Sonos Questions

Frederick21 - all manufacturers will claim this. If you compare a stock Squeezebox to a stock Sonos for instance, you will be shocked at the difference in jitter. The SB is much lower, and it still has audible jitter. The Sonos has the worst jitter of any of the computer servers on the market that I have measured. I believe it's primarily because they went overboard in adding filtering to insure that they would pass FCC spurious emissions testing.

As for jitter reduction in DAC's: They all reduce it to some extent, but never to inaudible levels, even ASRC (async sample-rate converters). Even the jitter in a CDP is quite high due to the lousy clocks that they use.

Face-it, the only way that you will ever get rid of it is to use an expensive reclocker or a DAC with a really good internal clock, like maybe a Spoiler, Zanden or Esoteric. DIP is not even remotely close, but it upsamples. It does reduce jitter though.

Steve N.

Hey Steve, not to argue but Soundstage noted in their review that the 48/96 both upsampled and reclocked for jitter reduction?? For those of us wondering if reclocking is needed woudn't starting with $300 for a $300 sonos unit be warranted before spending a few grand on one of those listed above?

I'm really more interested in Sonos adding support for higher resolution flac files. That would be my next digital jump, I think. I don't think Sonos is going to go there. I wonder if that is merely a firware upgrade to be able to happen?

Frederick21 - I agree. Even Squeezebox just launched their new Duet and it does not support 24/96.

As I reported earlier, I have been testing a Sonos ZP80 with an improved power supply. Contrary to what another participant in this thread asserts (based on no direct evidence, it appears), the power supply upgrade made a substantial improvement to the performance of the Sonos system.

Last week I received a second ZP80 with improved power supply. I own three ZP80s, two of which have been fitted with a new power supply. One upgraded ZP80 is connected to my network and hard drive storage. The second upgraded ZP80 is connected to my audio system.

The components of my audio system are:
ZP80 source
Audio Horizons tube DAC
Audio Horizons tube preamplifier
Simaudio W-5 power amplifier
Coincident Super Eclipse Mk III loudspeakers.

Also, I have a rotary A-B switch (with unbalanced and balanced connectors) in front of the power amp which allows me to compare two sources. I maintain a direct connection from the ZP80 unbalanced preamp out to the unbalanced power amplifier inputs. Also, I have a connection from the ZP80 digital out through the DAC/preamp to the balanced power amplifier inputs.

In an earlier post on this thread, I described what I heard using one upgraded ZP80 (connected to the audio system). Now with two upgraded ZP80s in the signal path, I can hear further improvement, of same kind I described in the earlier post.

How much improvement? How do you measure such things? By my scale (of which I cannot specify the metric), I think of the improvement added by the second upgraded power supply to be about 20% of the improvement delivered by the first upgraded power supply. In my opinion, after adding the second upgraded ZP80, the improvement from the ZP80 preamp out was greater than the improvement from the ZP80 digital out.

I can say that the quality of the ZP80 digital signal through the DAC/preamp now is the equal or better of the signal I got from my upgraded Levinson 37. It is very good.

I have no information from Joseph about the cost of these units. The modified ZP80s to which I am listening are protoypes. If I learn more, I will share the news with you.