Best Transport for Tidal

Mofimadness,
did you also notice a difference in the sound quality connecting Usb vs CoAx or optical

Beshair...I never tried the USB, but I did compare the coax and optical outputs of the Sonos Connect. I found the coax to be much better sounding. I tried several different optical cables, but really didn't like it.

My only experience is Tidal on Auralic Aries to DAC. Just be careful because the Aries requires an Ipad (not Iphone yet) or Andriod device to run (anything, including Tidal). There is no computer interface.

In my experience the Aries has been very good. However I can only compare the playback of CD through the same DAC via a Musical Fidelity A5 acting as transport to the Aries and it is comparable. So close that I wouldn't venture into stating a difference. Whether your Sonos would compare I do not know.

Did you test the auralic aries using tidal using 24 bits as the sonos is a 20bit resolution.

Auralic recommends usb connection which the sonos does not even have one.

Streaming is not as good as the player and running through a squeezebox or other device via a 3rd party plugin seems best. I think you can maximize the browser playing buy shutting everything off and not touching your keyboard but streamed music via a download connection is easilly effected by alot of things. I see the downloaded player being a lot better and I'd LOVE to tear it apart but I am using the squezebox so just hanging for know. Listening to music has not been this fulfilling since I got my first radio! Eyeing the auralic, etc but I suspect and hope Magnun Dynalab or some of the other big boys team up with tidal to offer something soon.