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Sonos to Bluesound

wiresandmore

wiresandmore

pfm Member
Hi,

Has anyone moved a system from Sonos to Bluesound? I’m pretty invested in the Sonos system which has happened a bit more by accident than design.....the lack of hi-res is a challenge as most downloads I buy now are hi-res and I wonder if the sound quality is any better (I’m especially curious on the amp/powernode comparison)

Anyone made this change?
 
Bluesound is the next step up from Sonos wrt sound quality. Yes, you should hear a difference quite easily with Sonos amp to powernode comparison.
Hi res on Sonos is going to be lost.
The individual speakers eg play5 vs Pulse etc, you may not be the difference so easily. The Bluesound speakers are more expensive & I don’t think hi res going through them is going to be a massive step up. The benefits will be with the boxes as opposed to the speakers. The Pulse bar is also a lot better than the Sonos playbar but it’s bigger, uglier & costlier.
I think Sonos is great at what it does. It works for a lot of people & the app is probably the best out there. The BluOS app isn’t far behind. However, Sonos is limited for people who want to go to cd quality or higher, which is where Bluesound kicks in.
Sonos for convenience, reliability & ease of use. Bluesound for all of that, plus higher quality sound, at a higher price.
 
Not everyone does well using some Bluesound equipment wirelessly, just for info. Worth researching this aspect if the wireless ability is critical to your use case.
 
jobseeker said:
Not everyone does well using some Bluesound equipment wirelessly, just for info. Worth researching this aspect if the wireless ability is critical to your use case.
Click to expand...

Bluesound equipment relies on your existing WiFi network. So if you have issues with range, congestion or interference from neighbouring networks, you might run into difficulties. Bluesound is no better or worse than most other manufacturers in this regard. In more general networking terms, Bluesound is a little less fussy than some other manufacturers. Sort out your WiFi and you will not have any difficulties.
 
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I have both. In my studio I have a Sonos zp90 going into focal active monitors and my main set up is a bluesound node2i directly into Avondale mono power amps into impulse S2 speakers. I have swapped them over to see whether there is much difference between them.
The blesound is significantly better. The difference isn’t marked when using Spotify premium, but when using Tidal - esp mqa - it’s very marked. I wondered about getting a pre/DAC for the main system but the bluesound is so good it doesn’t seem worth it right now.
 
jobseeker said:
Not everyone does well using some Bluesound equipment wirelessly, just for info. Worth researching this aspect if the wireless ability is critical to your use case.
Click to expand...

thanks - I could probably just use the. Blue sound with a wired connection.....I’ll see if that would work
 
I probably have cloth ears but I’ve yet to find a consistently noticeable difference between “hi-res” and CD quality. I have 4 Blusound devices but I’d be inclined to buy them on their own merits rather than by the fact they can play hi-res.

Mind you if you’re buying hi-res music it does seem daft not to be able to hear them at their resolution

.sjb
 
It’s more that I have to keep a 2nd library for the Sonos which is 44.1/16 - I know I can get round it with Roon but the rest of the family find it complex to use.....
 
I'm running Sonos throughout the house and Bluesound in my study. Main reason is that I just wanted to try it out as well as being able to use some hi-res material. The Sonos app is better, but not by much. The Sonos desktop app is much better. Streaming service integration is better with Sonos as well. One benefit I've found of using a separate system is that I can have just my music on the Blusound rather than everyone's being visable on the Sonos. It is a bit of a pain having a hi-res folder and a downsampled hi-res folder to cater for each system.
 
chris4944 said:
I'm running Sonos throughout the house and Bluesound in my study...It is a bit of a pain having a hi-res folder and a downsampled hi-res folder to cater for each system.
Click to expand...

Have a look into Roon. It can integrate with Sonos and Bluesound products (amongst others), giving you a single app (available for Android, iOS, macOS and Windows) to control all of your equipment. It can downsample your high resolution content on the fly for playback on the Sonos equipment or stream in at its native sample rate to the Bluesound equipment.
 
Thanks for that. I've looked into Roon before but always dismissed it on cost grounds. It hadn't really occurred to me that I could keep all my devices to use as endpoints but use a common app. That would be a useful feature. The DSP built into it also appeals as I do a lot of low volume listening and like to boost the bass a little bit.
 
The bluesound stuff is really well engineered and very wifi friendly (there really isn't an excuse for equipment not to be heading into 2020).
I've got a Node 2i and a vault 2i, both of which work flawlessly, except for BluOS integration with Amazon Japan, which is slightly behind the curve.
Highly recommended as long as you have a well-sorted wifi network and a reasonable internet connection.
 
I used Sonos for a while before moving over the Bluesound. Very happy with the switch, the app is better IMO, the networking is super stable and have both a Node 2i and Pulse Flex 2i playing very nicely together (the pulse flex sounding better than the sonos play 1). The node 2i is the particular star - it "just works" and the DAC is surprisingly good, so much so that I'm going straight from the node into a power amp for a very neat setup and this has eliminated a separate DAC. No issues with wireless performance with the Pulse Flex (I think the 2i is better in this regard) - my node is wired.
 
I picked up a used 2i , plugged straight into pre-amp. I really can’t hear the need for a separate dac. But then as someone else said, I’m not a Bat or a Dog.

Until I can afford dCS products, I really can’t see the need to look at anything else.
 
One thing I like to do with my Sonos is to group my three rooms together when playing a turntable. Something you can’t do with Bluesound gear.

Despite Bluesound’s plethora of inputs, none of these are able to act as sources for other Bluesound speakers. Connecting to a Pulse 2 via Bluetooth, for instance, means you can only listen on the Pulse 2 — speakers grouped with the Pulse 2 will sit idle as long as you’ve chosen Bluetooth as the source. Same goes for USB, and line-in.
 
John said:
One thing I like to do with my Sonos is to group my three rooms together when playing a turntable. Something you can’t do with Bluesound gear.

Despite Bluesound’s plethora of inputs, none of these are able to act as sources for other Bluesound speakers. Connecting to a Pulse 2 via Bluetooth, for instance, means you can only listen on the Pulse 2 — speakers grouped with the Pulse 2 will sit idle as long as you’ve chosen Bluetooth as the source. Same goes for USB, and line-in.
Click to expand...

You can group, just needs to be the primary player in a group otherwise silence.
 
Jumping in on this thread with what might be a bit of a silly question - I have all my music in flac files on a nas which I play through a Sonos connect. Would a bluesound 'reveal' more?
I always assumed that flac files were CD quality and that Sonos played them at their best or have I got it all wrong yet again..?
I don't have any 'hi-res and can't see me getting any, so that's not part of my equation..
 
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