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Logitech Squeezeboxes or Sonos

Thanks for the info guys. I might try a s/h one off ebay, just curious to see how it stacks up against the Sonos for sound quality. Would be running it into a DAC with Apple Lossless files.
 
If you intend to use lossless files on the Squeezebox, I can already tell you there's room for improvement. Personally I didn't hear much difference between flacs and mp3's on the SB, and I reckon it was basically designed (fairly well actually) for mp3. It took a better dac (styleaudio) to hear how good flacs can sound.
 
The dac isn't the issue as it will be outputting from the digital stage anyway, i'm more interested to see if what it outputs to the dac is better than the Sonos.

Thanks for your thoughts, it does look more like a PC peripheral than anything else but there's not much choice when it comes to a digital transport at sensible money. Seems like it's Sonos or Squeezebox. What's the next step up from those for purely a digital streamer ?
 
imattersuk said:
Seems like it's Sonos or Squeezebox. What's the next step up from those for purely a digital streamer ?
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Possibly a Linn Sneaky DS - would let you do 24/192 - though once you get into the DS range you don't need an add on DAC as they seem clude fine DACs in their own right that fully exploit the streaming capability.
 
AndyU said:
Possibly a Linn Sneaky DS - would let you do 24/192 - though once you get into the DS range you don't need an add on DAC as they seem clude fine DACs in their own right that fully exploit the streaming capability.
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Yes that's the problem. There's a gap in the market for a high end streamer imo.
 
after the Sonos I recently bought a Marantz NA7004 music player, about 700 euros,
It's a great machine, capable of streaming audio files from a DLNA, internet radio, DAB+, FM tuner. It supports FLAC 24/96, can be used as an external DAC also from a PC through the USB input, has an iPhone app as a controller or other DLNA controllers.

and the sound quality is superb!!!
 
I have just bought a Squeeze Box touch, running through a Naim pre-amp and I have to say I am very impressed with the quality and the iPeng control.
 
The Marantz has a DAC built in so again paying for something you don't necessarily need if you already have a decent DAC, looks a nice product though.
 
Funnily I just logged on to ask the same question. So thanks for all the feed back on the original post!

One things....does the Sneaky DS support Spotify yet?
 
ADL said:
after the Sonos I recently bought a Marantz NA7004 music player, about 700 euros,
It's a great machine, capable of streaming audio files from a DLNA, internet radio, DAB+, FM tuner. It supports FLAC 24/96, can be used as an external DAC also from a PC through the USB input, has an iPhone app as a controller or other DLNA controllers.

and the sound quality is superb!!!
Click to expand...

Interesting

I was considering a Marantz NA7004 but was put off by the poor user interface. Knowing it can be controlled from an iPhone certainly changes things. Could the iPhone be used to stream from a NAS.

Also, does it support WAV files.

I assume from your post the sound quality is better than the Sonos, could you give an indication of the sound quality relative to a stand alone CD player.
 
The Marantz has an iPhone interface and aslo a standard basic web interface. It's not of the Sonos Level but the target of the two machines are different, Marantz is more an audiophile item. The sound quality is comparabel to my 20years old cd + DacMagic when playing FLAC files from a NAS, it seem superior when playing FLAC 24 bit files. Compared to the DacMagic there seems to be more emphasys on high tones.

The Internet Radio sound quality is exceptional: Linn Radio streams at 320kbps and makes me forget that I'm listening to a radio.

Now I'm converting all my cd to FLAC and thinking to sell my DacMagic
 
Just a heads up re remote options: my girlfriend reports that the Sonos Remote and the Spotify programs runs under WINE on her Linux lappy just fine -- so all common platforms: Win/Apple/Linux are happy. iOS (iPhone/iPod/iPad) support is also going to be joined by an Android version of the remote soon, so the cheap n'nasty Android tablets for £100 quid or so in Maplins should be able to act as low cost remotes.

I use my Sonos as a digital radio (in an area with no DAB and poor FM) and to legally try music via Spotify Prem. I think 300kbps streamed sounds fine... I don't own a digital music library.
 
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