Sonos into NDX via digital - what am I sacrificing?

As you are suggesting a digital connection from Sonos to NDX, step 2 will be carried out by the DAC in the NDX, not the Sonos.

I know of someone who has added a quality HR capable (not Naim) streamer amp & speakers to his Sonos.   The new setup is in his living/listening room & the various Sonos bits are now kitchen & bedroom.   He connects the Sonos to the streamer to enable multi-room music.    For best SQ the streamer is ethernet connected (via router) to his ripper/NAS box to which he is now adding 24-bit albums that the Sonos cannot play.  

I'm surprised the difference wasn't significant.  I have compared a Sonos (ZP80) analogue output to NDX and the difference was considerable.

The difference (albeit less so) still exists when feeding the NDX with the Sonos via a digital input on the NDX.  I found the sound to be lifeless and not engaging.  I kept my Sonos for a while hoping to use lossless streaming services but the drop in quality was too much and I sold my Sonos system, replacing the other rooms with Muso QB's.

Just to check, are you transcoding FLAC to WAV as this makes a difference with the NDX?  Also I assume that the files are lossless?

If you really want to keep the Sonos as a digital source you may wish to consider other DAC solutions, maybe the NDAC or Chord products.  You will lose the ability to play studio masters and DSD though.

You might first want to establish that your Naim system is performing as it should. As you climb the upgrade ladder, system setup becomes increasingly important, and a decent rack, careful cable dressing, mains supply quality and network setup can make all the difference. Maybe worth getting your dealer involved too - did they do the setup for you? 

To answer your question yes you gain the NDX superior processing (2 and 3 in your description).  The digital out in the sonos is supposed to be a bit jittery (there is loads of conflicting info as to whether or not this is audible on the net) but the NDX DAC should remove this as I understand it buffers and re-clocks the signal so this should be moot.  Personally I suspect that when set up right (fixed volume output, no compression etc etc) the sonos into the digital side of the NDX will be pretty close to the bare NDX but others will be along to tell you different.  I struggle sometimes to tell the difference with digital sources so they may well be right.

As ever, give it a try and see what you think.  You should not need a really expensive digital connector to test the theory and in then end the only persons view that really matters is your own.

It'll be interesting to hear your findings.

Good luck.

I ran my Sonos Connect into the Naim DAC/555, alongside the NDX.  The hope was to keep Sonos for Deezer.  IME, even Spotify through the NDX/nDAC sounds better than my own lossless rips through Sonos/nDAC.

There are popular digital retrofits for Sonos that evidently lift performance.  I have not been sufficiently motivated to get one.  Abandoned Sonos in the end.

Nick 

Thanks for all your helpful and interesting responses. 

Just to answer a few points that were raised:

• All my streamed files are FLAC, ripped to my NAS using dbPoweramp 
• All my network connections are by Ethernet - except that my experiments with various upnp servers (Asset and Minimserver) currently necessitate them being installed on my wireless laptop (as my current 7-year-old NAS only runs Twonky), so there's a bit of wireless network traffic for the NDX when using the Naim app
• My main reason for wanting to try Sonos into the NDX via digital is to enable me to continue to have the benefit of the Sonos interface. I am hugely unimpressed with the Naim app (at best, it's functional)
• I'm confident that my system is all connected correctly. I'm also certain that my cable arrangements are a mess, but (perhaps bar a little bit of minor rearrangement which I keep meaning to do) that's just the way it has to be with my storage/rack set-up 
• I bought the NDX new from my local Naim dealer but no offer of any home visit to do a once-over. Do you think I should ask? Is it something Naim  expects dealers to do, or would it be a huge favour?

Regardless of all that, I have now connected the Sonos to the NDX via optical. 

I like it, a lot. My experiment is only an hour old (and I'll do a lot more comparing at the weekend), but it's hard to tell any difference to the NDX running via Asset (ie without the Sonos), including when Asset is transcoding to WAV on the fly. Both are brilliantly clear, crisp, exciting, accurate, revealing, with fantastic bass and vocals. 

And the even better thing is, I have also been comparing it all to the bare Sonos connected straight into my 202, ie my system before the NDX. I hadn't previously done any direct A/B comparison but, contrary to my original post, the NDX is clearly much better (using either of the feeds under discussion). Which is a very pleasing finding!

So I'm pretty happy at the moment. 

Thanks again. 

Matt

Glad to hear you’re happy. An all round great result I’d say.

Cheers, Matt.

Try a test:   save a few WAV files to a USB thumb drive and plug it into the front of the NDX.  This is the reliable benchmark for sound quality.  

If UPnP into the NDX is not equally good as WAV on USB, there are a number of aspects that can be tweaked and tuned — many more variables on a network than when using USB thumb drive, but they can be managed.

USB is also the surest way to know if you hear any difference in the various lossless file formats.  After trying them all, I settled on AIFF.  Not everybody agrees, so best to do your own test.

Nick

Maughan67 posted:

 

• I bought the NDX new from my local Naim dealer but no offer of any home visit to do a once-over. Do you think I should ask? Is it something Naim  expects dealers to do, or would it be a huge favour?

I would absolutely expect your dealer to be willing and able to come to you and check out your system. If they are any good, and want your long term loyalty as a customer, they should want to keep you happy, and ensure that you have confidence that you're getting the best from your system. My dealer would certainly be happy to do this.

Maughan67 posted:

 

Regardless of all that, I have now connected the Sonos to the NDX via optical. 

I like it, a lot. My experiment is only an hour old (and I'll do a lot more comparing at the weekend), but it's hard to tell any difference to the NDX running via Asset (ie without the Sonos), including when Asset is transcoding to WAV on the fly. Both are brilliantly clear, crisp, exciting, accurate, revealing, with fantastic bass and vocals. 

And the even better thing is, I have also been comparing it all to the bare Sonos connected straight into my 202, ie my system before the NDX. I hadn't previously done any direct A/B comparison but, contrary to my original post, the NDX is clearly much better (using either of the feeds under discussion). Which is a very pleasing finding!

 

If you prefer to use the Sonos and it's app, I think the NDX is the wrong product for you - you might find that you get better sound quality for less money by replacing it with a good DAC with an optical or coax input.

I like Naim DACs and amps very much but I haven't yet found a Naim streamer that is good for me.

I had an HDX for a while but I found the sound was better if I used an external DAC rather than the internal one. Also, I didn't like the way the HDX tagged my ripped CDs and it was better to rip them on a laptop with dBPoweramp. I subscribe to Qobuz and Naim don't support this so I needed to attach another streamer to give me access. Why keep an HDX when I was using other products to fulfil its functions? I didn't, and I think I'd have the same issues with the later Naim streaming products.

I think the HDX also had an issue in that, if you used it as a server for a multi-room system, all the rooms other than the main one were down-sampled to lossy. Maybe that has since been cured.

If Naim produced a streamer that was only a streamer (no on-board DAC or amp) and you could simply connect it to an existing system, and that gave access to a wider range of streaming services including Qobuz, I'd be interested.

These days I use Bluesound streamers into Naim DACs and amps. It's a multi-room system and it plays everything up to 24/192 and sounds great. I can happily stream Qobuz at 24/96 which is their highest offering. The only thing missing is IP control over the Naim amps so that you can take a direct feed from the streamers and control volume via the amps.

I also have some Simple Audio streamers which sound as good as the Bluesound ones but production was stopped a couple of years ago and the control system requires a few workarounds so they're probably not a long-term solution.

hardly used the ndx has a full player only use it as a expensive   transport,any my other route is   the aries mini through my dac,  cant really tell them apart.  iam thinking the sonos digital interface is flawed

Hi, I used to run this setup.. Sonos into NDX. It works very well, however the class of transport from the Sonos is ultimately the limiting factor and as a consequence there is more digital noise which you will notice as a loss of detail, presence and relative realism and presence... therefore if you have a quality Hi-Fi system, then ultimately you will be selling yourself short... but fine for background music and web radio.

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

Hi, I used to run this setup.. Sonos into NDX. It works very well, however the class of transport from the Sonos is ultimately the limiting factor and as a consequence there is more digital noise which you will notice as a loss of detail, presence and relative realism and presence... therefore if you have a quality Hi-Fi system, then ultimately you will be selling yourself short... but fine for background music and web radio.

I discovered that my system sounded a bit worse when I had a Connect running into my NDX. I believe it was having some kind of negative impact on the electricity since it was plugged into the same power strip as my other components.

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

Hi, I used to run this setup.. Sonos into NDX. It works very well, however the class of transport from the Sonos is ultimately the limiting factor and as a consequence there is more digital noise which you will notice as a loss of detail, presence and relative realism and presence... therefore if you have a quality Hi-Fi system, then ultimately you will be selling yourself short... but fine for background music and web radio.

Simon,

Exactly what is digital noise?  Electrical noise can be eliminated by using an optical connection 'twixt sonos and NDX. Please note I am not trying to start an argument here - your knowledge of these things far surpasses mine - rather trying to better understand what the transport issues are.

Matt