The Dark Side; Digital audio equipment recommendations and setup.

Looking for some input on changes I’m going to make to my home audio.

Current setup:
Living room: Sonos Beam, Two Play 1s, Sub
Bar room: U-Turn Orbit, Pluto preamp, Yamaha r-s202 receiver, Polk t50 floor speakers

I’m looking to make upgrades to my turntable setup. Originally I was going to gradually upgrade each component of the setup but now I’m considering integrating the turntable into the Sonos system. I was thinking of going the Amp direction but given the cost I’m wondering if it would make sense to just do two Sonos Five and solely run Sonos.

Couple (probably dumb) questions:
Would the sound quality of vinyl through the Sonos five be better than streaming music to them?
Am I losing a lot of sound quality going this direction rather than spending a comparable amount of money on new floor standing speakers?

I have a 16 month old and another on the way so I find myself sitting in my listening room a lot less these days. It’ll be nice to play the vinyl throughout the house but still have an enjoyable listening experience when I can sit down in that room.

Sorry for the long winded post but just haven’t found much help through my google searches and I’m just not nearly educated enough in this space.
 
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That's a tough one.
* A dedicated analog setup will almost certainly sound better than Sonos. Not trying to dis Sonos; they just had other design needs.
* The Sonos should preserve at least some of vinyl's sound, especially if you have a nice stylus.
* All this means nothing if you won't have time to sit and listen.

My thought would be to get some Y cables so you can connect the Pluto to both your receiver and the Sonos. That way, you'll still have your listening room when you can, but whole-house music when you have to listen on the go.
 
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Also, upgrading the Pluto could help both systems. Better preamps are less noisy, which will make life easier for Sonos's ADC and compression engine. And hopefully obviously, less noise will shine straight through the analog setup.
 
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Oh, nice! It looks like your Yamaha has a tape loop! At least input 3 has both out and in connectors. Maybe start by adding a Sonos Port to that. Then consider other upgrades after you play with it for a while.
 
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Sonos with a higher end Dac might get you "close" to analog. This digital getting close to analog argument has been ongoing forever, but dacs like Denaprips for example show you how close now. Some people even like the Project nos dac. I prefer to split the difference, have good analog and digital systems as I listen and enjoy both formats at times. Although sometimes digital is more out of necessity if I do not have the analog version due to cost or availability.
 
apholden said:
Oh, nice! It looks like your Yamaha has a tape loop! At least input 3 has both out and in connectors. Maybe start by adding a Sonos Port to that. Then consider other upgrades after you play with it for a while.
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Thanks for the responses! So I’d run the turntable -> preamp -> receiver -> port?
Any recommendations on upgrading the Pluto? I’ve seen the darlington labs mentioned here as being a solid preamp.
 
Dukes said:
Thanks for the responses! So I’d run the turntable -> preamp -> receiver -> port?
Any recommendations on upgrading the Pluto? I’ve seen the darlington labs mentioned here as being a solid preamp.
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Sounds like a winner to me. I've never seen people dislike something recommended by the long-timers this site. I love how my system sounds, and almost every piece is directly from a recommendation on this site or a close cousin to a recommendation on this site.
 
Dukes said:
Thanks for the responses! So I’d run the turntable -> preamp -> receiver -> port?
Any recommendations on upgrading the Pluto? I’ve seen the darlington labs mentioned here as being a solid preamp.
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Yes. This would actually give you a lot of flexibility. Anything you can play on your current stereo can go into the port. Vinyl, CD, radio, whatever. You would just operate your stereo normally, but turn the volume down and select the line input on your Sonos.
You could also use it as Sonos->receiver->floor-standing speakers. Just set the receiver to input 3, and it's just another Sonos zone!
 
For preamps, I've decided used is the way to go for those. The Vincent Pho 8 was our go-to for the $300 price point when it was still in production. I've also heard good things about the MoFi StudioPhono for about the same price. I'm sure @HiFi Guy has can chime in.

Actually, in all the excitement, I forgot to ask what sort of budget you're looking at.
 
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apholden said:
Yes. This would actually give you a lot of flexibility. Anything you can play on your current stereo can go into the port. Vinyl, CD, radio, whatever. You would just operate your stereo normally, but turn the volume down and select the line input on your Sonos.
You could also use it as Sonos->receiver->floor-standing speakers. Just set the receiver to input 3, and it's just another Sonos zone!
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I think this definitely makes the most sense. Would I send the preamp to input 1 line in and then input 3 line out to the port? Then I’d use input 1 if I wanted to just listen to the floor speakers and input 3 if I wanted to send the vinyl throughout the home via Sonos
 
Hook your phono preamp up to input 1.

Hook up the Sonos Port to input 3. You'll need 4 RCA cables or 2 stereo pairs, whichever you have. Connect out to in, in to out, and left to left, right to right.

You would then select input 1 to listen to records or input 2 for whatever you put there, or radio, or whatever you want to listen to. Basically, when choosing what you want to listen to, don't worry about where the music will go.

Once you get your source playing, you have 3 choices:
- Turn up the volume to listen on your speakers.
- Turn the volume all the way off and fire up your Sonos app to send your music to Sonos.
- Combine these by turning the volume up and using your Sonos app, thus having your records play everywhere. This might get annoying because the Sonos speakers will be just a smidge behind your regular speakers.


The other option I mentioned is if you want to stream something to your big speakers.
1. Select input 3 in your Yamaha. You're selecting this because, now, you want your stereo to listen to Sonos.
2. Turn the volume up.
3. Go into your Sonos app, and stream something to the Port.
4. Your listening setup is now a Sonos Zone. Pick what you want to play in the Sonos App, and control the volume on your Yamaha.
 
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audirvana studio is going to replace 3.5

its now a subscription for 7 bucks a month or 70 a year

so now why not just buy roon with this
 
For the first time in a long time I spent the evening streaming. Just was having music ADD and wanted to listen to lots of singles instead of full albums. It's been a long time, but it was a ton of fun just bouncing around Tidal building a seemingly endless playlist.
It was nice to mix things up, and makes me glad I invested in my digital side of the system
 
duke86fan said:
audirvana studio is going to replace 3.5

its now a subscription for 7 bucks a month or 70 a year

so now why not just buy roon with this
Click to expand...

Audirvana sounds the best of the players IMO (I tried Amarra, and Jriver before choosing it), but there is major backlash for the new upcoming subscription model ecspecially from people who bought a "lifetime license" for 3.5. On top of it their unveil and PR was a disaster. I do not do alot of streaming, flac playback mostly (over 3000 cd's ripped) so I'm going to keep using 3.5 on my old MBP and Remote on a old Android until something else comes along that makes me want or need to switch. But if your a streaming/hi res listener I would demo Roon or one of the other subscription services/apps.
 
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JohnnyCashFan said:
Audirvana sounds the best of the players IMO (I tried Amarra, and Jriver before choosing it), but there is major backlash for the new upcoming subscription model ecspecially from people who bought a "lifetime license" for 3.5. On top of it their unveil and PR was a disaster (came off as a money grab scheme). I do not do alot of streaming, flac playback mostly (over 3000 cd's ripped) so I'm going to keep using 3.5 on my old MBP and Remote on a old Android until something else comes along that makes me want or need to switch. But if you a streaming/hi res listener I would look at Roon or one of the other services.
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Roon really is fantastic. I don’t think it’s worth it if you don’t have a lot of downloaded/ripped files but I listen to it every single day and definitely get my moneys worth.
 
JohnnyCashFan said:
Audirvana sounds the best of the players IMO (I tried Amarra, and Jriver before choosing it), but there is major backlash for the new upcoming subscription model ecspecially from people who bought a "lifetime license" for 3.5. On top of it their unveil and PR was a disaster (came off as a money grab scheme). I do not do alot of streaming, flac playback mostly (over 3000 cd's ripped) so I'm going to keep using 3.5 on my old MBP and Remote on a old Android until something else comes along that makes me want or need to switch. But if you a streaming/hi res listener I would look at Roon or one of the other services.
Click to expand...

MikeH said:
Roon really is fantastic. I don’t think it’s worth it if you don’t have a lot of downloaded/ripped files but I listen to it every single day and definitely get my moneys worth.
Click to expand...

From my experience you've got that back to front @JohnnyCashFan and I agree with @MikeH in that I love Roon and the way it ties my files and streaming together in one bundle. It would also be a fantastic, if expensive, management tool if you were only using files. If I was just using streaming I'd consider it to be a huge extravagance and would instead be looking at using the streaming services own app on a phone and a box with Spotify connect, or tidal connect etc for hi res, to act as the streaming point and connection to the system.
 
MikeH said:
Roon really is fantastic. I don’t think it’s worth it if you don’t have a lot of downloaded/ripped files but I listen to it every single day and definitely get my moneys worth.
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Same. I don't like the subscription model but I think Roon is fantastic. I have been moving away more from streaming but have over 2500 albums in my digital collection so I probably will keep using it (I have sunk so much time into adding additional tags etc.)
 
Joe Mac said:
If I was just using streaming I'd consider it to be a huge extravagance and would instead be looking at using the streaming services own app on a phone and a box with Spotify connect, or tidal connect etc for hi res, to act as the streaming point and connection to the system.
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Agree with this. When I was just using Qobuz I was fine just using their app. But once I added all my downloaded/ripped CDs, Roon became entirely worth it for me. It's definitely overkill if you don't have a lot of downloaded music.
 
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