I have a set of Sonos Play speakers in my office which get 6 – 8 hours a day of usage while I’m working. I’ve enjoyed their sound for a few years, but the software has continued to get worse and worse.
Lately they’ll play music, but only some album I played a few weeks ago despite trying to use AirPlay from my iPhone/iPad or the Sonos Web App. Still get the same album I don’t really want to be listening to right now.
After a few weeks of this I finally unplugged them and let them reset which fixed the issue, but I just want to listen to music not fuck around with speakers.
So I visited the vintage stereo guy locally and started looking at getting a set of speakers and an AMP into which I’d plug in a digital audio player like this. Unfortunately he knows vintage stuff but not modern lossless audio and was unsure whether converting the balanced 4.4mm connection into an RCA would work well, or at all.
I think it will if I get the right cable but I’m not really sure either. If you’ve got more information I should be looking at as I think about moving to less streaming and less fucking around with wireless crap I’d love to hear about it.
2 responses to “Annoyed by Sonos”
Personally, I’d just use the 3.5mm unbalanced line output, which should be totally compatible with the RCA inputs on a classic amp. You’d just need a cable with 3.5mm stereo jack plug on one end and RCA stereo plugs on the other, and those are very easy to source.
I can’t see that there’d be any difference between balanced and (a short run of decently-shielded) unbalanced cable in terms of audio quality, interference, etc.
Yes I can do that and it’s only going to be a 10cm run since the player will be sitting on top/beside the AMP. I’ll have to go look at his AMPs and speakers again now that I have some more information. He had a bunch that took phono inputs but I’m not sure he had anything that took RCA. I’m sure there is some converter though.
I’ve also looked at getting the AIYIMA T9 PRO and then pairing it with either some speakers from that local shop or maybe something online. Budget has me waiting a month or so before I can change my audio setup.