Hi Dave, great video! I've been working at SONOS for 10 years. I help manage and develop their acoustical facilities. We're definitely meticulous when it comes prioritizing overall quality. It seems excessive, but the foam and glue are necessary to mitigate buzzing parts and fortify components for longevity. Despite not being inside the acoustic volume, the foam near the antennas is meant to mitigate buzz between the plastic foot and the enclosure. Keep in mind that the original PLAY:5 was made in 2009 and was our first "all-in-one" speaker. We've learned a lot in 13 years. We now design our own transducers in-house amongst many other improvements you might enjoy finding in one of our newer products. Cheers
Pretty awesome, I've had a lot of free sonos gear from a supplier over the years, and took a few apart for fun, and coincidentally, the same one dave took apart because the application didn't work anymore. Was pretty bad of you at sonos to do that. But yes the products do seem good and I got everything for free so can't complain. In short, good products CW!
@@colinofay7237 Glad you appreciate the product from a hardware perspective. I live and breathe hardware development so some of the other aspects of the business I'm less versed with. With S2, we got to the point where our early products were lasting so long it became a limiting factor for coexistence with the modern products we were developing using the same SW platform. We have a bit of a novel approach when it comes to designing consumer electronics that are not meant to be thrown away after a couple of years. We design our products to hopefully last a decade or more. I'm not sure what the exact statistic is, but around 90% of every Sonos product ever made is still working in the field. Basically, we got to the point where we had to diverge and develop a new software platform that would enable the technologies we wanted to build into our products going into the future. The road hadn't been paved for us when it comes to smart speakers and networked audio so we definitely hit some stumbling blocks as we forged a path forward. I think we've all learned from the S2 implementation and I hope that we're listening to our customers better than before!
Yet your company goes out of their way to make sure that the new app doesn't work with old hardware, so people think it's broken and throw it away when there's nothing wrong with it. I cannot stand companies who go out of their to ear as much money as possible and add towards Ewaste.
@@TheManLab7 sorry to hear you feel that way. We actually went out of our way to not brick older components that were incompatible with the new software. As I mentioned in my common above, we needed to redesign the software platform to evolve our products. Our older products literally did not have the CPU power or memory to work with our more evolved products which is why the split between S1 and S2 happened. Rather than brick the old components, we gave customers the choice to use two apps which is inconvenient but much better than having old gear turn into a paper weight.
@@CW-vo7ty I get technical debt can bite you but you misunderstand the core issues behind that backlash. People were buying an *ecosystem* and the break with compatibility meant that if they wanted to extend their system they would have to rebuy everything. This is really a slap to people who had already kitted out multiple rooms. It should have been a priority for S2 gear to fall over to compatibility mode to mesh with S1 stuff at the user acknowledged loss of newer S2 features… I liked Sonos a lot but after that I didn’t extend my system at all and there is no incentive to ever do so… :(
Vibration is nasty, causing rapid system aging unless ruthlessly damped. Back when I worked on aircraft instruments, we had solutions certified for both piston and jet cockpits that had excellent field performance. Moving the same instruments to the helicopter market (with a few software changes) opened up a can of worms when we reached vibration/shake testing. We had to add physical clamps for our larger capacitors, more mounting screws for the PCBs, and lots of silicone snot. All of this paid off when we targeted the military market, when the US FAA and DoD finally agreed that military aircraft should have a complete civilian instrument load-out when flying in civilian airspace, and the DoD had a sudden need for "plug & play" cockpit upgrades (which was our niche). Boeing and other military suppliers tried to add FAA software upgrades to their military cockpits, but needed to charge so much that it would have been cheaper to retire the aircraft early! We made a bundle on those deals. But only because the civilian and military vibe/shake testing specs for helicopters were very similar, and our instruments met mil-spec with only retesting, no hardware changes at all. Having a full-spectrum high-power vibration source INSIDE my instrument would drive me crazy! The Sonos folks didn't miss any tricks, so far as I can tell. Just treat it as a hostile environment, and design accordingly.
Vibration inside a speaker cabinet really isn't that much of an issue. A sturdy cabinet should barely vibrate at all and what's coupled through air will not be anywhere near aircraft levels especially not with a 4" bass driver. That's why even active computer speakers with shoddy engineering (Logitech etc). will usually last for decades.
Yes helicopters are a different ball game when it comes to vibration. Every instrument panel is on shock mounts, and those have no rubber in them to do damping, as that fails too fast. Changed a good number of those metal mounts because there was almost nothing left of the steel wire brushes that are used to damp them, though the springs in the middle were still fine. Take it out and the cup that holds them is full of small metal filings, that used to be stainless steel wires. There is a reason every fastener on a helicopter is either lockwired, or self locking of some sort, because otherwise there would be nothing in them after a while. Most common repair was putting floor attachment points back in, because they tore out of the honeycomb floor. We used to get Araldite slow set epoxy in 5l cans, not the little dinky 50ml tubes, and would often need 2 or more cans to fix a floor. When those tore out again the Araldite was not the failure point. That and the rolls of 3M blade tape.
@@westelaudio943 Logitech speakers (the cheap 2.1, 4.1, 5.1 ones) will last for decades :) Found a 4.1 system in the trash recently - looks like hell, but works perfectly still) Also; Cambridge Soundworks (which might also be Logitech now). Not too expensive, but my 5.1 sub has lasted for about 20 years now. No buzzing or anything
The foam and glue is going to be to reduce vibration noise, I don't think it is over engineered, nothing more annoying than a speaker that vibrates and rattles ! A speaker enclosure is a pretty harsh place for vibration. The external foam pads on the bottom will be to help stop cabinet buzz from the plastic foot contact point.
Sonos created a bit of a storm back in early 2020 when they wanted everyone to brick their existing units in exchange for 30% off the new units that would allow them to implement all the new features that the existing hardware wouldn't support. I remember a bit of a kerfuffle because updates were coming to an end and some people had just bought units that they were dropping support for.
It is a misstatement to say that Sonos would "brick" units. They quickly changed from that plan with a bit of internet backlash to rather than bricking traded in units, to let them continue, and they would still work using the old software. Users had a choice. You could get 30% off for each existing of the old units, and they wouldn't even disable the old unit, it just wouldn't play with the new software. Even then the youngest units they stopped supporting were over 5 years old if I remember. I still have an old unit that I use in a garage where I don't care if I cannot group it with my other speakers. Sonos overall has been great, and only improved with the newer units. The WiFi is strong, I almost never have connectivity issues. Some units I am using in a really hot/humid environment (In Florida on a covered lanai) and they have lasted 6 years with no issues so far. Much better than many TV's do in that environment! I think the Sonos stuff sounds decent and works flawlessly. This from a company that was the first to make this work... long before Google Amazon or Apple had such devices as even a glimmer in their eyes.
@@brianfritz575 _You could get 30% off for each existing of the old units, and they wouldn't even disable the old unit, it just wouldn't play with the new software._ That wasn't the original plan, certainly not as described on Sonos' own blog. To get the discount it was necessary to enter a menu option that would permanently disable the unit and render it inert. I have no idea if this changed after the backlash, I wasn't that interested - I do know some people successfully created new firmware to work independent of Sonos entirely but that is the extent of the interest I had (I seem to recall the reverse engineering to break in was interesting).
We are not allowed to throw away tech items at my work. We have to use the ewaste bin. That way we can feel self rightious about not filling our landfill with electronic trash, and insted, it probably fills a landfill somewhere else.
In England, we are (generally) NOT allowed to take *anything* (electrical or electronic) from recycling centres, which IMHO is criminal. People chuck perfectly good stuff in those skips, including vintage stuff which really needs to be preserved for future generations and can also be worth a fair few beans.
@@BG101UK I expect its for 2 reasons health and safety, and to avoid people taking the items with scrap value and scrapping the for profit (like the copper in the leads, as that offsets the costs of disposing of the other bits). I agree though a shame, luckily there are charity shops here which sell used electricals
@@BG101UK whats wrong with English people, why they are so obnoxiously insane with electrical things, they are super afraid of electricity, its kind of funny
I have one of these, and it is still going strong. The sound is great and fills a room with no problem. This was the flagship model and was probably over-engineered. I have two Play 3 and a Play 1, which are also engineered to a high standard. The newer Sonos gear does not work with the S1 app, and the older equipment has frozen in time and features. If you buy the newer gear, you must run two separate Sonos systems or retire the old equipment. That is most likely why this Play-5 is in the dumpster.
Isn't it a bit embarrassing to buy into these time-sensitive devices? I now learn from the comments they had the kill-switch ready for any connected 1st gen device. I know one might argue: but only if you wanted to upgrade. Ask to Windows 7 users if they also wanted to upgrade. I can find schematics and parts for my 90s Hi-Fi, I can still tie in new components to it... and this system from a handful of years back was already on the kill-list from SONOS? This tells a lot about the company ethics... I was absolutely right in my guts' feelings about this company and products.
@@m80116 Did you not buy a cassette player because in 12 years time a CD player was going to come out, I'm not sure this is all that different. It still works, its just not supported going forward, doesn't mean you can't keep using it.
@@edc1569 There's a substantial difference: nobody at Mastushita planted a backdoor in my cassette deck, I still can find most parts for it, the schematics are freely available on the Internet. We're talking of a mid 90s deck, an almost 30 years old deck. How is this stuff supposed to be environmentally friendly if it's in the dumpster 5 years after it was sold! It's out of my mind... I just get familiar with one piece of equipment in 5 years.
@@m80116 As someone who repairs vintage cassette decks as a hobby I can guarantee you that you can NOT still find old parts for a Matsushita cassette deck. Save for the belts and and modern knockoffs (read: lower quality Chinese examples) of the motors, those parts are fully unobtanium unless you cannibalize another deck. Nobody, and I mean nobody is still manufacturing heads, gears, pulleys, or idlers for those old decks - and the bespoke ICs are long gone. Dolby hasn’t licensed B/C/S NR in an IC in almost two decades, and none of the major manufacturers still have stock - so, no.
@@christodd3361 I repair too. Heads of RS-TR on AliExpress. Belts, rollers, most components except ICs obviously, even reproduction gears. Finding new belts at this point would be irrelevant being over 25 years old. I recently repaired a Panasonic RQ-V15x with original volume pot found well... I won't say. It's the only place in the world that I know of still having a stock, almost 30 years after production. Good luck finding parts for the modern garbage: no schematics, no parts and should you ever cannibalize they're serialized so it's pointless anyway.
@@Okurka. I mean one can be aware of the passage of time and still be shocked by its effects. The world's a big place, lots to not be aware of, and it's all always changing.
i actually have two Gen 1 Play:5s set up in a stereo pair in my office right now! They are definitely some of the best all-in-one wifi speakers i've ever heard, especially after you do the room tuning.
The 74AC over HC will be because they are being used as gate drivers. Faster switching means lower dissipation in the driver, improving the efficiency of the amplifier and lowering the internal heating.
Worth saying those 2009 high tech devices are still supported by today's Sonos systems. Definitely my best buy 10 years ago. Still using it everyday. A wonderful product imo.
Worked on it, you're pretty much right on, it's a ppc computer with 6 dac-amps mounted on. The later ones cut costs better but the first one was both over and under-engineered, still pretty good, expensive as hell.
Foam around wiring and plenty of sealant is to help stop vibrations. Everything has it’s natural oscillating frequency and inside a speaker it’ll be quite intense. It’ll help audibly as well as increasing reliability.
If I remember correctly the Sonos speakers also create some sort of mesh network for synchronization of the music, which is probably what all that Wi-Fi antenna stuff is for.
Very nice to see they have done so much to avoid vibrations causing issues. When you consider the frequency range of vibrations, it is not surprising they have gone to town. Nothing worse than having a speaker system that vibrates at certain frequencies.
Now that's an epic title. I used to have a pair of Sonos speakers. Wasn't super thrilled with them, but found someone who was and got most of my money back out of them.
Looks like early production, before they got the design down to cut price. Likely later units had a lot fewer fasteners and a lot fewer components, as they Muntzed the design. Likely later on they got all the power devices into a single package or three, using the integrated amplifier to drive the H bridge units. 5 channels of audio, only 5 drivers, 4 being single ended with DC coupling capacitors in a row, likely the middle of the 5 being the board decoupling, and the fifth one uses 2 inductors and differential drive for the "big bass" drive. Good filtering as well, likely actually passed all EMC compliance first pass with a good margin, and likely rev 2 and later on they sort of optimised it to get the cost of the filtering down. Separate antennas needed, and good ones, as these tend to be used far away from the music source, or in a garden, so need great wifi connectivity, and the BT side also has to have pretty decent range so as to work over 15m range or more.
Then second Ethernet port is typically called a "courtesy port" . It's basically allowing you to connect PC to the other port without needing an external additional Ethernet switch.
I know your stick is being outraged, But the sonos is not the Juicero as that thing could barely squeeze already crushed fruit despite all it's engineering. The sonos play on the other hand for a wifi speaker sound pretty good. And remember it was their first product, so ofcourse it was over engineered. Also sonos as a company has been brilliant with support, they still support an app for a product that is over 13 years old. I have two that are still fully functional and the only repair i've had to do on both of them, is loose screws that hold the antennas pcbs down, that started rattling around. Very few companies support products older than 5 years, let alone 10, but sonos play 5 is coming on 15 years. The only features they haven't add via software for the old units are: - S2 Controller compatiblity: (but they did offer discounts on new models, initially they did brick your old unit intentionally, but they changed their mind after the public out cry) - Airplay support (due to licensing/hardware issues) - Google Assitant (due to lacking a microphone)
The Sonos speakers actually sound really good for their size and work well in a multi-room setup. They are just horribly expensive, especially if you go all out (stereo pairs, sub, ...).
The discrete open-loop Class-D amplifier construction was pretty interesting and I didn't expect that in the beginning. However, I teared down a Canton DM90 (first gen) soundbar a couple of years ago which falls into the same time of that Sonos Play 5 shown in that video and there was a similar amplifier construction powered completely by Renesas products. A DSP with direct PWM outputs and then having some external dumb power-stages. So it seems like that was common practice in the middle 2000 years (I think the start of having class-d in consumer products). What I personally think is even more interesting is the Freescale-CPU. For the fact that it is a single-core 400 MHz chip, running most probably linux, very slow SDRAM, handling all the DSP stuff, networking and audio-decoding in software this is impressive to have that running on such a low-power computing platform.
Oh no, the software is just perfect for the audience they want to sell these things for. More tech vice people are far from people they want to hoover cash from.
Just found a JBL Flip bluetooth speaker, fairly clean, but needs the USB charge port to be replaced, ordered one complete replacement assembly for 15 euros.
repaired a few of them (play5 gen1) so far, they still work unless they are in recycle mode (which bricks them and gives you a discount on newer models.. they cancelled this program but allready bricked ones are dead) they (90% of the time) die by a spike in the mains .. bad filtering, new rectrumfryer and fets and a fuse. but some times no sound or silent sound is coming out, then a resistor on the bottom board near the connector to the top boards is dead. R27835 or the ones nearby (to switch power for the class-d amps.) they work fine.. if they work. just that account and update stuff is annoying. if they had the recycle program for longer people would have made a custom firmware for it. its not quite juicero. you need a account yes but you dont have to pay to use it. you can stream from free services or local music libraries. they have LAN ports to sync them for lower lantency if you are using them as tv speakers or something, over wifi you got a second or two, fine for music but not movies.
Couldn't one just replace the digital board with an raspberry pi / esp32 (squeezebox)? Looks like i2s audio, add a dsp chip inbetween to generate the individual channels from 2 and bypass the sonoff board Would be interesting to reverse engineer a bricked one buut... I have none :P
You may say Juicero level of smart speaker, but their smart power amps (Sonos Connect:Amp) from 2006 still sells for 200€/$ on Ebay because they still support Spotify and are absolutely bulletproof even when plugged in 24/7 for 15 years.
About a week ago I found a pair of cat RGB LED bluetooth Brookstone headphones. It had a loose connector on the left speaker. They originally sold for like $250.
I repaired a faulty Sonos Play 5 speaker a few years ago. It turned out it had a popped FULL BRIDGE RECTIFIER, which was quite surprising, as it was quite a chunky one. (we're in 240V land, in the Old Dart, so it's not like somebody plugged in a 110V speaker which popped the bridge rec. Maybe a power surge or lightning damaged it? Just don't often see a bridge rec that dies unless it's on a much larger device.) It sounded pretty good after, but the one HUGE downside is that it only worked via Sonos app, so you couldn't use it for playing music from RU-vid etc. At least I don't think it gave you that option. It would only play back files using their app. Hate that. It looks like the app has changed since, or the speaker allows a direct Bluetooth connection. Back when I repaired the Play 5, it definitely didn't allow that without the app. EDIT: Oh, if you were only playing music via a cable, then that explains it. lol
If my fuse has continuity while mounted on the board, does that necessarily mean that it's ok? Or could the continuity come from the rest of the board via these 2 leads? I'm planning on replacing the 2 blue power caps and bridge rectifier which may have been blown from power surges . Unfortunately my multimeter doesn't have tests for caps and diodes.
I see a lot of love for Sonos, in the comments, but no mention of the debacle and the reason for the "first-gen" app. Sonos made an announcement a number of years back that basically said: "We are deprecating these speakers [insert list of speakers here] and they will no longer be updated. We will give you money off if you trade-in." Well, that went over about as well as a lead balloon because they were deprecating tens of thousands of dollars of equipment. I know when they announced it my total Sonos system cost me ~12,000 freedom eagles (no, I didn't drop 12K in one purchase. I added on to my system little by little over years.) They walked that statement back about two weeks later and said: "We are deprecating these speakers BUT, you will still be able to use them. They will not work with our new speakers but you can keep using your old ones and we will continue to update them with security and bug fixes." I would say, because of that debacle, that the answer to your question is: Yes, they are the Juicero of speakers, but unlike Juicero, they haven't gone out of business. They would have if they stuck to their "your speakers are now non-functional, have a nice day" guns.
New fangled :) Made in 2009... I bought a few of these and a sound bar probably 10 years ago now, and they're brilliant - fab sound quality, very easy to use. The gen 1 vs gen 2 thing is annoying, but at least they are still supporting it.
My aunt swears by these, she's got the little cube version. I had the pleasure of repairing it as she brought it from a 3-year business trip to the US and forgot that we've got double the voltz here in the EU. Done blew the PSU! But in the end I got it working and she's been happily using it ever since. Was built pretty solid, but lots of steps/hidden clips to get to the meat and as expected every single cm³ is used.
I have a Gen 1. Yes, they work, but you do need to go through and set up an account, IIRC. It sounds pretty decent. I use it in my shed workshop. But it's not like a phone BLE speaker. It has its own connection and it's not streamed from your phone. All the silastic makes sense for something that is going to vibrate with bass.
Likely to be the most reliable part, the only failure will be power supply related and those coupling capacitors for the speakers finally going high ESR or open, or leaking over the board.
I just bought one used off Ebay last year (2023) - I preface by saying I have a Bose Soundtouch 300, 2 Aiwa Exos 9s, several Sony MHC-V77s and V50s etc. and many Marantz and Boston Acoustics, Energy, and Polk Audio vintage speakers from the 70s and 80s.... man is this one sweet! What a beautiful speaker -- I was planning on hooking it up to a reasonably good Bluetooth adapter with the 3.5mm input in the back, but the reset and ethernet connection to the router worked along with the older Sonos App - what a great speaker! 🥲
Running various Sonos Gen 1 gear here. Runs like a Swiss watch. Must be 14-15 years old. I use AirSonos to bring them into Home Assistant and provide AirPlay. Brilliant :)
I think all of the silicone/hot snot is there so that there will be ZERO chance of anything vibrating. If I spent $800 on a speaker, and I heard the slightest hint of vibration, that would be returned so fast it would make their heads spin…
I know a guy with a large number of these in his house. Pair with the subwoofer it has amazing sound and volume levels. Can’t say I like the app experience though. I’m not surprised it wants your information to get an update 😂
When it comes to all the belt and braces retainment - when it comes to speakers you need all the screws and Silastic you can get. I've had many many expensive speakers that ended up rattling because they didn't go far enough.
The one I can remember the best is the TDK boombox from around 2011... I saved all my pennies for this $400 speaker - and it ended up buzzing every time a certain bass note hit. I exchanged it for another one, thinking I got a dud - but the second one was just as bad. Could have been just a wire that didn't get foam and Silastic, and was slapping against something. But it ruined the product for me.
My parents have an entire system of these and they're awful. You can't connect to them over Bluetooth or Chromecast, you have to use their garbage app to play music from services that Sonos has blessed. Not to mention they've been gradually removing old models from getting updates. Do not buy these. Get a Bluetooth aptX HD receiver from Sony and some old Pioneer cabinet speakers off Craigslist, you'll have much better luck.
I own 3x original Play 1 speakers that are now powering the music in a corner store I work for. They were $230 a piece but I felt like they were worth the money, I worked as an installer for an electronics retailer and we sold a lot of Sonos and customers were pretty satisfied with them. I had heard that they were ex-Apple engineers that started the company, so it helps explain the very closed, locked-down system it is - they do very good tech support, but you’re stuck dealing with them to figure out what to do if for example you have a VERY old unit that needs to be updated, there are “commands” to make it do the updates manually but they don’t publish it... so yeah, very Juicero except they haven’t gone bust.
What part of a speaker really needs to be updated? If it works it works. Definitely planned obsolescence and Sonos got their way as the previous person threw it out and probably bought a newer model thinking they had no choice.
That's what "the cloud" brought us - anything can be obsolete now if the company says so (or if the company ceases to exist and the cloud infrastructure goes away)
I think Sonos wized up along the way and choose to start over, building G2 on a code base they couldn't make work on the older G1 units. They did provide lots of warnings and I also believe you could connect G2 to G1 - but not the other way. Also, they had a trade-in program of some sort for those who wanted to get onto G2. Pressured by (happy wife - happy life) I eventually caved in and replaced my Squeezebox devices with Sonos. I'm a bit disappointed by some of the limitations, but it has worked flawlessly for some years now - and I have supplemented with some of the IKEA-branded cheaper speakers for the odd places like the laundry room, bathroom and workshop.
Do you work with this type of technology? It gets harder and harder to support older systems, the guys and gals who built them leave, the tools change, standards change, whole paradigms change, it's not planned obsolescence, it's just how the world works, skills get lost and the business has to focus on its future. At least they put an aux port on it so it could still do something.
@@edc1569 It's predictable obsolescence. The effect is the same and why I've gone from a gadget dork to completely checked out of the gadget scene with the rise of "smart" devices. Guaranteed to "go obsolete" eventually (even if the function they perform is timeless), often flaky on the software side in the best of times, and more frequently loaded with spyware-like features. A dumb amplified speaker is never going to straight up annoy me like a "smart" cloud gadget will, I'd much rather just plug in a cable than go down a troubleshooting rabbit hole or sitting on hold with support when the cloud junk inevitably flakes out.
A couple of comments on Sonos.. firstly, one of their big selling points was having multiple devices in sync with each other. They communicate via their own proprietary wireless mesh network (called SonosNet, but not sure of the specs) which may have been what the plethora of antennae were. Second, the thing with the apps... a few years ago, Sonos decided to discontinue support of some of their older gear, by making a new app, which only supported their new gear (after a certain cutoff) and if even *one* of the pieces of hardware on your network was one of the unsupported ones then you couldn't upgrade to the new app, and use new features etc. This perfectly good speaker might have been the only gen1 device on someone's network. But still, the dumpster?!
Wow! Sagan has grown up so much! I've been watching your channel for years, and I've grown to take "Risk of electric shock" or "no user-serviceable parts inside" as a personal challenge lol
I personally don't think its over engineered. But I rather get a pair of powered studio monitors, nowadays you could get wifi built-in, although not exactly the same as an all in one solution. I suppose these are more treated like a ghetto blasters, but wifi driven. For its price, I would have expected some sort of discrete amplifier design with some protection circuitry. And for the same price you couldn't even get 1 passive reference design speaker from known brands, that is, just 1 speaker no amp no wifi brains, just a box and speaker with crossover network in them. Just something to think about in price differences and what you get for the cost. I'm rather impressed at the attention of details added to secure everything down, because if you are really into audio it matters. But then again im not sure if any of the serious audio fanatics would want a all in one solution.. or even a class-d (mostly).
The SO14 and SO8s are probably the active crossovers - 3rd Order on the voltage plus commoning the low frequencies. The 6 amps will be the number of drivers plus bridged for the bass. The hot melt glue is definitely needed for the amp output inductors to keep them at right angles. They'll be about 12W or less for the main amps and 50W, probably at 10% THD to keep the figures up. Check the rail voltage to get the figures. And that foam will be nothing acoustically, though the ports will. They need to be long in small volume cabinets like that.
Nah, they're just paralleled buffer/inverter's to manifest enough current to drive the push/pull pre-drivers for small power FET's that make up the class-d amplifier output stage. It's an open loop class-d amplifier based on a 4 output part from Cirrus Logic that only has PSU feedback for ripple gain modulation rejection. Any crossover work would be handled in the DSP domain, the audio then comes to the Cirrus part via I2S or TDM. All the backend crap you see inductors and air cores are the LC output filter for the class-d amp which avoids driving that high frequency switching energy into the speaker load (while it's quite inductive, the inductance is pretty lossy at HF) and mitigating EMI. The air core inductors indicate to me they had some higher order harmonics which were troublesome...
@@JamesReedy Thanks. I made a number of errors in that comment, which was written before the video had finished. I should have looked up that Cirrus part and I'm not sure why I didn't think the XO would be done in DSP when even tiny BT speakers are.
@@JamesReedy Funnily enough, kinda so do I. In fact I' did a bit of work on trying to improve those output filters a couple of years ago, and make them less load dependent, which was a harder task than I thought it would be. A bit easier here where you know what your load is going to be, but here they seem to have left them all the same. I did conclude that these simple LCs were a pretty good solution, which was not what I expected.
I was an Engineer at a boutique manufacturer around 2012, I found the Sonos guys very hard to talk to at the trade shows [ Aren't they a French company? ], meanwhile I got cards from many other manufacturers. As for all the complaints about clamps being stuck down... You know how a single rattle in a £500 speaker will send it back immediately to the seller and we have at least a year to return in the UK. [ guessing Aus may have real consumer protection too ] We hot-snotted the crap out of our £500-£5,000 sub-woofers. We found the tech too latent or expensive for the audiophiles we mostly sold to.
Novel! I knew about 74HC4066s being used as balanced mixers, fairly high IP3 until you get to the high end of shortwave. (Somewhat effective band-filtering is obviously required due to them being the switching variety which would act as a sampling mixer unless restrained.)
My goodness, seeing Sagan was a shock! As we used to say in the US, "growing like a weed." I'm seriously considering moving, at least temporarily, to Australia just to nicely-furnish a home from Dave's work dumpster! You'll know me when I get there, I'll be the only one driving a Camry sensibly (and it'll be left-hand drive, I'll ship mine out just to confuse everybody). 😆 I'm pleasantly-surprised at the build quality of this unit. It seems to be built with attention-to-detail. Customized bass ports, each driver acoustically isolated, obsessive effort taken to mitigate PCB vibration, every single wire foam-wrapped, plenty of mounting screws from several sides (case vibration), the WiFi antennas... A fair bit of the MSRP was obviously in the engineering.
Reason why 6 amps is I'm guessing they use 2 to drive the subwoofer as the other speaker don't handle bass the subwoofer will be drawing the most power, so they use 2 connected together in a bridge mode or whatever to drive the sub. Doing it with 2 amps not only increases power but also decreases distortion vs if you only used one.
There's a lot of yesteryear tech out there that can be upgraded and used with modern things. Adding a simple Arduino type board can give you WiFi, BT and music storage. The quality of the sound didn't really go up since the 80's, it's just that they added new ways to connect.
Sonos is not a "speaker" per se. Sonos is a complete sound system. Good to see they were thorough in their design and assembly. I have Sonos in my apartment, and it's just so lovely to have it all working together as one sound system - sharing the same audio in multiple rooms or dividing into more areas, taking the sound from my TV to my kitchen, waking up to music in my bedroom and bringing the morning news and music to the kitchen and even the bathroom. Sure, you could do some of that with traditional amplifiers with multiple outputs, CD player, radio, etc., or Bluetooth, but not really and not half as elegant as a set of Sonos speakers does the job, wirelessly and requiring nothing but a power cable.
I’m betting the massive amount of hot snot over the inductors is to prevent feedback through microphonics. Nice attention to detail on the design, though. Lots of damping and vibration control. I like it!
Peerless was a danish company which became part of danish sound technology which incorporated peerless, vifa and Scan-Speak. This then got bought out by tymphany which was American Chinese. Scan-speak was then broken out to be an individual company whilst tymphany caries on with vifa and peerless. Today it’s still a big player in the oem drive unit supply to companies like SVS amongst others. Minimum order on units is typically 1000 pieces.
I have a bunch of Sonos speakers. Would I recommend them? Not really - their control software is *horrible*. Really wish they had a browser based configuration like my old Sony sets had. But, they work fine as Airplay devices and are cheaper than many of the alternatives. Also, why the heck does the Connect (or whatever it's called these days) cost so much!
The enthusiastically applied silicone had me in mind of Frank Zappa's 'A Little Green Rosetta' : "...arrogantly twisting the sterile canvas snoot of a fully-charged icing anointment utensil. And every time a nice little muffin comes by on the belt, he poots forth... "
Unplug the unit, press and hold the mute/play button and plug it back in. Wait for the orange light to flash, it should be ready to set up when blinking green, but only using Sonos S1 app
16:10 no you are wrong: thease days even modern technology from 5+ years ago implemented a tpa3116 or Tpa3116d2 which can output 50w per channel into 4 ohms at 10% thd in a very similar size package, i have had multiple of those amps and i can confirm they do actually put out near rated power! So if i had to guess I'd say those might be 15-25w per each chip. Should also mention they also have a tpa3255 version (all of which are by Texas instruments if i didn't mention that) the TPA3255 is no joke for around 3-4x the size of a single one of those chips (same thickness) you can get over 500w of power! Which is just crazy! (Needs a heatsink of course) but i have 2 of those amps connected to 2 high power car subwoofers and even though they can definitely use more power the output for what those amps are is crazy! Technology has really evolved haha :) Edit: ah that's very interesting haha like the way they use those smaller transistors as the amps
The cirrus logic control chip would be the DSP, EQ and volume control of the system, the main CPU would send audio and control data to it, this type of topology is very similar to modern car touchscreen car Hifi and certain BT soundbars.
id kinda be interested to make a custom firmware for it to let it take a Dante (common digital audio standard in the pro audio world) input signal and then make a line array of sonos speakers just for funsies
Wow, discrete switches for the class D amplifier, that's something I've never seen before. I'm wondering if they did did just because they could, or did the existing amplifier ICs were just not good enough for them.
Ya. I I commented in last video. People are giving you thrings. And now they will continue. So stay on it. They are very generous. They will give. Just keep checkin
Registration or useless.. Classy. That's why I love my UE Boom speakers - they'll function without an app (just via Bluetooth) or even without Bluetooth (3,5mm input) The UE Boom app (no registration required) just offers some extra features, like turning the startup/shutdown/button sounds off. And it allows for pairing up to 99 speakers, using them as stereo speakers (one L, one R signal), and has EQ settings. I think THAT is the way to go. No reliance on apps or registration. Because if Sonos goes bankrupt or just quits... Your 800$ speakers have just become a paperweight. UE = Ultimate Ears = Logitech, by the way. (Thumbs up to Logitech) As far as I know, they're also the only BT speakers that allow the signal sounds to be switched off. JVC (Samsung) doesn't allow that, for instance.
I have never seen anyone go through the effort to design a discrete audio amplifier for a product like this instead of an integrated package. It's not like they didn't have options for amplifiers that support a PWM input. Every home theatre in a box receiver I have ever looked in, has used PWM amplifier chips.
Was hard to get the power they needed and the linearity then, so they made a stage that would do it. BLDC motor drivers have really exploded in the last decade due to both the drone market and them becoming common, and the driver and output stages have to be capable of very fast switching with minimal delay or jitter.
My mrs has three of these speakers. The only thing I dont like about the speaker is it doesnt have a power button, so they need to be unplugged to switch them off.
With how well acoustically designed this looks it seem like a good candidate for a DIY project. Just remove the outdated proprietary electronics, take the nice enclosure and speakers and add your own amps and controllers and whatnot.
