HomePod HomePod mini Stereo or Sonos One

[gregpod9]

I'm thinking of selling my HomePod mini stereo pair and getting the Sonos One. My questions are:
1. Is one Sonos One speaker better than the HomePod mini stereo pair?
2. Can Sonos One play Apple Lossless Music from Apple Music?
3. Is it worth selling the HomePod minis for the Sonos One speaker?

 

[steve knight]

the 1 is not stereo you would need two. but the sound would be better. so it depend on what your after . Sonos is more stable then the homepod

 

[firoze]

the 1 is not stereo you would need two. but the sound would be better. so it depend on what your after . Sonos is more stable then the homepod

Steve, in what way is the Sonos more stable than the HomePod? Now that the original HomePods are no longer available, I am thinking of getting a pair of HomePod minis or a pair of Sonos 1’s to use as my TV speakers. Any thoughts or recommendations. (I haven’t bought th TV yet, but it will be either the Samsung QN90A, or LG C1, or Sony A80J).
ps: I do not want to install a home theatre system, and I want to avoid using a subwoofer.

 

[stocklen]

I had a similar quandary as I have a Sonos ARC and sub and play ones which I wanted to be part of my whole home airplay music....

In the end I opted for HomePod minis.

First reason they are a bit smaller, a bit more discrete, and have better functionality i.e. handoff.

Secondly, and this is a BIG one... Sonos are terrible when it goes wrong. A friend of mine had huge problems just moving house and setting up a new wifi network. The app is ridiculous, and terribly finicky and just plain doesn't work. He was cursing Sonos. I too had a similar issue when busing a new home mesh network and getting the Sonos gear to connect was a nightmare.

So, given that experience the last thing I wanted to do was add more Sonos kit to my house.

That said, I am having significant problems with some of my homepod minis at the moment and its rather hard to know how to troubleshoot and fix the issue - I just created a new thread on the subject.

All in though, Id recommend HomePods over the sonos - yes of course the sound is better with the Sonos kit but the HomePods are more than adequate in the majority of settings especially as a stereo pair.

 

[pup]

I have a network with 11 Sonos and 5 airplay devices. I’ve never had any trouble with the Sonos speakers or the app, though I only use the Sonos app for speaker settings, since it can’t control the other airplay devices. I just use Apple Music and airplay and it works fine with the Sonos.

I can’t comment on the issue above about moving them to a new system since I’ve never done that, but I’ve never encountered a glitch in setting them up out of the box.

For sound quality, the Sonos ones will definitely beat out the minis. They are on par with the original HomePod, with the Sonos being more customizable to personal taste since they have individual tone control. They’re more expensive than the minis of course.

They will stream apple lossless, but not high definition - same as the minis. CD quality is what you’ll get.

With the Sonos you have the option of hard wiring them if you have Wi-Fi issues. That said, the wifi on my Sonos ones was far better than my original HomePod. Apple may have improved the wifi on the minis of course.

Apple may have improved their HomePod reliability since I gave up mine, but a glance at the forum tells me that they haven’t. My HomePod experience was incredibly frustrating, and frankly I think that apple’s HomePod excursion is just a big dumpster fire.

If you’re using them for your tv then I’d give serious thought to getting a Beam rather than two Ones, just for the HDMI input. Direct input is always better. I have one and I’d say that the sound quality is about the same. An Arc would be great if course, if you could swing it. And even though you don’t plan on doing the whole surround thing, with any of the Sonos kit, you’ll have the beginnings of a home theater if you ever change your mind. I can say that adding a sub to a pair of ones is transformative and well worth the rather high price.

 

[stocklen]

Well, it seems I have fixed it.... fingers crossed.

The weird thing was the home app could still 'see' the pair and I could unpair them in the app... but any network information was not showing.

The HomePods WERE attached to my Eero network as the Eero app showed them quite happily connected. The HomePod itself also had a network connection because it 'worked' and played music etc just not correctly.

I tried to unpair and re-pair but that didn't fix it.

In the end I dug around the Eero settings.... I had already restarted the 'gateway' Eero assuming that would restart everything but that didn't work....
Eventually I found under settings 'restart network' which restarted all the Eero nodes.... so I did that and when the network was back up and running all was back to normal with the HomePods stereo pair appearing correctly and showing network info and more importantly functioning correctly again!

thanks to all for the advice in here.

 

[firoze]

Well, it seems I have fixed it.... fingers crossed.

The weird thing was the home app could still 'see' the pair and I could unpair them in the app... but any network information was not showing.

The HomePods WERE attached to my Eero network as the Eero app showed them quite happily connected. The HomePod itself also had a network connection because it 'worked' and played music etc just not correctly.

I tried to unpair and re-pair but that didn't fix it.

In the end I dug around the Eero settings.... I had already restarted the 'gateway' Eero assuming that would restart everything but that didn't work....
Eventually I found under settings 'restart network' which restarted all the Eero nodes.... so I did that and when the network was back up and running all was back to normal with the HomePods stereo pair appearing correctly and showing network info and more importantly functioning correctly again!

thanks to all for the advice in here.

Glad you managed to sort out the problem. From what I have read, most problems with the HomePod/minis occur because of network issues, especially mesh networks.

 

[firoze]

I have a network with 11 Sonos and 5 airplay devices. I’ve never had any trouble with the Sonos speakers or the app, though I only use the Sonos app for speaker settings, since it can’t control the other airplay devices. I just use Apple Music and airplay and it works fine with the Sonos.

I can’t comment on the issue above about moving them to a new system since I’ve never done that, but I’ve never encountered a glitch in setting them up out of the box.

For sound quality, the Sonos ones will definitely beat out the minis. They are on par with the original HomePod, with the Sonos being more customizable to personal taste since they have individual tone control. They’re more expensive than the minis of course.

They will stream apple lossless, but not high definition - same as the minis. CD quality is what you’ll get.

With the Sonos you have the option of hard wiring them if you have Wi-Fi issues. That said, the wifi on my Sonos ones was far better than my original HomePod. Apple may have improved the wifi on the minis of course.

Apple may have improved their HomePod reliability since I gave up mine, but a glance at the forum tells me that they haven’t. My HomePod experience was incredibly frustrating, and frankly I think that apple’s HomePod excursion is just a big dumpster fire.

If you’re using them for your tv then I’d give serious thought to getting a Beam rather than two Ones, just for the HDMI input. Direct input is always better. I have one and I’d say that the sound quality is about the same. An Arc would be great if course, if you could swing it. And even though you don’t plan on doing the whole surround thing, with any of the Sonos kit, you’ll have the beginnings of a home theater if you ever change your mind. I can say that adding a sub to a pair of ones is transformative and well worth the rather high price.

A Sonos Beam rather than two Ones sounds like an interesting option.

 

[stocklen]

A Sonos Beam rather than two Ones sounds like an interesting option.

Depends where you live but look into Ikea's Sonos speakers too.

The Symfonisk range including shelf speakers are much cheaper than Sonos ones and apparently almost as good sounding for half the price.

 

[firoze]

Depends where you live but look into Ikea's Sonos speakers too.

The Symfonisk range including shelf speakers are much cheaper than Sonos ones and apparently almost as good sounding for half the price.

Thanks for the head-up on the Symfonisk. I will check them out.

 

[waw74]

for sonos, if you plug one speaker into your network using ethernet, they will create their own mesh wifi network. From my experience that network is much much more stable than trying to have them join your house's wifi. I've had friends with similar experiences. (it can be any speaker in your system, even a surround)

I like sonos because the player is in the speaker. and it can be controlled from anywhere on your network.

having the player in the speaker means you don't have to deal with airplay at all, Airplay tends to only work well if you've got a really stable network especially once you start adding more speakers.

Sonos also supports multiple services, and Sonos will also let you make a multi source playlist. I can make a list that has songs from Spotify, Apple Music, and my local music collection. and it will all


Start some music playing using your phone, and then go to into another room, but leave the phone behind...
- with HomePod - get up and get the phone. or use basic controls with siri, but depending on what and how you're playing those could be severely limited.
- with sonos - launch the app on your computer, and have full control.

have friends, roommates, signification others with an android or windows....
-with HomePod - ?
-with sonos - no problem.

want to watch TV, and have the audio come out of your speakers...
- with sonos, you have an HDMI input when using one of their soundbars. and once sound is in any speaker, it's available on any speaker in your whole system (also applies to airplay, you can airplay to one speaker, and then uses sonos to get it to the others). Also limited sync and connection issues, because it's a cable, and HDMI has been designed with lip-sync in mind.
- with hompod - unless you have the brand new 4k, you can only use them with the appleTV. With the new 4k, you can use HDMI-ARC to get audio from other sources on your TV to the HomePods, but from what I've seen here, it doesn't always work well. And also, since it's using airplay, and the HomePods have no ethernet port, you must have really stable wifi for it to work well.

 

[AEWest]

Steve, in what way is the Sonos more stable than the HomePod? Now that the original HomePods are no longer available, I am thinking of getting a pair of HomePod minis or a pair of Sonos 1’s to use as my TV speakers. Any thoughts or recommendations. (I haven’t bought th TV yet, but it will be either the Samsung QN90A, or LG C1, or Sony A80J).
ps: I do not want to install a home theatre system, and I want to avoid using a subwoofer.

I have a Sonos system for my TV. You cannot use only a pair of 1s as tv speakers. You need a physically connected soundbar like Beam or Arc, and then add the ones as your back speakers. The IKEA ones would also work for this.

 

[firoze]

I have a Sonos system for my TV. You cannot use only a pair of 1s as tv speakers. You need a physically connected soundbar like Beam or Arc, and then add the ones as your back speakers. The IKEA ones would also work for this.

I see. Thanks for that info.

 

[waw74]

You cannot use only a pair of 1s as tv speakers. You need a physically connected soundbar like Beam or Arc, and then add the ones as your back speakers. The IKEA ones would also work for this.

you can send audio from an appleTV to a pair of speakers using airplay. But you'll need to reconnect at least every time you power on the aTV, it's not hard, would just get annoying having to do it all the time.
You would only be able to do this for audio coming from the appleTV, so when using apps on the TV, or an external device like a cable box or game console, you would be limited to your TV's speakers.

it's a horrible choice for full time use, but for an occasional movie night it might be OK.
the beam or arc would be a much better choice for a TV speaker though.