Best Sonos ZP-80 Mod?

Like Tboooe, I too am trying to get that last bit of audiophile quality out of sonos. I have a thread that just petered out asking about best jitter reducing scheme for wireless distribution (sonos). I have heard all sorts of options, and the latest are the mods to the sonos itself because jitter from the sonos is the biggest issue (supposedly), and apparently the modders believe you just can't get best sound by trying to solve jitter via reclockers in an outboard dac. Not to be a cynic, but I'm guessing that before they came up with the sonos mod, they might have argued that a superduperclock100 in the dac was all you needed. This is why we need the guinea pigs to ante up with their experiences so we can get some consensus.

So i'd love to see this thread get back to the original question: who has exp with these mods and are they any good? Are they better than simply dropping in a good dac with great jitter control and maybe upsampling to put it over the top?

BTW, I have three sonos zp80's in three different systems. I'm using an apogee minidac in my small bedroom system, and an apogee in my bigger living room setup: B&W 803 s2 with Acurus DIA100. I have also picked up a BelCanto dac2 to compare to the apogee. I started with a benchmark dac1 but the apogee squeeked out a win there. Its neck and neck with the BC. (as you can see, the apogee is a great bargain unit at $750 streetprice, and it's nice and small, but you have balanced analog out via xlr) In my HT setup, I'm going direct digital out (marty: volume works in dig out) to a pioneer vsx49tx, and letting the pioneer dacs do the rest. Sounds pretty darn good, each of them. So the question remains, what is the best and yet most reasonable solution to getting sonos to equal a good cdp. Just my two cents...Jeff (ps- I think I'm going to try the cullen modded ps lll or maybe the northstar dac next).

Stumpeyjoe, my sonos runs through either an apogee dac or a bel canto dac2 (also had benchmark for short tryout). Both sound great, but not as "full" or robust sounding as a cd through my old adcom gcd700, which has dual ladder type 20 bit burr brown stuff (whatever that means). Maybe what I'm really hearing is some "hash" and I like it better than a really clean signal from the newer dacs, but everybody in my family notices the difference and likes the adcom sound slightly better. That's why I started thinking that maybe there's something to this concept of a sonos mod. But I can't help thinking that the only thing the sonos mod cleans up is the jitter, and that can be largely done within the dac (especially with a mod superclock), so I think I'm going to go the same route and try the modded DL3. If and when you do it, PLEASE report back in with your results. Dying to know if it makes a significant improvement. Regards...Jeff

Barrelchief, just for clarification, are you saying that the modded zp80 WITH an outboard dac still doesn't match your reference cdp? Can you elaborate by identifying your reference cdp (and cost) and the dac(s) used with the modded zp80? I think this would help everyone understand your evaluation to date. I too am trying to get to the point, hopefully at a reasonable cost, of getting cdp-type performance from my sonos setup. However, I think it is important for all of us to establish a cost/performance reference. If I'm looking simply to equal the performance ofr my old Adcom GCD700, I shouldn't have too far to go, nor (hopefully) should I have to spend $2-3000 in total to match $700 performance. On the other hand, if someone is trying to match the performance of a $5k-10k reference quality CDP, well, that's another story. Can the Sonos system ever get there, and at what cost? Look forward to your current system comparisons. Regards..Jeff

Thanks Barrelchief. So your results are a bit of a mixed bag: definite improvement via the cullen mod, but still not enough to match your cdp's, even when using the same dac (the AA internal dac fed digital from sonos). Perhaps the limitation in rate via the sonos limits best possible results? I wonder if there are any other reasons we are not accounting for? You did seem to suggest that the differences were pretty definitive, so there is obviously something holding this back. The only other note I might add is to echo your statement that this is all probably very system dependent. I would assume, given the rest of your system, that you also have very revealing, high quality speakers as well. Obviously the less revealing the speakers, the less the perceived difference (duh!). Hopefully we can all get to the bottom of this and find a way to make sonos what we all want: equal to a quality cdp at roughly the same cost outlay (ie, 5k cdp = 5k investment in sonos, mod, dac combination)