IKEA Symfonisk Gen2 Amp Modification Guide – A Much Cheaper Sonos Amp
thetylergibson.com
thetylergibson.com
Nice work. Warm fuzzies.
We had a working amp + DAC signal chain with the TPA series, so we reused that. We also had working wifi drivers with the MT7613. Much of my job was convincing the RF people that they didn't need to break out all the RF chains, which would have tipped the product into unprofitable territory.
A lot of the design decisions were based on hardware cost and speed of development. We reused a lot of subcircuits we'd previously validated on other designs.
The TPA3116 is a nice sounding chip don’t you think?
It also has one hell of a startup transient. It was not a fun exercise to get that passing startup click/pop requirements. I said some words about TI in anger while bench testing.
Any chips you’re particular to?, or are otherwise interesting?
Never used them in depth, but the demo they showed us on an EVK was neat. You can trivially pick up 6dB improvements in SNR, or more with tuning and characterization.
My beef is really more centered on the fact that, if you're already at -100db of SNR, what's the point?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson%E2%80%93Moss_Warranty...
TL;DR - invalidating because of sticker bad, using present sticker to fast track warranty cases good.
Let's not pretend we haven't seen 1001 cases of "You've upgraded your laptop's RAM, so the laptop hinges that we see break in thousands of laptops is your own fault" (Dell).
Generally, tie-in sales provisions aren’t allowed.
These are provisions that state or imply that a
consumer must buy or use an item or service from a
particular company to keep their warranty coverage.
Here are some examples of prohibited tie-in sales
provisions.
“To keep your new Plenum Brand Vacuum Cleaner
warranty in effect, you must use genuine
Plenum Brand Filter Bags. Failure to have
scheduled maintenance performed, at your
expense, by the Great American Maintenance
Company, Inc., voids this warranty.”
“This limited warranty shall not apply if the
warranty seal has been broken, removed, erased,
defaced, altered, or is otherwise illegible,”
where a device cannot be repaired without such
effects.
I think the opposite, really. Selling overprovisioned hardware, with differentiation between models happening in software happens because they devices are locked down and aren't user serviceable or intended to be modified.
Users upgrading cheaper, over-provisioned, possibly loss-leading hardware to get more expensive functionality means no one would buy the more expensive model, which would drive up the cost of the cheaper one.
No, not really. If you think tinkering people who would open up their IKEA Symfonisk has a nontrivial overlap with Sonos customers, you're in for a surprise. Richer "nice off-the-shelf device" people will stay that way, DIY with an IKEA speaker people will also stay that way.
What it does is it really encourages tinkering, thinking and innovation in the small fraction of people who would do that. It breeds better engineers, more engaged teenagers, a more flexible society. So really - all the positives and almost none of the negatives.
HEY! I was literally just researching wireless speakers this week, and considering Sonos. Seeing this post convinced me not to buy Sonos hardware.
There’s probably dozens of us out there :)
The little amp in the Symfonisk is plenty powerful to drive these large speakers. The crossover is completely off by default, but by using Trueplay the crossover gets tuned properly and the sound is pretty damn good (albeit a tad boosted in the highs).
It's a great way to get super convenient (Airplay 2) and high quality sound in a room, just with a power cord for each speaker. And these quality Hi-Fi speakers are readily available for cheap second-hand... some pics here: https://twitter.com/jstsch/status/1529204823912075264/photo/...
So simply unplug those (carefully, use tweezers to squeeze the connectors and they'll pop off without friction), and connect those on some cables which you'll run to your speakers. The connectors can be found at your local electronics store.
The speakers you'll be connecting need to have a crossover that you can bypass (typically four connectors on the back versus two, with a piece of metal in between to short them). Total upgrade would be to mount all the electronics inside, but I haven't dared to cut mine open yet
https://www.thetylergibson.com/ikea-symfonisk-amp-modificati...
Tell you what scares me though: I don't like seeing that they doubled the amount of DRAM in the new one. Hopefully they did that only because it was becoming impossible to source the 256MB module. I hate to see it because if they allow themselves to use it, eventually there will be a software release that doesn't work on the older 256MB model, and they'll deprecate it.
My Playbar from god knows when (5? 6? years ago) still gets updates and is on S2 now. But then yeah, there are the older devices which are EOLed.
IKEA still supports 5-year old smart switches they no longer produce even with their latest smart bulbs. But no idea if that will continue with their move to Matter (or whatever the new hotness is called).
> Brilliant sound
I have a Symfonisk bookshelf speaker in my kitchen, and I don’t think the sound is brilliant. It is too boomy for a speaker that is supposed to be placed near a wall or in a bookshelf. The low price forces some compromises and I suspect this is one.
This is a field in which DIY is still viable; the other day I posted a link to a data sheet of a set of modules promising quite serious performance (digital uncompressed audio with sub-millisecond latency), but sadly can't find any seller from whom I could purchase a few for testing.
I returned mine after a week, the HomePod Mini produced superior sound even in an open area for less money. The Symfonisk was capable of being loud, but the highs were very muffled.
So what is the actual benefit here? Is it upgrading the speakers of the Ikea model? Or is it adding an amp and wifi to unpowered speakers? Or more specifically, creating a ceiling wifi speaker for cheap?
Because step way down from the Ikea speakers, and you could grab a few Echo Dots for (alarmingly) close to free, and line-out into any powered (or amped) speaker, which would seem to be about the same result? And at least with Spotify, multi-room works quite well. This of course ignores privacy concerns, which keeps costs down.
"This laid all the technical groundwork to prove that the Symfonisk speaker should work as a general purpose mono speaker amp." Then he goes on a crazy mod and solder run that almost no one could or should ever do.
He wanted to power some ceiling speakers. I'd rather just buy a TPA 3116 amp with bluetooth and go from there or use echo dots like you say.
I've got the DAMGOO in my greenhouse and it sounds damn fine. $25.
https://www.amazon.com/Bluetooth-Amplifier-DAMGOO-Technique-...
If you just want a single pair of speakers in one room and are fine just casting off your phone, of course Bluetooth is fine.
Adding to an existing Sonos setup makes sense though
Price is not cost. Echo costs money _and_ privacy.
I'm guessing you get some more functionalities out of it?
Or Sonos compatibility?
This mod removes the Ikea speaker and adds the connectivity required to the Sonos component to effectively replace a Sonos Connect.
Because Sonos doesn't offer a $120 device that replicates this functionality, it effectively allows you to invest an hour or two of soldering and circuit board modding, and optionally $60 in 3D printing, to replace a $320 device.
See, in their normal state these Sonos speakers are mono, yet they have this stereo amp in them. What Sonos does is use a crossover with that stereo amp to make it a mono bi-amp (in other works instead of left/right, it's outputting high/low to the tweeter and woofer respectively). If you simply connect one side of the amp to a normal speaker, you'll either get muddy bass or incomprehensible chirping, because the crossover splits the audio)
The whole soldering part of the mod here is to work around that fact, and bridge the audio back to a single mono channel. While this has some advantages - more power, and connects to 'regular' speakers, it's a lot more wrk, and a lot riskier.
I already had a whole home amplifier and wanted to use some of my AVRs also. Truplay with in ceiling speakers is amazing!
You'll likely need to switch out the PSU to get 100W for real though. Consider looking into used laptop PSUs for bargains.
(There was some missing context.)
Not all amps are equal. The Sonos Amp can competently drive 4 beefy in-wall/ceiling speakers. The Sonos Amp isn't just the guts of this product marked up 5x.
Either way, it's silly that Sonos doesn't have a simple un-amplified receiver for similar setups. Perhaps they are afraid consumers would get confused about non-amplified products given all their other products are amplified.
They do have that, the Sonos Port, but it's extremely overpriced at $449. They very gracefully do allow you to get a full two channels of audio (stereo) though.
That said, removing the bi-amp capability may technically break trueplay, but I don’t see how. If it worked in single channel mode as a sub, it should work bridged like this.
[edit] just looked at his gen1 guide that does the same mono-bridging, and it claims trueplay still works. Which makes sense - trueplay is a feedback loop. With the speaker playing specific frequencies at specific volumes, and your phone listens to it and adjusts the DSP to make those frequency/volume pairs match what it expects.
If you use them to bi-amp speakers with two drivers, the TruePlay calibration works great.
Or Chromecast audio to hifi.
Start listening to something in the bedroom, head downstairs for breakfast, bedroom speakers switch off as kitchen speakers take over?
Is that it?