Hacker News Reader

Comment by tpmx | Hacker News Reader

tl;dr: turn a $119 IKEA Symfonisk gen 2 wi-fi bookshelf speaker into a 100W mono Sonos TPA3116D2-based amp.

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.)

View on HN

Yeah, but why? Is the end result better than using any old hifi speaker set with an amp? Will there be stereo?

The Sonos Amp + two built-in speakers with equivalent functionality is like $1,200. This lets you use a $100 speaker as that amp (or two of these setups for stereo sound) and then you can use much more reasonably priced built-ins that are still Sonos compatible. It's only useful if you're in the Sonos ecosystem, but it's pretty useful if that's the case.

> This lets you use a $100 speaker as that amp

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.

Either way, it's silly that Sonos doesn't have a simple un-amplified receiver for similar setups.

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.

The benefit of doing this is the Sonos compatibility. If you like the ecosystem but don't like the packaged speakers or the cost of their standalone amplifiers, this is a cheaper path to using your own speakers in the Sonos world.

I'm not sure that it will be fully compatible. Sonos has a feature to tune/calibrate your speaker setup for your environment. That's to reduce room gain and in general to get a better flatter response for your environment. And I'm not sure that after switching the amplifier into bridge mode that functionality will work correctly

There are a bunch of mod articles and YouTube videos about doing mods with the Gen1 and bi-amp speakers - or some even turning it into a subwoofer amp - and trueplay apparently still worked.

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.

For good and easy multiroom sound obviously. It's a killer feature of Sonos. And in this particular case it's a ceiling speaker. Stereo is not a problem here since a single Symfonisk is a mono speaker and you need a second one to get stereo. That won't change after the mod.

Seems to be most important that this amp is small and sound okayish. Still better spend your money on old serviced piece of kit that will likely survive several decades. I haven't had any new amplifiers that sounded as good as my old 70s Sony TA over-engineered amp.

I used the same mod to turn a few older, passive hi-fi speakers into Sonos-enabled wireless speakers. They sound (and look) a lot better than the Symfonisk, and putting the DAC and amp right into the speaker enclosure is more convenient than an external amp and wiring.

If you use them to bi-amp speakers with two drivers, the TruePlay calibration works great.

Yeah fun hack? But would have to be a lot better than the cheaper Google nest for me to care.

Or Chromecast audio to hifi.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com