Digital Trends

Sondigo Sirocco

June 27th, 2006 | by Ian Bell

Performance

You would think that that there are several factors which influence the sound of the Sirocco, but according to their engineers there is actually only a few factors to take into consideration. First of all, your PC soundcard will not influence the sound output to the Sirocco directly. The audio is losslessly rendered by the Sirocco's driver and then sent to the Sirocco unit/receiver in a pure digital form. According to one of the Sondigo engineers we talked to, they are using a lossless compression codec loosely based on FLAC. There are a couple ways to output that sound which may affect the quality at that point. If you connect analog speakers or headphones directly to the Sirocco, then the sound quality is determined by Sirocco's internal digital-to-analog converters (DAC) which according to Sondigo have over 90dB of signal-to-noise ratio. Keep in mind that's just a specification, it does not guarantee perfect sound.

If you are using the unit's digital optical connection (48 kHz) then you will get the highest quality stereo sound. Note: We think the digital optical cable that comes with the Sirocco is pretty cheap and would recommend getting a better quality one. At this point when using the digital connection, the sound quality will be determined by your receiver's DAC rather than the one in the Sirocco itself.

In any case remember that the sound quality will ultimately be determined by the source material. An MP3 that is highly compressed will sound worse than a music file recorded in FLAC or AAC for example. Garbage in, garbage out theory.

For our test system we used the following components:

Receiver Yamaha RSX-1105

Speakers: Orb Audio Mod 2 with subwoofer

Sound quality in its base configuration sounded flat and distant. We were able to tweak the DSP, equalizer and speaker distance settings to get the audio to sound better. Because it's an audio bridge, not an audio streamer, the Sirocco will basically playback anything that is being played on your PC; whether it's a game, Winamp, or iTunes.

In order to play DRM-protected content, you must play back your music in its native software. So for example, if you have DRM protected iTunes music; you would open iTunes and play the music through there. Then open tie Sirocco software and tell it to “connect”, which at that point it will stream the music to your home theater. The same applies to any software that outputs sound. This is both good and bad for a couple reasons.

Sound quality is good albeit not audiophile quality and really depends on the source material, soundcard and home theater setup. Plus there is some minor compression going on so it's not totally lossless even if the source is. For the best sound quality you would want your media server connected directly to your home theater.

Also keep in mind that you do not need to install the Sirocco software on the same system your music is stored, only on the system that controls the music. For example, if you have a media server setup at home, or basically a PC where you store your music, and you access that library from a separate laptop, you would install the Sirocco software on that laptop. If you like to host parties and have an extensive play list, we would recommend installing the Sirocco software on a laptop or a PC close to where your guests would be so you can control the play list on that system. Luxury systems like the Sonos Music System give you a remote control to use so you do not have to go to your PC every time you want to change the music. But keep in mind that the Sonos system will run you about a thousand dollars, so you are paying a premium for that feature.

We did not experience any buffering issues with our Sirocco unit despite having our home theater system on a different floor and through several walls. This is likely due to the external antenna. Media streamers like the Roku SoundBridge or Slim Devices Squeezebox use an internal antenna which could be prone to electrical interference and usually shorten their range unless they have a good buffering system put into place.

You cannot stream music to your home theater and play something different on the source PC and get two separate audio outputs, this is a major drawback if you only have one PC in the house or have a large family which is constantly using that PC.