Summary
Sonos Port (see image) , the upgrade version of Sonos Connect, gives a richer sound with better clarity in the midrange and upper midrange tones.
Long the go-to brand for audiophile sound, Sonos replaced their best-selling Connect with the next-generation Port, unveiling the latter in September 2019. Both products are tuner-like components that seamlessly integrate streaming music services into whole-home music systems.
However, as detailed below, Sonos Port offers many features that Connect lacks. If you have a Connect, make the upgrade to Port.
Note that Sonos Connect is available as either Gen 1 and Gen 2. Note that Sonos products require the Sonos app/operating system for use.
Be aware that Connect Gen 1 can only use the Sonos S1 controller app (which doesn't support CD-quality sound) while Connect Gen 2 and Port can avail either the S1 or S2 controller app.
Sound Quality
Let me tell you something right off the bat.
The sound quality performance you'll end up getting from a speaker will always depend on your room acoustics - particularly room dimensions and speaker positions.
The impact of the combination of these two is actually so strong that in most cases, it doesn't even make sense to utter a single word on sound quality without speaking of them.
This is also why it's not unusual to see completely different reviews of the same speaker.
In one case the speaker might be placed in a sweet spot inside the room and hence the user might be satisfied. In other cases the same speaker might be ill placed and hence user might even have returned it.
The point most people miss here is that it mostly isn't even about the engineering behind the speaker itself. It's about where you place the speaker inside which room.
So, in order to solve this problem, I've partnered with Acoustics and Audio Engineering PhD Andrea Cicero from AC Acustica and created Soundton - a simple, 2D, browser accessible online speaker placement calculator.
With Soundton, now there's a way to figure the sound quality of most speakers before you buy them.
Read more about its working principles at soundton.com/documentation/.
The end colormap provides you the locations with the best (green) and worst (red) acoustics.