Deezer Elite high-def auto hits Sonos international

Deezer Announces High Definition Streaming on Sonos Globally

By Chris Burns/Feb. 10, 2015 12:19 pm EST

The system known as Deezer – with their service called Deezer Elite – is suggested (by the company) to be the largest global high-definition streaming service. They're coming to Sonos with this service this year internationally, bringing Deezer Elite to the wireless speaker system for several countries around the world – beyond the USA, that is to say. Between now and March 19th, Deezer users will be able to upgrade to Deezer Elite for free. Once March 19th comes along, Deezer Elite will be available to all users at a nominal fee per month, all for the glory of high-definition audio.

This launch brings Deezer Elite to Sonos after an initial launch of the service alone in the United States in the Fall of 2014. This service works with 35-million tracks of music, streaming said files from lossless FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) files.

NOTE: At this time we're not 100% convinced at the difference between MP3 files and anything of higher quality over streaming services. Unless you're working with some new-age technology we've not yet heard of, there's no way to bundle music for web streaming, then unbundle it again without the loss of some information.

Whether or not you find the final product far more enticing than MP3 streaming, that'll be your own judgement.

Meanwhile Deezer has done a study (of Deezer Elite users), that brought on the following results.

• 65% of Deezer Elite users will never go back to MP3 (with only 4% saying they could go back)

• 90% of Deezer Elite users say high quality sound is important

• 91% of Deezer Elite users say they can hear the difference

*Deezer Survey conducted in Jan 2015 with 340 Deezer Elite respondents in the US.

Pricing for new users will be announced in March, while all users will receive a 30-day trial of the service. For existing Deezer Premium+ subscribers, an upgrade to Deezer Elite will be available "at no additional cost" when subscribing for a full year.

For Sonos promotional users, upgrading will be available for 36€ when subscribing for a full year.