Sonoro Meisterstück
Lots of features; decent build; plays multiple formats Average sound; strident at high volume; pricey
“If you’re looking for an all-in-one unit that will play CDS and has streaming functionality, the Meisterstück could serve you well”
The Meisterstück is the third music system we have seen from Sonoro. Last year, we gave four stars to the Stereo 2, having given the original Stereo unit the same rating before that. One of the features missing from the Stereo 2 was the ability to stream, and the Meisterstück is, to all intents and purposes, a Stereo 2 with the benefit of a range of streaming options.
Like the Stereo 2, the Meisterstück has a CD slot underneath a display screen. Behind each speaker grille lies an 8cm midrange driver and a 20mm tweeter. A 14cm driver fires down under the unit to provide the bass heft.
As we’ve come to expect from Sonoro, the Meisterstück is a nice piece of kit. It is reassuringly weighty and the piano gloss on the curved wooden casing is beautifully finished – as you’d expect for a product costing the best part of a grand. It comes in white, silver or black finishes and wouldn’t look out of place in a five-star hotel.
The Meisterstück is stacked with options for playing your music. As well as the CD drive, there’s FM, DAB (and DAB+) and internet radio, two auxiliary ports to wire in external sources, a USB port, optical port and an ethernet socket. Wireless connectivity is via Bluetooth or wi-fi, so you can stream to the unit from a mobile device or NAS drive. The Bluetooth signal is bi-directional, so it can send a signal to a pair of headphones as well as accept one.
Only hi-res is missing
Spotify Connect is on board too, so will access your playlists. It supports the usual digital formats, including WAV, FLAC and WMA, up to a maximum of 16-bit/48khz. High-resolution playback isn’t on the cards, but we don’t think that’s a deal-breaker.
The supplied remote control handset is comprehensive, but rather confusing to use. There are no directional controls as such, the volume up and down buttons are pressed into service, along with the fast forward and rewind buttons, for your up/ down/left/right functionality. It works, but requires a little too much thought.
These foibles become irrelevant once we download the Undok app. We can’t imagine anyone using the handset once they’ve got the app in hand. The app is also the place to go to sort out the Sonoro's multi-room capabilities with suitably compatible kit.
The Meisterstück has the familiar Sonoro family sound – mature and fairly even across the sonic spectrum. The midrange is a highlight, and radio comes across particularly well, with its requirement for good voice reproduction.
A comfortable listen
Streaming is, in theory, the USP of this unit, so we log on to our NAS device via wi-fi and stream Tom Waits’s Midnight Lullaby. Sure enough, the distinctive Waits voice rings loud and true. This is a comfortable listen – as is appropriate for this type of device. But when we switch to the Game Of
Thrones soundtrack, chinks start to appear in its armour. The overall sound lacks crispness; the edges of notes blend into one another, and the lasting sonic impression is a touch cloudy. As a unit for playing background music, it’s perfectly adequate. But if you want to listen to your tunes, your money is better spent elsewhere.
The bass is reasonable for the size of the unit, but it’s not as crisp as some rivals, such as Ruark’s R4 Mk3 (£650). Placing the Meisterstück near a rear wall helps its delivery of the lower registers; in the middle of a room, it struggles a little to plumb reasonable depths.
We play Radiohead’s 15 Step and the Sonoro puts up a decent effort, but is tripped up by the percussive, confused, detailed nature of the recording. Of more concern, however, is a rather strident tone that kicks in at higher volumes. At anything near room-filling levels, the treble runs the risk of getting uncomfortable.
While it's great to have a unit that can play pretty much anything, we wonder how much of the functionality anyone will use. If you have your files stored digitally, you’ll use the streaming functionality and the radio, but not the CD player. If you’re using the CD player, you probably won’t have a NAS drive. And if you want to move into that area, you may be better off investing in a standalone streamer – the Arcam rplay (£340) for example – to add to it.
The problem is that we couldn't really recommend spending £300 more than its sibling Stereo 2 for just the extra streaming functionality. However, the Meisterstück is an impressive looking unit, and does a decent job with sound. If you’re looking for an all-in-one unit that will play CDS and has streaming functionality, it could serve you well – but there’s no doubt that you can get far better sound for your money elsewhere.