Sonos

[Amadeus]

Has anyone else got any SONOS equipment?
I bought some stuff a few months ago and it transformed our music listening (CDs, radio, Spotify) so I bought a few more bits and bobs so now have 3 zones. Looking to increase that to 5 (main bedroom and dining room).
It's great quality sound, very functional app (for iphone, ipad, mac and pc) - when we did crimbo for my wife's family (12+us - Catholics (all but me)...) everyone picked up the ipad and added tunes to the playlist - worked really well.

[maviczap]

No, but it was something I was thinking about, as all my music is ripped to my hdd now

I'd seen the basic starter unit was only £250 now?

[Amadeus]

Yes, the Play:3 and bridge is on a deal, think it's finishing soon.
However, when I bought my initial setup (2xPlay:3 & SUB) I got a bridge thrown in free. I was told that SONOS tell their resellers that if the cost a bridge is a deal-breaker, to throw it in for free.
You only actually need a bridge if you are not having any speakers in the same room as your router as a speaker plugged into your router will act as a bridge (as do all other speakers once they're on the network so if you have a very wide house like I do, you can then have your system working all across the house).

The SONOS does require metadata to be set for your music - I use dbPowerAmp for that - generally works very well indeed.

The only issue I've found so far is that for classical music, a lot of the tracks have the first 20-30 characters, with the movement at the end of the name; SONOS fails abysmally here as it only shows the first x characters of a track name. I've registered a bug with them about this.
Btw, the support I've had has been excellent. I asked for someone to call me, they asked me what time and someone phoned me bang on that time and spent an hour or so going through all my questions (it was presales info).

[Amadeus]

Oh, my setup is now 2xPLay:3 + Sub in living room, Play:5 in snug, Play:5 in study. Probably get a Play:5 for dining room and bedroom at some point. The Play:3 is good standalone but once you've heard the play:5 with its extra bass, you want the play:5 over the 3. The 2 play:3 with sub is really very good indeed IMO.

[Mr Speirs]

No but I have an Airport express wireless router. This has a similar feature, being able to stream music wirelessly to it. I can plug in any existing speaker I own into it which is a bonus. Router cost me £79. Can be used as audio out from any iPhone, iPad, Mac or PC.

[Amadeus]

So how does that work then? I mean, how would one connect speaker(s) to the Airport? Would they have to have ethernet (wired or not)? Or do a normal jack plug? You can then tell the airport to stream from a HDD or from an iDevice?

[maviczap]

I saw it being tested in a group test, either on Click or the Gadget Show and I was impressed with it then

I have to get something better, as I have absolutely Nothing now, apart from a crappy PC speaker system and my Roberts internet radio doesn't work with my Sky router. It had good sound for it's size and was nice and compact.

Can the Sonos play the sound from the Tv, ie like a cinema surround system? I've got a media pc sitting under my tv which I could attach a wireless dongle to.

[Amadeus]

Umm, the PLay5 has a phono jack I think, and a network socket. The phono might work but wouldn't give stereo let alone 5:1. If it worked, I'd have thought it would be a bit of a bodge.
There is a Sonos PLay:amp which you plug your normal stereo speakers into and it gives you the benefits of the SOnos setup. That would probably have more connections for input into it - maybe even HDMI - you'd need to take a little look at that.

[maviczap]

Ok, I'll have a look at that

[Mr Speirs]

So how does that work then? I mean, how would one connect speaker(s) to the Airport? Would they have to have ethernet (wired or not)? Or do a normal jack plug? You can then tell the airport to stream from a HDD or from an iDevice?

Mini Jack out the back.
Not sure whether you can stream direct froma HDD, maybe there is an app for it. I've just been using it from my iDevice or computer. Just thought I'd mention it cos for the price its great.

[Viney]

For what it essentialy is, i think its overpriced. All they are are wifi enabled speakers. Everything else is software and app based.

The bar i frequent has it as thier main system and i have been trying to hack into it for months!

[Stenno]

My friend has Sonos equipment throughout his house and runs it on Napster, using his iphone as a controller.

I want to go down this route when I get a new place but not sure yet whether I'll choose Sonos equipment. I believe Google are also venturing into this realm. It's definitely the future in some form or other.

[Amadeus]

For what it essentialy is, i think its overpriced. All they are are wifi enabled speakers. Everything else is software and app based.
Well, there is a lot of value in software... Google for example... :-)


The bar i frequent has it as thier main system and i have been trying to hack into it for months!
Which piece are you trying to hack?

[Amadeus]

My friend has Sonos equipment throughout his house and runs it on Napster, using his iphone as a controller.

I want to go down this route when I get a new place but not sure yet whether I'll choose Sonos equipment. I believe Google are also venturing into this realm. It's definitely the future in some form or other.
More and more companies are venturing into the arena; there are some *very* expensive products out there but almost certainly cheaper ones will be available soon.