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Sonos - great piece of kit!
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Author:  Roffensian [ Tue Dec 20, 2011 5:46 pm ]
Post subject:  Sonos - great piece of kit!
As we have discussed before I am a bit of an audiophile and I decided to pick up a Sonos system (www.sonos.com) for a new games room that I have just put in place at home. I was a bit sceptical of the quality as the cost is pretty low for what you get - in Canada $450 for the Sonos 5 and $60 for the bridge.

Set it up this evening which only took about 5 minutes and I am really impressed with the sound quality. It's not reference quality audio, but for the money it is pretty darn good and the ability to play all of my music wirelessly and play different music in different parts of the house is fantastic.

If you like music at home then definitely check it out.
Author:  JustinFournier [ Tue Dec 20, 2011 9:20 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Sonos - great piece of kit!
Thanks for the info, I will certainly look into this as I was already looking at something for the Baby's room.
Author:  nr123 [ Wed Dec 21, 2011 4:01 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Sonos - great piece of kit!
Roffensian wrote:
for a new games room that I have just put in place at home.


Sorry, just cannot picture you as a gamer. :!: :lol:
Author:  AlexB [ Wed Dec 21, 2011 4:21 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Sonos - great piece of kit!
Sonos devices are great pieces of kit, awesome for multi room setups.
Author:  Roffensian [ Wed Dec 21, 2011 5:23 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Sonos - great piece of kit!
nr123 wrote:
Roffensian wrote:
for a new games room that I have just put in place at home.


Sorry, just cannot picture you as a gamer. :!: :lol:



I think that you have misinterpreted my comment, shockingly.
Author:  rplace [ Wed Dec 21, 2011 1:27 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Sonos - great piece of kit!
Interesting. I would be curious to know your thoughts in a month or so. I have not been overly happy with my Logictech Squeezbox Duet. It is the controller that sucks. Android app for smart phone helps, but you still need the controller form time to time when the thing stops working and needs to be rebooted.

I am looking for music played at two different systems I have (pretty high end). Not interested in the speaker option so much as a wireless player that will attache to my stereo. Looks like the connect might do the job.

What are you using for a controller, phone, tablet, other? Is the bridge needed if you have good wirless through out the house? Computer/Server of mine is on top floor and best listening system is in a dedicated room in the basement.

If there was only an all in one solution for vinyl I'd be all over that.
Author:  nr123 [ Wed Dec 21, 2011 4:03 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Sonos - great piece of kit!
Roffensian wrote:
nr123 wrote:
Roffensian wrote:
for a new games room that I have just put in place at home.


Sorry, just cannot picture you as a gamer. :!: :lol:



I think that you have misinterpreted my comment, shockingly.


I guess so, I was picturing something like this...
Image
Author:  Roffensian [ Wed Dec 21, 2011 5:32 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Sonos - great piece of kit!
rplace wrote:
Interesting. I would be curious to know your thoughts in a month or so. I have not been overly happy with my Logictech Squeezbox Duet. It is the controller that sucks. Android app for smart phone helps, but you still need the controller form time to time when the thing stops working and needs to be rebooted.

I am looking for music played at two different systems I have (pretty high end). Not interested in the speaker option so much as a wireless player that will attache to my stereo. Looks like the connect might do the job.

What are you using for a controller, phone, tablet, other? Is the bridge needed if you have good wirless through out the house? Computer/Server of mine is on top floor and best listening system is in a dedicated room in the basement.

If there was only an all in one solution for vinyl I'd be all over that.



Didn't buy the Sonos controller - it's $400 :shock:

I don't use iPod for portable music, but bought an iPod touch 8 gig for $200 and downloaded the free app that turns that into the remote for it. Initial thoughts are that it's a pretty good app.

The connect does connect into your home setup and allows you to play music through there, there is also a version of the connect with a built in amp so that you can use your home speakers but bypass the system (although I don't know why you would want to). I haven't looked into it, but I assume that the connect is a glorified DAC. You do need the bridge - Sonos uses proprietary communications protocols so the bridge acts as the 'translation'.
Author:  andrew692003 [ Mon Dec 26, 2011 6:31 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Sonos - great piece of kit!
Hey Roff, we've been selling these for a couple of years now. I installed 4 zones around the house when I moved in last year. Easy to work and can work wirelessly around the house or be hard wired. As you said, amazing bit of technology if you like your music.

I subscribe to Napster for around £5 a month and basically can have any tune from any era you would like at the touch of a button or 2!
Author:  Budlum24 [ Sun Jan 08, 2012 1:34 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Sonos - great piece of kit!
Since we seem to have some resident experts here... If I understand correctly, Sonos would allow me to play music through my laptop wirelessly to a speaker placed anywhere within wifi range? Is there a specific type of media that needs to be played or will the system just pull all audio from the computer?

In short, my laptop speakers are hopelessly bad and I don't want to plug in to my older desktop speaker setup, even though their sound quality was quite good.

Thanks for any help.
Author:  Roffensian [ Sun Jan 08, 2012 2:29 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Sonos - great piece of kit!
Budlum24 wrote:
Since we seem to have some resident experts here... If I understand correctly, Sonos would allow me to play music through my laptop wirelessly to a speaker placed anywhere within wifi range? Is there a specific type of media that needs to be played or will the system just pull all audio from the computer?

In short, my laptop speakers are hopelessly bad and I don't want to plug in to my older desktop speaker setup, even though their sound quality was quite good.

Thanks for any help.



Pretty much.

You will need a Sonos bridge plugged into the wireless router, and technically the Sonos 5 and Sonos 3 units aren't simple speakers they are sets of speakers and amplifiers (5 and 3 respectively).

You tell the software where to pull the music from - a computer in the house, a NAS, etc and it can play the vast majority of audio formats - mp3, wma, flac, etc.

If you are using a laptop it needs to be powered up and awake.
Author:  Budlum24 [ Sun Jan 08, 2012 2:45 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Sonos - great piece of kit!
Roffensian wrote:
Pretty much.

You will need a Sonos bridge plugged into the wireless router, and technically the Sonos 5 and Sonos 3 units aren't simple speakers they are sets of speakers and amplifiers (5 and 3 respectively).

You tell the software where to pull the music from - a computer in the house, a NAS, etc and it can play the vast majority of audio formats - mp3, wma, flac, etc.

If you are using a laptop it needs to be powered up and awake.


Thanks, Roff. One more if you don't mind. If it is playing from a PC, will it work for things like playing a CD, playing from iTunes, Youtube, etc? I suppose I'm really asking if it can work as a wireless powered speaker.

I'm a complete knob when it comes to home electronics and audio...
Author:  Roffensian [ Sun Jan 08, 2012 2:52 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Sonos - great piece of kit!
Budlum24 wrote:
Roffensian wrote:
Pretty much.

You will need a Sonos bridge plugged into the wireless router, and technically the Sonos 5 and Sonos 3 units aren't simple speakers they are sets of speakers and amplifiers (5 and 3 respectively).

You tell the software where to pull the music from - a computer in the house, a NAS, etc and it can play the vast majority of audio formats - mp3, wma, flac, etc.

If you are using a laptop it needs to be powered up and awake.


Thanks, Roff. One more if you don't mind. If it is playing from a PC, will it work for things like playing a CD, playing from iTunes, Youtube, etc? I suppose I'm really asking if it can work as a wireless powered speaker.

I'm a complete knob when it comes to home electronics and audio...



It needs to have the files on your computer, you can't use it to stream live feeds. You could do something to hook your computer in to your home audio system for that (and you can also hook Sonos into a home audio system as well).
Author:  Budlum24 [ Sun Jan 08, 2012 5:12 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Sonos - great piece of kit!
Thank you yet again, Roff. I suppose I need something to wirelessly connect my PC to my non-existent home audio system. This is going to get expensive! The Sonos thing still seems to be quite an interesting piece and well received. Maybe I just need to adjust my listening habits to work with what is available.

Thanks again for your help.
Author:  Roffensian [ Sun Jan 08, 2012 5:16 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Sonos - great piece of kit!
Budlum24 wrote:
Thank you yet again, Roff. I suppose I need something to wirelessly connect my PC to my non-existent home audio system. This is going to get expensive! The Sonos thing still seems to be quite an interesting piece and well received. Maybe I just need to adjust my listening habits to work with what is available.

Thanks again for your help.



Or buy a decent set of computer speakers.

It depends how much you want to spend - you can connect all types of external processing to the computer so that it is effectively just a source for streaming digital data, but if you are talking about things like YouTube then it's a waste because the quality of the source is so poor. You would probably get 90+% of what you are trying to achieve with a set of decent external speakers.

If you are talking about streaming high quality (FLAC) audio files then I can make some suggestions depending on how much your budget is, but that might be overkill for your situation.
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