In short, you can pretend to be a well-wired rich person

[4313B]

-- without having had to pay $10,000 for somebody to install a "system."

No 'System,' but Music Housewide (http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09323/1014747-96.stm)

[louped garouv]

does this wireless system do bass?

seems like a lot of the wireless system solutions
i have read up on recently left much to be desired in that area...

[DavidF]

This music-as-a-commodity- and the hardware market supporting it- is just not working for me. The market, though, is leaving me behind. Just like those EMI record producers and engineers who ate and slept only classical music played by ladies and gentlemen when all of the sudden someone inserted the Beatles into the corporate bloodstream.

[HCSGuy]

It's actually a really awesome system for everything but the really high end. The system creates its own mesh network, sends everything digitally (yes it's compressed), has awesome access to your music off a NAS drive, supports Rhapsody and Pandora, or you can add one analog source for each room amplifier. That analog source (turntables would require a phono preamp) is then available in any room.

The two biggest drawbacks are that you cannot control added sources through their LCD remote, and the encoding/compression introduces a time delay (I think about 1/10 sec). Therefore, if you are playing the Superbowl from DirecTV on the A/V system and also through the Sonos system in other rooms, rooms adjacent to the A/V system will sound like they have an echo and the lip sync will be off.

I hope I don't sound like a shill for the company - we've installed a few of their systems but aren't dealers. For simple retrofit music, it's hard to beat, provided you engineer around its limitations. If you want to see a turkey in the same category, look at the new Yamaha MusiCast 2...

[Mr. Widget]

I hope I don't sound like a shill for the company - we've installed a few of their systems but aren't dealers. For simple retrofit music, it's hard to beat, provided you engineer around its limitations. If you want to see a turkey in the same category, look at the new Yamaha MusiCast 2...We are dealers for them... and we also really like them. I am not so sure about the new model with built in speakers, but their self powered units are pretty good and their simple line level devices are even better since you can use the amp of your choice.

As far as not spending $10K and pretending to be rich... we have put in a few Sonos systems that cost well over that amount (10+ zones) and were in multi-million dollar homes. They aren't a replacement for a full featured whole house audio system, but for many people they are just the ticket.

Where do you plug in the turntable? On the back of each unit is an analog input. :) We have plugged in turntables for a few customers... with an outboard phono section of course. Would it satisfy me? No way... but in this MP3 and XM world, most customers love it. (Sounds better than XM, Pandora etc. if you use the analog input or you use lossless music files.)

Is this a replacement for a stand alone high end system... hell no, but it is fun to use and is quite affordable considering what it does and how good it sounds.

FWIW: Most higher end system installers will disparage Sonos as there is very little margin in them and they are so reasonably priced... but if you are looking for a system for the Patio, kitchen etc... it beats a boom box, is easy to install, and sounds very good if you set it up right.


Widget