Sonos Digital Music System
Tuesday, November 22nd, 2005
Different rooms, different music, one source, one remote to control it all. Even better when the source is your PC - which stores tons of your music selection. And it’s all wireless.
My scrounging around the internet lead me to the [tag]Sonos[/tag] [tag]Digital Music System[/tag]. A wireless music system that feeds of your digital music collection: MP3, WMA, AAC(MPEG-4), Ogg Vorbis, Flac, WAV and AIFF formats are all supported and the firmware can be upgraded to cater for future formats. It doesn’t do DRM-encrypted and Apple or WMA lossless formats at the moment though.
It also does playlists. Formats supported are: Rhapsody, iTunes, WinAmp, Windows Media Player and MusicMatch. You can just port over your favourite playlist which will save some time setting the unit up.
Album art is also supported and images are displayed on Controller unit. Supported formats are: JPEG, PNG, BMP & GIF.
Not only does it play your stored collection, it can also play internet radio stations using streaming MP3 and WMA formats. In fact, the [tag]ZonePlayer[/tag] unit already comes with over 100 pre-programmed internet radio stations - which is convenient.
This is the system in a nutshell (via Sonos):
The system allows you to play simultaneous or different music on each of the ZonePlayers. Sonos claims that the system works right out of the box. This eliminates the need to do wireless networking setup which can be a pain at times. Nice.
Minimum setup requires a ZonePlayer, a Controller and a pair of speakers.
The ZonePlayer is the box that does the music processing. It can network with other ZonePlayers via Sonosnet - “a secure, wireless mesh network that streams music to other ZonePlayers, avoiding sources of wireless interference” (via Sonos). The built-in amplifier is capable of powering large or small speakers with 50W per channel. There is also subwoofer output with automatic crossover.
A 4 port ethernet switch allows multiple connections to PCs or other ZonePlayers. But the charm is in the wireless networking - a one-button operation allows a ZonePlayer to connect to another seamlessly.
Then there is the controller unit. You just need one of these to manage multiple ZonePlayers that you setup housewide. The Controller allows you browse through your music collection by Artist, Genre, Track Name, Composer or Playlist. You can also build multiple queues for multiple ZonePlayers and save them. Seperate playback options can also be programmed for multiple ZonePlayers.
Physically, the Controller unit comes with a high-res backlit full-colour LCD screen. There is also a movement sensor that switches the unit on when you pick it up - no more searching for a power button in the dark. A scroll wheel selector - similar to the iPod I suspect - provides easy and quick navigation of the menus.
Last, but not least, are the speakers. The Sonos speakers operate at a bandwidth of 75Hz-20kHz with a sensitivity of 85dB @ 2.83 volts/meter. Nominal impedance is 8 ohms and crossover frequency is at 1.85kHz. The drive components are a two-way system using one 1″ magnetically shielded Teteron dome driver with 5.5″ magnetically shielded polypropylene copolymer core woofer. That was a mouthful. Power handling is 75 Watts.
The good thing is that if you already have a favourite set of speakers, you can use that instead.
An easy to setup music system that feeds off my MP3 collection - plus, one Controller to rule them all…
I gotta have one!
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