Sonos Whole House Audio Review

Hot and funky

Fresh Reviews

Motorola TX500 Bluetooth…

The Motorola TX500 Bluetooth In-Car Speakerphone is extremely easy to pair with a smart phone and has…

Bose SoundLink II Mobile…

The Bose SoundLink II mobile Bluetooth speaker sounds very good, is extremely easy to use and feels…

The KitchenAid 5-Speed…

At 3 am in the morning during an all night edit session nothing hits the spot like a good smoothie. The…

Sanyo eneloop Rechargeable AA…

Sanyo eneloop AA rechargeable batteries are good a place to start when investing in rechargeable batteries.…

HitFilm 2 Ultimate Review

HitFilm 2 Ultimate is an easy to use effects and compositing tool that offers outstanding value under $400.…

iPad mini Versus Kindle Fire…

The Kindle Fire HD is an appealing product and a great choice if you consider it a media consumption device…

The Roku 2 XS Review

The Roku 2 XS is a great gift for anyone with a high speed Internet connection that wants to get into…

Sonos Whole House Audio Review

Electronics and Home Entertainment

Friday, 09 June 2006 00:00

Our gadget girl Sandee loves her music collection but she was finding it a little cumbersome and a bit stale. By upgrading her audio system to Sonos with Rhapsody and Pandora she now has complete control over her tunes and gets turned on to more great music than ever before.

Sandee was frustrated with iTunes, digital rights management and just trying to manage her current music collection. Next thing we know, a big white truck is parked outside her home and Sonos boxes are scattered everywhere. Cut to a sunny California afternoon and Sandee's out back enjoying the day with here friends while Sonos and Pandora take care of the entertainment.

Let's face it, with a full time job, who's got the time for all the ripping and downloading required to make your music library both accessible and portable' Not to mention how much effort goes into finding new artists. The combination of a Sonos system with Pandora playing tunes from the Music Genome Project should keep you humming new melodies you love for a long, long time.

Sandee simply says, 'iTunes who'' Now she can have multiple zones in her home and outside while controlling everything with one device. "It's awesome" says Sandee. The basic Sonos bundle runs 1K. Sandee's setup with 3 zones and multiple speakers set her back about 3k. However, she says it's worth every penny. In fact, she's considering adding a 4th zone for the garage. It sounds like overkill but once you get used to having all this great music instantly available in any room of your home it's hard to go back.

Your Sonos experience will only be as good as your installation. Do it yourself or make sure your installer does the installation properly by placing the zone players throughout the house. Some opt to put all the equipment in one spot and run speaker cable to the various zones. That's not optimal. If you have any wireless deadspots you'll be disappointed with the performance of the Sonos controller. The best way is to place the Sonos zone players in the zone they're feeding the signal to. This will actually increase your wireless range as they act like repeaters on the network.

We'd also like to be able to choose an artist and have all tracks from that artist instantly available. It's a bit cumbersome to create a streaming playlist of all tracks by a specific artist. We understand many customers are asking for this and expect to see this option added soon.

So what's next' Well, now that Sonos has a pretty good handle on this audio thing we expect them to tackle video in the near future. In the meantime, Sonos earns our stamp as a funkyfresh essential element.

Visit Sonos for more information.
Visit Pandora for more information.
Visit Rhapsody for more information.
Visit Last FM for more information.

Hot and funky

Fresh Reviews

Technology and Toys

Health and Home

Fun and Entertainment