review: Sonos Digital Music System

Posted on | July 15, 2006 | No Comments

I just finished my review of the Sonos Digital Music System for PLAY.FM – definitely the most amazing network audio player I’ve reviewed so far. the Sonos is a modular multi-room-system, streaming all sorts of audio-data from a PC/Mac or any SMB-fileshare (f.e. a fileserver or a stand-alone NAS-box) to a home stereo or (in case of the ZP100) any pair of speakers. A Sonos setup can connect up to 32 receivers  (think of one ‘ZonePlayer’ for every room of your apartment/house) which are managed by a neat handheld-controller. the controller features a crisp 3.5″ color-LCD and an iPod-like click-wheel – a great tool to navigate large media-collections. I’ve tried other systems like the Squeezebox or the Terratec Noxon before, and while both offer basically the same functionality, it just isn’t fun to browse through thousands of mp3s with a simple plastic-remote control and a tiny display you can’t decipher when being away more than 2 meters from the device. of course, all that shiny technology has its price: a basic setup for streaming music to one room costs about 800,- USD, additional receiver-units go for 350,- USD (ZP80, hooking up to an existing stereo-amplifier) and 500,- USD (ZP100, integrated amplifier).

since I’m going to move into a 2floor-apartment by august, I’m thinking about getting a basic setup…if my budget isn’t eaten up by the move, that is

update: while the Sonos is a great product, I think there is still room for improvements. primarily, I’ld love to see Sonos open up APIs to the controller unit. since the system seems to be based on linux, I’m sure a great number of innovative extensions would pop up soon. if you don’t believe me, just check the directory of available Squeezebox-plugins. moreover I hope it’s just a matter of time until Sonos integrates video-capabilities into their devices. I think of a ZonePlayer connected to my TV (maybe even HD-TV) or video-projector, streaming video-data (divx, mpeg2…) from a central file-storage. now that’ld be cool…

 

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