There's a lot of people on here who lurk without posting too much, and I recon that the typical Sonos buyer would fit that profile, mainly for fear of being ostricised by the hardcore audiophiles or the Squeezebox fanbois.

Well, I'm not ashamed to say that I'm very seriously considering a Sonos bundle for it's high-WAF User Interface, simplicity of configuration, and that oh so cool remote

I know it's expensive, and that the Squeezebox and others may output better quality sound, but my functional requirements for this system don't prioritise those factors as highly as the user experience.

My music will be served up from a Infrant ReadyNAS NV+ and whilst I know the Sonos can stream the audio via WiFi, I'd prefer to use the CAT6 cabling as there may be up to 8 brick walls from source to target.

I'd love to hear any opinions or about potential issues that some of you who have hands on experience with Sonos gear have had.

Foggy talk to Samhain - he put Sonos thru a clients entire house which was solid brick thru-out and the Sonos's Wifi-mesh networking was able to work perfectly.

Thanks djos, I'll definitely do that, but I'd also really like to hear from owners or installers about any gripes or shortfalls that they may have with the system.

I'm aware that the Raphsody online server functionality is not available for non-US residents, but I'm OK about that for now.

Samhain did have one setup in his house for a couple of months and does know the product first hand.

Cool.... I'll be sure to speak to him then.... and hopefully he'll do me a nice deal again

I'd still love to hear other opinions though, there must be more Sonos owners out there.....c'mon, don't be shy!!

Here is a positive review on Stereophile. In particular, this statement impressed me:

"I was hard-pressed to hear much of a difference between the Levinson driven by the ZP80 receiving Apple Lossless Compressed or AIF files, and the original CDs from which I had ripped the tracks, as played back by the Classé or Ayre players feeding the DAC the same data via AES/EBU links."

Thanks Amfibius.

I read that review, and it's one of the reasons why I'm so keen on it. I'lll probably also get a Slimdevices Transporter for the main listening room which purportedly has a great DAC as well as all the streaming media capabilities.... and it also does double duty as a 2-ch Pre

The Sonos doesn't even need to deliver audiophile quality audio as it will be for the distributed audio duties in the Living Room, bedroom, and outdoor area. The CD Player will be purely a backup device in my home, it's streaming digital all the way baby

Foggy,

I hope to be a Sonos owner fairly soon for all the same reasons as you. I'm going for the unamplified version (ZP50 I think). Got a pair of powered Bose speakers which I hope will do a good job - can always add an amp and speakers later if my room setup changes. I'm currently converting a heap of CDs into .flac on my htpc so I will have a bunch of tracks and playlists ready to go from day one. It's that remote which displays album art that really sold me - just too cool to go past. I really think it's the answer, although I haven't actually gone to see a demo yet. All I need now is more time (proving very hard to come by lately!).

Hi Guys, as A Squeezebox owner and reseller I am obviously a SqueezeBox fan... but I can see how the Sonos, can be appealing, especially the WAF bit. Gee's but so many of you guys are so hen pecked stand up for your selves

Personally Album Art does nothing for me and I find it a pain to search via album art, but many seem to love it... One day I will get around to configuring an output from my PC to the TV to show the SlimServer browser on the TV to see how this goes, but this means yet another cable.

The Sonos for most duties will perform admirably it is just not an Audiophile level player like Squeezebox.

BTW the Slim devices Squeezebox Transporter has hit the shores and I will have mine and a few for stock this afternoon. RRP is $3200 I think so higher than expected, but if anyone wants a best price contact me I can do better than most if not all places.

Foggy have you got the Infrant NAS yet, I have heard they are a bit noisey, I would like to hear your opinion.

Michael

Thanks for the info Michael, I am seriously considering a Transporter as well as the Sonos. The Transporter will be used for "serious" listening, and should do an admirable job of being a DAC and Pre for 2 channel work. Please let me know when they arrive, as I am very interested.

The ReadyNAS NV used to be noisy, but about a month ago they changed to a fanless power supply. They also launched a new NV+ this week which also has an LCD display and comes with some backup software on top of the silent PS.

I've spoken to several people now who have had the Sonos in their home, and they cannot fault it. One of those people is an audiophile, and he said that the audio quality was surprisingly decent, particularly if you use your own amp.

I'll continue to update this thread over the next few weeks as I think this is an area which is about to really take off, and there will be many more interested people.

I have been very impressed with both the Squeezebox and the Sonos in terms of SQ.

Foggy,

Went in to demo the Sonos and just couldn't help myself - plonked down my 2 large for the ZP80 (unamplified version). Give me a week to set it up and test it and then I'll post my review.

Nice one max

I was probably going to put my money where my mouth is this week too!

I look forward to hearing how you go.

Yeah, the wife wasn't happy with me....she said "You're just going to look at it, right?". "Of course!" I said.

Sucker.........

When you put that remote in her hands, you won't be getting it back!

Okay Foggy, here is my review of the ZP80, also copied in the reviews section:

The Scenario: Looking for a way to wirelessly play music from my HTPC to my dining/billiard room.

The Challenge: To fit this wireless system on a glass bookshelf measuring 23cm x 75cm which is already displaying books, photoframes and general trinkets!

The Failed Previous Attempt: Netgear MP101 Wireless Music Player with Bose Companion powered speakers.

So firstly: what went wrong with the Netgear? The biggest problem was it could only stream mp3 and wma. I ripped a few cds into 320kb mp3s and tried to convince myself that it was good enough, but it just wasn't. Also it couldn't read my MCE playlists, I had to duplicate them in the Netgear software. This combined with the very basic interface made using it a very unexciting prospect, and within a few days my interest in it had basically disappeared. It just seemed easier to lug out the trusty old portable CD player as I had been doing since we moved here. I was pretty happy with the Bose speakers, the only drawback with them being that they had no tone controls at all - very unusual for a powered speaker.

Then I discovered the Sonos ZP100 on the web. It seemed to have all the features I wanted, except the units contained an amplifier which I didn't need and were pushing it size-wise for my bookshelf. After several months umming and ahhing and pretty much giving up on the idea, I suddenly found out about the new ZP80 - same product sans the amplifier, and thus packaged in smaller units. Could this be the perfect product for me??.....

So I packed up the virtually unused Netgear and began preparations for the Sonos. The single biggest decision was what format to use for the music. The Sonos will play pretty much everything right up to uncompressed .wav, which was my original intention to use, until I discovered that it's not tagable - pretty much useless for MCE which depends on artist, album name and genre for sorting music. So I decided to go for lossless compression, of which the two most common seem to be .flac and .wma lossless. In the end I went with .flac, because the compression amount seems to be lower (about 70% of uncompressed size). I then went about learning how best to rip into .flac format and set up album cover art in MCE, which was a fair bit of trial and error (a subject for a tutorial if anyone is interested). After succesfully setting up 20 albums and 2 playlists, it was time to buy the Sonos.

Setting up couldn't be easier - these guys have really thought it through. Plug one unit into the router, software detects it. Set the other one up in the dining room, connect the Bose speakers, software detects it also. Then it asks you where is the music stored. In my case it's all in one folder on my HTPC called My Music, however you can choose any number of locations if your music is stored all over the place. Charge up the controller and she's ready to go.....

I did some scrolling through the Album, Artist and Genre menu - everything was there, including the album cover art! But there was nothing under Playlists......some quick research revealed that MCE playlists are not stored in My Music, but somewhere in Documents and Settings, hence the Sonos couldn't see them. Tried to get Windows Media Player to save its playlists elsewhere, but I don't it's possible. The easiest workaround is just to add this location in the Sonos software as another music store folder, and bang, there they are! So now the Sonos is displaying everything exactly as my MCE does, not a single tweak or duplication necessary. First BIG tick.

Now, how about the sound quality? Well let's face it, it's probably never going to be audiophile quality when it's coming out of what are essentially beefed-up PC speakers. In fact that's exactly how the Bose Companions were marketed. Gotta say though, they're pretty damn good - never heard better from a speaker of this size. The only problem was too much bass, and without any tone adjustment I thought I would just have to live with it and get used to it. Imagine my joy when I was looking around in the Sonos software and found an equaliser setting, one which you can adjust for each Zoneplayer! Yipee, bass problem solved! So I sat through several songs - did not hear a single audio clitch, nor could I detect any deficiencies due to compression. Second big tick.

Finally, what is it like to use? Well.....how cool is that remote! Not ever having used an iPod, I found the scroll dial thingy very cumbersome at first, but after a few days of messing around with it I'm getting a lot better, so I think it's only a short-term problem. I have only found one minor annoyance with the software, and it only applies if you play your music a certain way. Basically when you choose an album or song to play, it puts it into a "queue" and plays it. When it's finished, you choose another album and it adds it onto the end of the queue and begins playing from there. This is no problem unless you use shuffle play, which I do nearly all the time. In this case when you choose the next album, it gets re-shuffled along with the first album you played, so you end up hearing all those songs again. The only way around this is to clear the queue after each album (requires ~5 button presses) or add your next album to the queue before the current one finishes. I'd love to see a "Clear queue upon completion" option in the software, but anyway it's no biggie. I guess the best thing I can say is that I now look FORWARD to having some time to going in there, sitting down and pumping out some tunes. Third and possibly BIGGEST tick!

So it's 20 CDs down, 200-odd more to go.....

Thanks for posting your impressions, madmax. Sounds like a great product.

Fantastic review madmax You tell a great story, as well as giving us an insight into the Sonos:)

Can you please tell us how it passed the WAF test.... and have you had the courage to tell her how much it cost yet? :ph34r:

Hi Foggy,
Just to throw a spanner in the works, take a look at this website.
www.promixis.com
Look at net remote. Team that withe J river media center and you have a multi room system streaming directly from PC. It's what I'm doing at the moment and works great. (lot of fiddling about, but if you can master it, it's actually quite fun.)
J river is the only media player at the moment that allows you to assign different zones so can actually play different music to different zones.
Also the cost saving over the sonos is worth just taking a look.
Don't get me wrong , I actually love the simplicity of the sonos and ease of setup but cost wise it just got to much.
Just my 99c (after tax) worth.

Er, no I'm pretty sure the Sonos can play different music to each zone, although I have no immediate need to use that feature. Might test it out on the weekend and report back.

As for the WAF, she's not into music so it all comes down to aesthetics really. Maybe I'll post a pic or two so you can see how it turned out......

She nearly died when she found out it cost ~7 times the price of the Netgear. My answer was "Sure, but it's also 10 times better....."

"Er, no I'm pretty sure the Sonos can play different music to each zone."

Sorry I should have clarified, I meant software player. As Windows media doesn't do it.
And yes the sonos can do that very well!

Thanks Farbs. I've tried going down the PocketPC path on previous occasions, but the useability isn't up to scratch... not to mention the reliability.

I have no problems with technology, but there are others in the house who struggle and get very frustrated. The beauty of the Sonos for me is the simplicity and reliability, I think it's worth the price premium to save days/weeks of mucking about to set it up and then to maintain it.

Even the Squeezebox, as cool as it is, doesn't have the same level WAF-friendliness of the Sonos.... I think I'll just bite the bullet and order it today.

I am sure you will enjoy the sonos, and yes the pocket PC can be FRUSTRATING at times. Any way let us know how it all goes!

Yeah, go for it Foggy! You won't regret it. I've been smiling for the last 5 days - fading now, only because I'm thinking about how much ripping work I have to do before the project can be called complete....

Well, I rang some dealers to ask about the bundle pricing, and ran into one of my pet hates:

The ZP80 Bundle does not include the cradle for the controller, that's an extra $100

The RRP of the ZP100 (amplified) bundle is $2399
The RRP of the ZP80 (unamplified) bundle is $1999 + $99 for the cradle

The only reason you wouldn't pony up the extra money for the ZP100 bundle is if space was an issue.

Does the ZP100 have preamp level out?

Got mine for $1,999 including cradle from Encel. I just said "Do this and I'll buy it today" and they did - what a bargainer-extraordinaire I am..... Mind you, they haven't actually given me the cradle yet cos they didn't have any in stock.....

Sure does Amf, you don't have to use that built in amp, except for emergencies.

Here's a pic:
http://images.amazon.com/images/G/01/elect...-zp100-1-lg.jpg

Note, the ZP100 also acts as a 4 port network hub too. This could come in handy if you only have one network point at that location, especially with the advent of new equipment like AVRs and HD-DVD players that have network connectivity.

Foggy, did you get one yet?

Been busy so haven't played much more with it, but discovered two things:
1. If you add new music, it doesn't automatically appear on the Sonos. You need to open the Sonos software and under the 'Music' menu click on 'Update Music Library' (or similar).
2. Although you can randomly choose any track (shuffles entire track list), there is no way of randomly choosing an album. Somtimes deciding which album to play is the hardest part for me.....oh well, I guess it's back to the old D&D dice. It's a little embarrassing to admit it, but this is actually how I've been choosing which CD to play for years now......

Thanks for the great write-up Madmax. I’ve been considering the options of either a squeezebox or transporter or a Sonos system. I’ve been offered to take a Sonos system home next week for a trial, since I’m not interested in multi-room audio, I guess the quality of the sound is going to be my biggest requirement.

I have an external HDD with an Ethernet connection I wonder if the Sonos or Squeezebox can stream it directly of if it needs to be connected via a PC, the thing I like about this external box is that you can configure a sleep mode, so the HDD is not working 24/7 when it’s not required.

I believe it should work work Spearmint as your drive supports SMB, but (I may be wrong here) it may not offer the most user friendly solution for the Squeezebox as you won't be able to run the Slimserver software.

The Sonos however doesn't require server software to be running, so it should work well.

As to the audio quality, I'd be surprised if either streaming device would match your current setup.... you may have to look towards the Transporter for that sort of quality.

Thanks Foggy, so the Sonos is the way to go for flexibility, although the Transporter is the way to go for audio quality. Is this due to any particular thing with these units, i.e. using a good quality external DAC will this bring both units a little closer in audio quality?

Spot on Prof. Mint!

The Sonos definitely wins out in WAF and ease of setup/use, and it's sonic quality is purported to be similar to the Squeezebox3, which is no slouch in the SQ department. You do pay a very large premium for the Sonos over the SB3 though!

As for the Transporter, I've been doing a fair bit of reading, and after sifting through many "excited new owner" reviews, the impression that I get is that it's DAC is very revealing and may not suit everyones tastes.

My intention is to contact Dlite and see if he'll bring the Transporter over for a demo when my room is completed in a few weeks time, and if all goes well, it may perform the Pre and DAC duties in my HT/listening room. The Sonos would be used for distributed audio in other areas of the house.

EDIT:
Oops, I forgot to answer your question...

Many Squeezebox owners do use an external DAC and say that it does make a difference, I believe JDH on here uses a Benchmark DAC-1 with his SB3. Some people in the UK & US also get their SB3 modified and there are claims that a modded SB3 actually sounds better than the Transporter. I believe that either the Sonos or the SB3 could benefit from your Elektra DAC.

Thanks Foggy, at this stage I’ll opt for the Sonos solution as I believe its flexibility will suit me more than the Squeezebox or Transporter. Providing the reproduced audio is good via my Elektra DAC and that it can access the HDD without any PC intervention then I’ll be happy. If it works out I’ll buy a couple of more of these external HDD boxes.

BTW here is a review of the external box I have if anyone is interested, I checked with some the other units on the market, they didn’t appear to have some of the niceties of this unit like HDD sleep mode.

I think your and Foggy's comments pretty much some it up.

The Sonus is more flexible and a higher WAF. (God you guys are all wooses pandering to your wifes all the time ) .

The Transporter DAC is very good, but I would not call it over revealing (i.e. not as revealing as Benchmark). If I have a complaint about the Transporter's dac it would be that it is a little warm sounding and it is very hard to pump anything through it that will become fatiguing. Some people will really like this, particularly the tube brigade I would think. The DAC in the Transporter leaves the DAC in the Squeezebox for dead, immediately noticeable improvement. The Transporter is just great plugged direct into a power amp, there is definitely something to be said for one box solutions I think.

You can always use a Linksys NSLU2 to bridge USB drives to the Transporter. If you plan to use an external DAC the Squeezebox 3 should be sufficient unless you plan to use the other features of the transporter.

I am happy to loan out a Transporter for you to have a try.

Michael

Thanks for the clarification on the sonics Michael, I'll certainly be taking up your offer of borrowing the Transporter for an in-home demo very soon ...and be careful who you call a whuss, or I'll set my wife onto you

I'm thinking of having the best of both worlds by using the Transporter in the main listening room, and the Sonos for the other parts of the house.... now I just need to get over the stigma of it being a Logitech Transporter

Sure can. After setup, the only time you need PC intervention is after you've added some new music to your hard drive.

Since my HTPC is always on, access to my music is currently no problem. Nevertheless, a NAS drive is the next thing on my shopping list, mainly to reduce the workload/storage on my htpc.

I’ve done a bit of hard sell tonight and believe I have tentative approval from the cheese & kisses to procure the Sonos, so depending if that approval runs through into Monday I may just get things moving.

BTW thanks guys for the information about the external HDD and the Sonos.

Great work Prof. Mint

I suspect that when you hook up some speakers onto your back deck to a Sonos module, Mrs Mint will be saying that this is the best piece of HT gear that you've invested in

BTW, for some strange reason the Australian distributors in all their wisdom decided not to include the docking cradle for the remote as part of the bundled packages, it'll set you back about another $80 You can live without it as you can plug the DC pack directly into the remote, but that's not as elegant.

One other thing that we miss out on in Australia is the Raphsody server capability that streams the music of your choice in real time from the internet for US$10 a month. There is a workaround however, if you're prepared to use an IP masking site that makes it look like you have an American IP address. I believe the Raphsody music is only encoded at 128kb, so it's more of a sampler application, rather than something that you would keep permanently.... but this probably wouldn't matter too much if it's being played on outdoor or in-ceiling speakers.

Well just spent a fantastic morning having a late breakfast with a couple of the kids at a restaurant in Mornington. The purchase of the Sonos has now got the official stamp of approval, so tomorrow I’ll start the ball rolling.

Thanks for the help Foggy; I’ll add the cradle to the list.

I've spent the last few hours at a mate’s place that is running a Sonos system, and this has definitely sold me on it. I’m now going to get one remote control with cradle and two base units.

Now I realise this has been answered in other threads, but I thought I would broach the subject here and that is what the best program is, and what the best method of storing the files is. The reason I ask is my mate is using iTunes and Apple lossless as the method to store them on an external networked. His setup is basically the same as what I’m going to do as far as the external drive goes; I just now need to decide on the file saving method. I’d prefer some program like iTunes that labels the files and also downloads the cover art automatically. Are there any preferences?

That's great to hear Spearmint.... I think we're on the verge of something very big with Sonos

Most people who are 'in the know' seem to recommend Exact Audio Copy (EAC) to rip their music in FLAC format. The Apple lossless and iTunes are usually problematic when wanting to use with other software.

I'm also getting an Infrant ReadyNAS NV+ with 2TB of disk to store all my music and digital photos.... as well as a few of the more commonly played Kylie DVD's I'll be ordering one tomorrow or Tuesday, so PM me if you're interested and I'll see if we can get better pricing for 2 units.

Ahh Kylie this unit must be good… anyway thanks Foggy, although I think it’s a bit sophisticated for me.

I’ll give EAC a whirl; BTW does it also get the track names like iTunes?

I believe it uses CDDB to get the track info and album art, whereas iTunes uses the Gracenote DB.

Thanks Foggy, I should have the toys by Tuesday/Wednesday so then we play…

Aren't they the same?

I think you're right John

apologies for the error on my part

I'm using Audiograbber as my ripper and the FLAC utility to convert to FLAC. It's a two-step process but it's okay with me. I also use Album Art Fixer to find the album covers. I don't trust the online databases because a lot of the US discs have different tracks or different track orders to our CDs, so I name them myself. Here is a little tutorial for ripping cds (Spearmint: please note this is for MCE users, your process will be a lot simpler). This tute assumes you are running an HTPC and have a separate PC (in the study?) for doing this sort of general work, as I do. Whether they are networked or not is unimportant.

1. Install a ripper of your choice, FLAC utility, Album Art Fixer and the FLAC codec into Windows Media Player.
2. First, rip just a single track and convert to FLAC and see if WMP will play it. I remember I had some trouble here, and had to go into Tools-->Plug-ins-->Options-->Background and tick the FLAC box before it would work - can't remeber exactly but found this info online. Once you've got it to work, install the same codec in WMP on your HTPC and do the same steps. Test to prove the track plays in My Music.
3. Rip CD into .wav files.
4. Rename tracks as 01 - The Locomotion . etc. You need to use two digits to maintain correct track order, or three digits if there are 100+ tracks on the album.
5. Drag and drop them into the FLAC window.
6. Tick 'Delete files after encode' (or similar). Go into Tag Conf and correctly label Artist, Album name and Genre. Click 'Encode'.
7. Transfer the songs to your backup store on your PC. I recommend creating a separate folder for each album, and make it an exact replica of how it will be stored on your HTPC.
8. Open WMP. Go to 'Library', down the bottom choose 'Add New Folder'. Browse to the new album folder you just created. WMP now updates. This is necessary for Album Art Fixer to work.
9. Open Album Art Fixer. Choose the new album from the drop-down list. Click 'Fix'. Make sure 'Google Search' is activated on this next screen. Choose the album cover of your choice (200x200 or 300x300). Click it once to preview it. Then right click-->Save As. Browse to the new album folder, name the file "Folder.jpg".
10. Close Album Art Fixer by clicking on all the 'X's in the corner. Otherwise it will try and 'update' your music library. This gave me all sorts of problems. DO NOT LET THE PROGRAM UPDATE YOUR LIBRARY!! Use it purely as a tool to find album art, and nothing more.
11. Browse to the new album folder. Make a copy of the Folder.jpg file and paste it into the same folder. Rename it AlbumArtSmall.jpg (Note: not sure what this actually does, but I think MCE likes it for some reason)
12. Copy this entire album folder into the mirror location on your HTPC.
13. Go to your HTPC, into My Music. You may find the new album appears, but not all the tracks are there. The rest will be in an "Unknown" album (should be the first on the album list). Find the "Unknown" album and play the first track. You should see the track number for a split second (e.g. 01 - track name) and then suddenly the track number will disappear and leave you with only the track name. Skip through each track until all tracks are 'fixed' in this fashion.
14. Exit My Music and then come back in. You should find the "Unknown" album has disappeared and your new album is now complete!
15. Click on the new album, then click Edit Info. Use your keyboard to enter the Album Artist, click Save. This is necessary for the artist to be registered in MCE's database.
16. Go back to your PC, open the Sonos software. Go to Music-->Update Music Library Now (or similar).

I omitted step 4.1, which is where I open each track in Cool Edit Pro and adjust the volume to my chosen level and adjust the start silence to nearly zero and the end silence to 3 seconds. But that's just my eccentricities running wild......

This process has worked for me every time but once so far, when for some reason MCE will not display the cover art for Green Day's 'International Superhits', yet the Sonos does using the exact same jpg file. Weird......

A few notes on Artists and Genres:
I decided to make my own Genres as follows:
50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, Classical, Musicals, Classic Albums.
This is because Pop/Rock is too broad for me, and covers too much of my collection. It makes it hard to browse if you have too many albums in one genre.
I decided to not put the artist name in the FLAC tag for albums containing various artists. This is because even though MCE will not register an artist if you skip step 15, the Sonos will. And I don't want my Artists menu to be clogged up by tons of artists with only one song. Instead for these albums I put the artist name in brackets after the track name in step 4.

Hope this helps somebody!

WOW MadMax, thank you for that! I’ll print this out and do some study.

Spearmint,

Sorry to daunt you.....if you intend to use only the Sonos then your steps would be:
1, 3-7, 16. Steps 8-9 are optional, because you can browse Google for images yourself if you like. Or even scan them yourself. It doesn't matter how you get them, so long as you save them as Folder.jpg.