Finally having a break to get back to this, it seems like the most interesting recent 'gadget' purchase is a Sonos Digital Music System. http://www.sonos.com Everyone keeps asking my opinion of it, so to keep it all in one place:
I have have had several home audio systems over the last 8 years or so. The first was a 200 cd jukebox connected to a multi room receiver, with distributed speakers and IR repeaters. I then switched the cd player for a Turtle Beach Audiotron, upgraded the other components to an Elan system 6, tied in DirecTV satellite audio, and other did a few other bits. Having moved again, I was thinking of putting in another central audio distribution system, even got my house about 80% wired for it. However, I really like the ability to easily select music, arrange queues and all of that, and there really isn't anything that provides an interface anywhere close to Sonos'.
I've had a base system - 2 ZonePlayers and 1 Controller - since they started shipping in February, and have had lots of time to play with it. For what it is designed to do, it does it very well. The thing everyone talks about is the remote. The remote is very similar to a landscape mode iPod, but with a bigger, color screen and a few more buttons. The additional buttons are for track, volume, and zone control. You can have as many zones as you have ZonePlayers, and can link any set, or keep them separate. I only have 2 zones right now, so I don't know about having multiple groups of linked zones, but I would imagine that works fine.
So basically the remote is great. There are a few things that can be improved, and I assume software upgrades will take care of most of them. The biggest improvement would be for a plug-in architecture for the remote (whole system). Like just about every piece of hardware out today, the net community has already produced a number of workaround apps to add missing functionality, like auto-on (alarm clock) functions, query tools, etc. Plug-ins to support scripting would be very useful. Being able to get weather, time, rss, etc would be great. (the Tiger dashboard is so very very nice for quick info, btw) But the queue management and other capabilities of the current release are very well thought out. From a hardware perspective, I wouldn't change a thing. There is this scrolling issue - it doesn't accelerate like on an iPod. Don't know if this is just a sw issue, or if the trackpad isn't speed sensitive, or has a max top speed or what, but scrolling takes a while.
What's really interesting about the Sonos is that each player is a wireless bridge for a proprietary mesh network. Each one has a 100meg ethernet switch, and you can use wired or wireless for all but one player, which must be wired because Sonos wireless can't connect to WiFi. This is fine with me, but it wasn't apparent when I bought it. You can also let other network traffic (TiVo, X-Box, etc) ride the Sonos network back to your main network if you want. The network is very stable and gets stronger with more ZonePlayers, so you can easily cover big distances without hassle.
The current ZonePlayers have line level output, as well as amplified and a separate subwoofer output. In my media center, I take the line-out
into my Marantz receiver. In my master bedroom, I plug the line-out into an amp, which then powers a passive sub and 2 satellite speakers. (http://www.roundsound.com - I've had the micros since '98, a 2.1 and a 5.1 set, much nicer than any other satellite system, good price, and now if fashion colors....) The amplified output will connect through a volume control to a single stereo in-ceiling speaker in my bath. http://tinyurl.com/9vjru I have all the wiring done, but can't pick a volume control.. I would prefer buttons or a slide control over a knob, with some water resistance, impedance matching and good quality. Any recommendations?
Linked zones are truly synchronized. You can walk from zone to linked zones, or play them loud enough so they overlap, and there is nothing off at all. There are no other products that do that right now.
The ZonePlayers also have line-in jacks. So I also connect an am/fm tuner to the media room player and can select to listen to the radio elsewhere. It's nice but fairly limited in that I canÂÂÂ't change the channel. Another really useful feature would be an IR output, or input/output, or just a USB or even serial port and the aforementioned plug-in architecture. There should be no reason why I can't use the controller to change channels on a tuner, XM/Sirius, what-have-you.
Anyhow, there is no player with sub zones, or any ampless version (with digital out would be nice), both of which would suit my needs better than the boxes I have, but again - they work very well, more than well enough to deal with extraneous amplifiers. And while Sonos hasn't said anything on their site, I've read rumors that at least an ampless version might be available in the future. I'm sticking with these two for now, and will expand once I see what is offered, and then re-use what I have. Or not if there is no new hardware.
Sonos works with Real Rhapsody, and I did the 30 day trial. I really liked the internet radio stations, which send songs, not streams, so you can skip songs if you want (no pause or rw). And I also found that I grabbed quite a few new albums/artists on the subscription side. It was nice to listen to music in the proper environment (not a 30sec clip on laptop speakers) and see if I liked it or not. I bought several cds (I still buy cds) based on that after the 30 day trial ended. The Rhapsody client on the pc crashed or disconnected and couldn't reconnect constantly. A few hours of uptime was good. And Real is not a player I ever used, so I'm not thinking I'll try Rhapsody again. Yahoo music support would be nice, posts on the Sonos forums http://tinyurl.com/8yyvb seem to say there are hurdles. But Rhapsody, Yahoo, Sonos, and most other things support UPnP, and all things seem possible with a plug-in architecture and open-source developers. (do those guys get paid, yet?)
There are lots of other approaches to distributed home audio. http://www.techlore.com/article/10086/
But for the way I installed and use it, Sonos is far better than any alternatives at this point. The only things I would improve: the remote can likely do many more things so i hope it soon does, and a few different player models for alternative applications would be a nice thing to have. And the release of the announced Mac version of the desktop controller software.
