Home music gear maker Sonos has long offered multi-room digital music systems that hook together via a wireless mesh network to make entire digital music libraries—plus Internet streaming—available in any room and controllable with wireless remotes. But the systems haven’t exactly been inexpensive, especially considering users still need to hook up speakers of some sort to each wireless ZonePlayer unit. Sonos looks remove some barriers to entry with its new Sonos ZonePlayer S5, an all-in-one audio system with five speakers that can tap into a home network’s music libraries (as well as Internet audio streaming services), and be controlled wirelessly via a free app on an iPhone or iPod touch.
Tag Archive: Sonos
Sonos Controller 200 (CR200) Review
Summary
If you already own a Sonos Digital Music System, you’d better not pick up the brand-new controller unless you intend to buy one. The original touch-wheel controller is wonderful; the touchscreen model is absolutely irresistible.
If you’re not already familiar with Sonos’ innovative multi-room audio system, you can read our review here. Sonos is now shipping the new model CR200 controller with all its bundled products, but it can be easily added to any existing setup. And thanks to the way the Sonos wireless network is designed, it’s possible to use multiple remotes, including the older model CR100 or an iPhone running Sonos’ free app.
Sonos Digital Music System Review
Summary
The Sonos Music system is all meshed up. That’s a good thing. A new twist on multi-room audio, Sonos uses a wireless mesh networking technology called Sonosnet to transmit music files from a home PC to up to 32 zones in the house (go slowly; at a minimum of $600 per zone, the overall tag can add up fast) While remote music players from Linksys, Creative and others have sought to do the same thing using Wi-Fi, there’s always some household appliance that seems to get in the way in the 2.4-GHz airspace: a microwave oven, a cordless phone (at least, that’s the way it is in my house.) I can’t even get my PC in the basement some 20 feet away from the upstairs router to make a wireless connection over 802.11g—even after hours on the phone with tech support.
Sonos Digital Music System
The Sonos Digital Music System by Sonos is designed to bring your digital music files from your PC or Mac to other areas of your home. At the heart of the Sonos system are two components which interact together to provide a wireless entertainment experience no matter what room you may be in.
The Digital Music Network?s primary purpose is to be able to bring simultaneous, or different if you so desire, streams of your computer music to remote ZonePlayer boxes. In one particular example of this type of network entertainment delivery, a romantic dinner for two with jazz playing from your PC could be going on in the dining room while your children are in the garage listening to hip hop remotely off the same computer.
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