Tír Na HiFi

Could someone please explain the how, what and why of the sonos system/s is this strictly for digital sound? or is it a system? or.......?

MooseTrackz wrote:Could someone please explain the how, what and why of the sonos system/s is this strictly for digital sound? or is it a system? or.......?

Good question. I thought that everybody knew and was too embarrassed to ask.

well i'll be the first to say, embarrassed nay! dumb arse, most probably!

but what is this thingie?? more smoke and mirrors? the newest power cable amplification?

As far as I know it's a digital streaming playback system. You have a single base unit with an attached hard drive with all your music on it and then as many individual playback units as you want. You control it via a fancy remote I think. The idea is that you can have several playback units in different rooms all running off the one base unit.

I seem to remember that it gets good reviews and its user friendly and stocked by cloneys too....

Fran

It is all the rage in Denmark. A lot of people get them modified to perform better. Now the Bluesound Node seem to be taking over as it will play back 24/192 (although some are reporting difficulties in this regard). No doubt that the user friendliness is a big advantage with these products but I am still skeptical regarding it a "High End" source...

I had a Sonos ZP 90 for a while.
I used the digital out through an Arcam R Dac and was happy enough with it. All fed from a NAS.
The user interface is excellent. I used iPad and iPhone Sonos free apps to control it.

I think if you like your system sound now and have digital in along the line then it's really good. Think it's still limited to 96 though not sure about that.

Good sound, convenience, easy to integrate and great www radio access too.

I compared it to the Squeezebox and preferred the Sonos on a few levels. Including sound.

I have 6 zones throughout the house playing any radio station or any of my music from a NAS so, among other things, I don't need to have the computer switched on. I control them from any computer in the house or my iPhone or iPod touch (free apps).
I would recommend the play 3 (or a pair if you can afford them) for convenience in a bedroom or kitchen. The play 5 is too big and expensive. Sound from play 3 and 5 is good for what they are but not real hifi.
I also have a zp90 playing through a DAC into an arcam/system audio system and that is real hifi. They have a digital amp (which I also have driving speakers in the kitchen) which just needs to be connected to a pair of good speakers and sounds great.
They have just brought out a soundbar for the tv which I would love to try if I had €699

Well worth getting into sonos. Really convenient and great sound.

DNT

so you need a connect + stereo per room?

one of which is connected to a nas/Pc/mac...??

pardon my ignorance but what is a nas?

it's a hard drive that's attached to the network itself as opposed to a particular machine on the network...

at least that's my understanding of it!