The Sonos is an impressive digital-age multi-room music system that gives you room to grow.
Introduction
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.
But I could with the Sonos ZonePlayer, and without hours of aggravating setup. Mesh networking is the enabler. The Sonos controller communicates with the nearest ZonePlayer, and then that ZonePlayer communicates with the other ZonePlayers throughout the home instantaneously. As a result, the system can play in rooms that are out of range of the first ZonePlayer, and you enlarge your network as you add ZonePlayers.
Editors note: The Orb Audio Classic Two speaker system (available in white to match the Sonos system) would be a perfect fit for the Sonos Digital Audio System. Check out our review.
RSS Feed
by York on April 6, 2008:
“Yes its expensive. But this system is the BEST I have ever used (and I have bought several). There is a mistake in Digital Trends' review: You do not have to hook at least one satelite to a router. You can hook it up to any ethernet (network) outlet. Thus,...” More...