Sonos - is it still worth putting cat5 in my house?

[admin_exported]

Hi,

I am buying a complete new system for my house, a small 2 bed victorian terrace. we are looking for something a bit better than your average high street stereo.

I think im going to buy sonos with three zones 1 zone for kitchen/dining and 1 zone for the living room and then an extra zone for the whole of the upstairs, (will put a zone player in a bedroom and then split in to three speaker sets, one for the bathroom ceiling speakers and one set each for the other two bedrooms, this will save us buying two extra zone players even though we will not be able to play different music in each upstairs room.

we will try to get the most quality from our budget in our living room where our home entertainment will be.

My question is, is it still worth installing cat5 wire through the house and if so for what reason?

and how can I incorperate sonos in to the home entertainment system?

 

[Anonymous]

For future proofing I would personally install a wired network.

Does your wireless signal ever drop out? Going back a few years when I first installed a wireless router in my house there were no other systems in my range and I had a super stable reliable connection. Now there are about 15 other wireless networks I can see and every so often the connection drops. If that happened during a listening session it would be annoying. Worse still should you decide in the future to view movies via a network then again at a crucial moment in a film the network goes out - not good.

So when I recently did a lot of work on my house I installed a wired network with connections in places that I don't currently use but maybe will one day.

And I now have a super stable netwrok again. Bliss.

 

[The_Lhc]

Leaving aside the fact that Sonos won't be using the router's wireless I'd say if you've got the opportunity to wire the place with cat5e (minimum) then it'd be worth it, I don't know how thick the walls are in this house but it's the best way to ensure reliable service (although Sonos is pretty reliable anyway) and will shield you from interference from neighbours, as suggested.

As to the other points, I don't think you can run THREE pairs of speakers from one ZP120, the impedance will be too low, you can run two, provided both pairs are 8 Ohm impedance but more than that you'll need some fancy speaker switches to do it safely.

Finally, you'd need to tell us what the "home entertainment system" is but if it has an optical or coaxial digital input you can take a ZP90 and connect it using the digital outputs.

 

[chebby]

It really depends on how the other four cats interact with it.

(I approve of the sequential numbering though. Give them human names and they get ideas above their station.)

 

[matthewpiano]

Wired is ALWAYS better than wireless.

 

[Ravey Gravey Davy]

matthewpiano:Wired is ALWAYS better than wireless.

Agreed-despite what any of the cats think.

 

[Anonymous]

Just one minor note - if you do install wire, make sure it's cat-6 (gigabit ethernet) and not the older cat-5 (100 mbit) which will prevent you from running at gigabit speed in the future. Fortunately cat-6 is backwards compatible so there is no downside. Most computers today already support gigabit ethernet (although I doubt Sonos does or even needs it).

 

[Ravey Gravey Davy]

You can install cat 6 if you want to- at enormous expense in comparison. We are not going to have those incoming speeds available in our lifetime. Stick with 5E. It's more than enough for our current/future private needs.

 

[Anonymous]

Incoming speeds from the internet aren't the only thing to consider. IMO if you are going to install a wired network you should always install the best available and a CAT6 / 1000mbit network is currently the way to go. If you plan to start streaming music and HD movies around your home you'll soon see the benefits.

Using the SONOS system wireless is great if your house layout and wall thickness' don't cause any problems for the wireless signal.

 

[Ravey Gravey Davy]

IanS1:Incoming speeds from the internet aren't the only thing to consider. IMO if you are going to install a wired network you should always install the best available and a CAT6 / 1000mbit network is currently the way to go. If you plan to start streaming music and HD movies around your home you'll soon see the benefits. Using the SONOS system wireless is great if your house layout and wall thickness' don't cause any problems for the wireless signal.

I agree with the concept of putting the best available in, but it's still an expense that the homeowner will not see the value of for quite some time, so unless you are there for 50 years ,it is someone else's issue-and we are talking double the money-

 

[Anonymous]

Ravey Gravey Davy:

IanS1:Incoming speeds from the internet aren't the only thing to consider. IMO if you are going to install a wired network you should always install the best available and a CAT6 / 1000mbit network is currently the way to go. If you plan to start streaming music and HD movies around your home you'll soon see the benefits. Using the SONOS system wireless is great if your house layout and wall thickness' don't cause any problems for the wireless signal.

I agree with the concept of putting the best available in, but it's still an expense that the homeowner will not see the value of for quite some time, so unless you are there for 50 years ,it is someone else's issue-and we are talking double the money-

50 years?! If you look back 50 years ago, networks were operating at 50kbit... Cat5/100Mbit ethernet is exactly 2,000 times faster than that. And the switch from 10 to 100Mbit happened 10-15 years ago. The switch from 100 to 1000Mbit (ie gigabit) is happening now. I don't want to guess where we'll be in 50 years but am reasonably sure both cat5 and cat6 will be WAY obsolete long before then... So let's keep this real. You say "huge expense" so we can put that in numbers - 250m cat6 is £60 - how much would you spend for cat5, half that? So the question is - does it make sense to dig 15 year old cabling into your walls which will speed restrict your local computers already today, not to mention in a couple of years time, for a £30 saving? Sounds absurd to me but hey every man to his own etc.

 

[Anonymous]

Ravey Gravey Davy:

I agree with the concept of putting the best available in, but it's still an expense that the homeowner will not see the value of for quite some time, so unless you are there for 50 years ,it is someone else's issue-and we are talking double the money-

If we were looking at few hundred quid extra it might be worth considering the CAT5 option but to be honest £60 for a 250m drum of CAT6 isn't that expensive....Is it?

 

[Ravey Gravey Davy]

I went through this exercise 5 months ago so I am out of date because you would have struggled to get 305m of cat 5e before Xmas for less than £50-unless you are trade. I have just found 250m cat 6 for £60 on the net (plus postage) so things have changed.Sorry.

Granted ,50 years was an exaggeration, but solely to make a point- and one which is now invalid.

As of today, my statement of yesterday is no longer operative.

 

[Anonymous]

Sonos operates in the 5GHz band, while most data networks use the 2,4GHz. But as the 5GHz band is also available for the more advanced wi-fi set-ups, Sonos will not be immune to interference and drop-outs. So by all means, wire your house if it's possible!

As for Cat5e versus Cat6, there might be a huge price difference if you look at percentages. In actual money, for a normal house, the total price of Cat6 will still be reasonable.

Be sure to run two cables instead of 1 to all outlets; this allows for future video use. Double outlets are only marginally more expensive than single ones, and cable are sold in bulk and usually comes cheaper the more you buy.