Sonos

[MajorFubar]

I saw the Play 3 and Play 5 in Curries the other day for the first time.

Let me get this right: for £300 (for the 3) or £350 (for the 5) you get one mono speaker?

Is that not like 1950 odd? Why is it so popular?

 

[The_Lhc]

They're not mono. If you want to know why they're so popular, read some reviews, such as WHF's, they've recently put the Play:3 review online.

Regardless of reviews though, they're no different in concept to any other portable speaker, such as the Zeppelin range but I don't recall you having an issue with those?

 

[bigboss]

They're not mono speakers. The answer lies in their name.

Play:3 contains 3 speakers: http://www.sonos.com/shop/products/Play3

Play:5 contains 5 speakers: http://www.sonos.com/shop/products/Play5

 

[eggontoast]

Why is it so popular?

Because they sound very good, not audiophile quality but very pleasing none the less.

 

[MajorFubar]

Thnks for the explination guys. Now I understand.

they're no different in concept to any other portable speaker, such as the Zeppelin range but I don't recall you having an issue with those?

Being new to all this stuff the only one I'd heard of is Sonos. I didn't intend to specifically victimize it.

 

[professorhat]

They also provide you access to all of the multi-room and streaming capabilities that Sonos are famous for. I'd say if you have no intention of ever using those facilities, you can probably buy better for the money. But if you do want to stream internet radio, or Spotify (plus many other streaming services), or music stored anywhere on your network, to any of your Sonos devices in any room and have either the same music or even different selections in each room, then they're unrivalled (in my opinion).

 

[The_Lhc]

Thnks for the explination guys. Now I understand.

they're no different in concept to any other portable speaker, such as the Zeppelin range but I don't recall you having an issue with those?

Being new to all this stuff the only one I'd heard of is Sonos.

You're mistaken of course, being a regular reader of the magazine you'd be very familiar with this sort of thing, as the magazine regularly features this sort of device, but you know that already, being a regular reader obviously...

I didn't intend to specifically victimize it.

Sonos were by no means the first (some might even say they were late to that party), nor are they the most expensive.

 

[Joe Cox]

And of course these two speakers are relatively late additions to the Sonos family. We were big fans of the Sonos system before they existed when it was a case of adding a Sonos device to your standard hi-fi set-up.

 

[gowiththeflow]

The Play 3 and Play 5 are getting a lot of promotion at the moment (the former in particular) and John Lewis, Best Buy and the bigger revamped Currys superstores have displays with working examples to play with. Although not receiving any promotion at the moment, there are also the ZP90 and ZP120 modules to consider, especially if an existing Hi-Fi or set of speakers are to used on a Sonus home network.

I took the plunge a few months ago and aquired a couple of ZP90's and a couple of Play 5's when they were on offer at a substantial discount (the Play 5's were reduced to £278 each) from a couple of well known retailers. I'm very impressed with the sound quality and useability of the system.

As the new Play 3 was discounted to £204, I decided to take a chance and bought one of those too, although I didn't expect the sound quality to be as good. I can happily say that I was surprised at how good this little unit is, with a very full sound.

As pointed out, the Play 3 and 5 are stereo units; however they can be set up in pairs to be left and right hand mono units in a paired stereo configuration.

.

 

[ric71]

All,
Have just saved the funds to purchase a Sonos ZP90 and Qnap NAS to replace my CD collection as all ripped to lossless.
Just a quick question would there be any improvement in sound quality buying the Cambridge Audio streamer, I will be using the digital out utilising my ARCAM AVR 500 dac's?
Thanks

 

[amcluesent]

>would there be any improvement in sound quality buying the Cambridge Audio streamer<

That unit can't do gapless playback. Maybe not an issue if you like Dark....side....of....the....Moon.

 

[The_Lhc]

All, Have just saved the funds to purchase a Sonos ZP90 and Qnap NAS to replace my CD collection as all ripped to lossless. Just a quick question would there be any improvement in sound quality buying the Cambridge Audio streamer, I will be using the digital out utilising my ARCAM AVR 500 dac's? Thanks

If you're bypassing the internal DACs on both systems there isn't likely to be much difference in sound, so it comes down to features and usability. I've never used (or even seen) the CA unit but Sonos scores very highly on usability and of course is the best multi-room system in the world, which is something you WILL want to use at some point in the future.

 

[ric71]

Just waiting for my ZP90 to be brought from the warehouse so touch wood will all be set up later today. I figured as bypassing the streamers dacs that it will make no difference as also stated by the lhc. Plus the multi room appeals for the future and the fantastic iOS app.

 

[Anonymous]

Sonos has reputation for ease of use and excellent customer support.

The product range is looking a little dated though, no HiRes support (and none planned it would seem), and the ZP90 has poor jitter performance. For the best results, probably a good idea to use a DAC that is known to have good input jitter rejection.

 

[ric71]

I have now set up my Sonos and streaming from a MacBook Pro, ALAC, using iOS on iPhone as the controller. All I can say is pure genius. Just waiting to get the Qnap NAS so it can all be hard wired for improved SQ. Talk about freeing up my CD collection,Micromega transport now on ebay!!Listening to stuff I never bothered with before.

Can any one tell me why not all of my album artwork has appeared on the iPhone as it is all on iTunes ?

Thanks

 

[BillDay66]

Artwork is relatively easy,

Do you have a copy of the embedded artwork stored in each folder, if so check its no bigger than 1000 x 1000 (off the top of my head!) and rename the ones that dont show up in sonos as 'folder'

that should do it

 

[ric71]

Hi Bill,
You have completely lost me here. I am computer illiterate!
How and what am I supposed to do?
The Sonos extracted all from iTunes.
Sorry for being so dense in these matters but help would be really appreciated as spent hours searching for album artwork for iTunes.
Rich

 

[ric71]

Wow this is the dogs!!
I am streaming Spotify through my Sonos into the Arcam using my iPhone as the controller. I am listening to stuff I haven't heard for years. Yes it's 320kb but it sounds pretty good to me so no debate on that subject please. What I'm saying is I haven't had this much pleasure from any system for years. This has opened up a whole new listening experience for me.

 

[MajorFubar]

You're mistaken of course, being a regular reader of the magazine you'd be very familiar with this sort of thing, as the magazine regularly features this sort of device, but you know that already, being a regular reader obviously...

well I was for nearly fifteen years, then from the start of the century marriage and kids took priority. I didn't realise it when I first joined this forum in 2010, but it's incredible how much has changed since then. Picking up again now after such a lapse, I feel like everyone else on the forum knows how to take their personal spacecraft for a Sunday afternoon's warp-drive pleasure-flight around the universe, while all I know about is how to fly my Sopwith Camel across a field.

 

[eggontoast]

Hi Bill, You have completely lost me here. I am computer illiterate! How and what am I supposed to do? The Sonos extracted all from iTunes. Sorry for being so dense in these matters but help would be really appreciated as spent hours searching for album artwork for iTunes. Rich

If the album artwork you have embedded in the tag info is bigger than 256k it will not show up on an igadget device. You need to check the size of you artwork before embedding it. Better still remove the artwork from the tag in iTunes and put the jpg of the artwork in the music folder of the album and just call it folder.jpg the sonos will then pick it up. If you use a program such as mediamonkey to library your music it will give you the option to save the artwork as a folder.jpg and do it for you, either way just check the size of the artwork file first and resize as necessary.

 

[The_Lhc]

Hi Bill, You have completely lost me here. I am computer illiterate! How and what am I supposed to do? The Sonos extracted all from iTunes. Sorry for being so dense in these matters but help would be really appreciated as spent hours searching for album artwork for iTunes. Rich

If the album artwork you have embedded in the tag info is bigger than 256k it will not show up on an igadget device. You need to check the size of you artwork before embedding it. Better still remove the artwork from the tag in iTunes and put the jpg of the artwork in the music folder of the album and just call it folder.jpg the sonos will then pick it up. If you use a program such as mediamonkey to library your music it will give you the option to save the artwork as a folder.jpg and do it for you, either way just check the size of the artwork file first and resize as necessary.

That doesn't work if you have a flat folder structure though, like I do, Sonos reads embedded artwork fine, ime.

 

[eggontoast]

That doesn't work if you have a flat folder structure though, like I do.

Just out of curiosity, why ?

 

[The_Lhc]

That doesn't work if you have a flat folder structure though, like I do.

Just out of curiosity, why ?

You can only have one file called "folder.jpg" in a folder, so if all your music is in one folder and none of it has embedded artwork then everything will reference the same jpg and all the music will end up with the same cover art.

 

[eggontoast]

That doesn't work if you have a flat folder structure though, like I do.

Just out of curiosity, why ?

You can only have one file called "folder.jpg" in a folder, so if all your music is in one folder and none of it has embedded artwork then everything will reference the same jpg and all the music will end up with the same cover art.

No, why do you have a flat file structure ?

 

[BillDay66]

Ric,

very simply go to itunes, select one of the tracks from an album with missing artwork in sonos, right click - get info -go to the artwork tab, where you should find the album cover - right click the picture, copy - then paste the pictue into the actual album folder that sonos is reading, finally rename the picture folder.jpg.

That should do it, however the problem is that sonos will already be reading the embedded files anyway, so there is probably a problem with that particular image, most likely it is too large - in that case just find a smaller image on the internet (600 x 600 works fine and still looks ok on a monitor) and replace the image in itunes for the entire album

itunes - highlight entire album - clear downloaded artwork - get info - copy and paste new picture into artwork box (and you might as well save the picture in the folder as well as above.

hope that helps

Bill