Which Sonos Set Up?

[admin_exported]

Hi,

I am a new member. I want to provide a network for my music around the house using Sonos. I have my music stored on my PC (in the study) hard drive and have a Belkin broadband modem/router attached to it. I have a hi fi in each living room and that is where I want to listen to my music. I can listen to music in the study via my PC. What Sonos gear shoudl I use? I have an IPOD Touch and intend to us eit as controller?

Thanks in anticipation.

 

[John Duncan]

Welcome, J.

To be honest, you have all the constituent parts of a good setup already without having to go down the Sonos route, and you could spend substantially less money. There are benefits to Sonos, undoubtedly, but I'd say that hey're best realised when you have no hifi already, since the controllers with built in amps are a good starting place, and the hand-held controller is good. But if you have all of those already (the iPod being the controller), why not look at a simple airport express or Squeezebox setup?

 

[manicm]

I find the Sonos very appealing John, in fact you don't need the whole shebang anymore, you can get away with just a ZonePlayer, iPod Touch (which the OP has and Sonos gives a free control app for), and PC or NAS. And of-course a decent DAC.

 

[John Duncan]

Oh yeah it's undoubtedly hassle-free (and if you want to run it from a NAS, the very simplest solution), but it's expensive if you already have amps and controller, in which case you have other options. S'mall I'm sayin'....

 

[The_Lhc]

You can just buy individual zone players however, in which case it doesn't work out that much more expensive than squeezebox and is considerably easier to setup.

To answer the OPs question if you have amps in every room (with digital or analogue inputs), then all you need to buy is a ZP90 for each room.

If you're only intending to use the iTouch/Phone as controller however then be aware that it CANNOT use the Sonos Mesh network and will be reliant on your own wireless network to communicate with the ZPs, so you need to ensure it can find your network from every room in the house you wish to use it from.

 

[method man]

will he need a zonebridge thingy as well 'the'? I belive that was what i was missing in my 'bundle'.

i went with squeeze. but to be honest if i was looking to do it all over the house i would use sonos. espcially as he doesnt have to for out 250 notes for a controller and charger. i wouldnt trust squeeze stuff further than 15 foot LOL. unless u know/have lot of expereince and quality wireless kit for it to use.

 

[The_Lhc]

method man: will he need a zonebridge thingy as well 'the'? I belive that was what i was missing in my 'bundle'.

Difficult to say without knowing more about his layout, if his router is in the same room as one of his hi-fis (mine is because that's where the master BT socket is, the amp, router and ZP are all on the same rack in fact) then no, he should be able to wire a ZP straight to the router. Otherwise, then yes maybe, but at £69 it's the cheapest part of what could be an pretty expensive shopping list anyway!

 

[method man]

oh yes. its not expensive. just wouldnt want the guy all happy setting it up to find he was missing a box or cable he needed.

also i didnt know about the ipod touch/phone needing the existing wireless to be good and that it couldn't use sonos. makes sense as sonos is very self contained.

 

[The_Lhc]

method man: also i didnt know about the ipod touch/phone needing the existing wireless to be good and that it couldn't use sonos. makes sense as sonos is very self contained.

I think it's something Sonos would like to do but are prevented from doing so because they can't get access to the iTouch wireless device at a low enough level.

 

[JamesPianoman]

Hi manicm, like the OP I'm investigating a Sonos set up... can I just ask why a decent DAC would be needed? I thought the ZonePlayers had DACs built in, or are you referring to a 'decent DAC' as an upgrade? Thanks.

 

[The_Lhc]

JamesPianoman:Hi manicm, like the OP I'm investigating a Sonos set up... can I just ask why a decent DAC would be needed? I thought the ZonePlayers had DACs built in, or are you referring to a 'decent DAC' as an upgrade? Thanks.

They do have DACs built in and, if you're using an active Zoneplayer (the ZP120), then you don't have too many options (any in fact...) you have to use it.

The ZP90, the unamplified Zoneplayer, however, has both analogue and digital outs and frankly the onboard DAC isn't much cop. I plugged the optical output into my 10 year Sony AV amp (STR-930 if you're interested) and even using that the difference is night and day compared to using the analogue output on the ZP90.

Granted that might say more about the analogue stages on my amp but I'm inclined to say you'll get much better results from a ZP90 if you use the digital outputs.

 

[JamesPianoman]

Great, thanks for the info the_lhc... I'm gradually building up a picture. I don't want to hijack this thread though, so I'll start a new one when I'm closer to buying the kit

 

[Clare Newsome]

And of course now you've got the new Sonos BU250 bundle, with the CR200 controller, to consider, too - review in our new issue, out tomorrow....