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Linux HiFi: The Sonos Digital Music System
TractorJector writes "Mad Penguin published a 5 page review of the Sonos Digital Music System, a wireless music distribution system built on Linux. According to the site, you can use a single remote to control up to 32 "zones" (locations throughout your house where the receivers are placed). The interface is intuitive and well done for such a compact device. According to the review, it's extremely simple to setup as well."
I ended up just putting a computer with some decent speakers in each room I wanted music and accessing my music files over my existing network.
One thing in Sonos' favor is that their system is a lot more consumer-accessible.
Very neat.
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i wonder if they will get sued for apple, or got the proper rights for that clickwheel
What if your house only has one zone? Do you still have to pay full price?
Looks like a very cool system - well outside my price range (and with 3 small children, outside of my "what can my heart stand when the little buggers touch the expensive equipment").
My only question is on the school wheel interface. My understanding is that Apple had purchased the rights to use the patents to the scroll wheel touchpad system for their technologies (I don't recall the actual patent holder). Does this mean that Sony's scroll wheel is not touch pad based (could be a physical wheel and *not* violate the patent, I guess), or did they also get a piece of the patent license somehow?
Just curious.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
I could buy a cheapo $299 Dell for each bedroom, network them wirelessly to a huge 300GB drive and have far more functionality than this setup. Am I wrong?
of things that I don't need, can't afford, will never get, but want anyway, updated.
Interlink Electronics http://interlinkelec.com/
If you forget about the future, the future will forget about you.
I assume you are trolling, but here you go.
The Sonos sounds more like what I had hoped the AirPortExpress would be: awesome looking remote control and multiple zones. Although Apple's product is much cheaper...
Jobs has hinted at a remote control feature for AirportExpress, but nothing has materialized so far.
The biggest need I have in this realm is for a UPnP media player that runs under linux and can play streams from a Windows server. I'd be happy with one that only supports audio, but so far no dice. I'd like to interface with Real's Rhapsody from a Linux box.
There seem to be plenty of UPnP servers being developed under Linux, but no clients.
Are there proprietary codec issues that are hindering this?
Therefore, what I did opt for is a system from Russound. Their "CA-Series" is very nice. Check them out at russound.com. I have two six-zone systems, creating a total of twelve integrated zones.
You definitely loose the oohs-and-ahhs factor that Sonos brings with their remote LCD. However, when I walk into a room in my house, I can control that zone from any one of six sources: two AM/FM radio tuners, XM Satellite radio, a CD player, my MP3 collection, and even a cable TV feed. Yes, I can even tune the station I want on the radio, skip tracks on the CD player, etc.. This is all done via the in-wall control panel.
It's not as [fancy|sexy|cool] as the Sonos, however, it's more functional for my listening style.
Of course, the excellent is pretty much what you'd expect given that you're paying $1200 for a remote control and a pair of wireless bridge+tuner boxes.
I checked this out via an ad at Engadget, and it is pretty nice, but man, that price tag is way too expensive to even consider them. While I like the remote control that has the built-in monitor (for the love of God, all remotes for small devices should have that, otherwise you can't see what you're navigating around in unless the player is at arm's length, in which case, who needs a remote?), $1199 for two wireless boxes and a remote w/monitor is waaaaaaay out of my price range.
"[if (blahblah) and if (blahblah2)...] then the Sonos Digital Music System is for you. It's the current state of the art for wirelessly controlling music in a large home or business where you need just the right music in the right room at the right time.
Analog loophole, analog loophole... a whole page raving about that and the fact that you can rip CDs to MP3s on your computer and play them on this thing! And there isn't even a single real-life photo, only those found on the official site. Nobody seems to be complaining about the slashvertisment now, eh?
The company I work for. http://magnoliaav.com/ sells these and I had a change to demo them for use on our network. We only used three zone but they were dead simple and worked great. If you can afford them (I can't) you will love it. Before I hear the cries of "astroturfing, astroturfing!" I did not submit the article.
My dad got the Sonos a couple of months ago, and I saw it in action last weekend. It's really cool stuff and well implemented.
The big selling point for him was being able to have all the "zones" synchronously play the same song in every room. None of the other solutions he looked at were able to do that.
As far as I remember, the scrool wheel doesn't move- it's touch based, like on the recent iPods.
I just wish I had the money to buy one for myself...
Couldn't they lower the price a little bit by selling a version of the box to integrate with your existing stereo. Just a receiver box with a RCA and digital output jack on the back. For a lot of applications I would image people already have the amp covered and don't need to spend the extra money on a part of the system that isn't going to get used.
...
I see a lot of people out there discounting the capabilites of Sonos because they really don't understand what exactly the system does versus alternate setups. To be fair, Sonos competes directly with high-end multi-room, multi-source systems such as http://www.elanhomesystems.com/, http://www.crestron.com/, and http://www.amx.com/. All of these systems can cost tens of thousands of dollars for product/install and require that you hardwire your whole house.
Sonos
=-=-=
*multi-room capability (control up to 32 rooms on one controller)
*multi-source capability (play different songs in different rooms)
*synchronization capability (play the same in different rooms, or in groups of different rooms)
*built-in amplifier (not everyone has a speaker amp in each room)
*line-out to existing amplifier (for those beefy existing home theatre setups)
*line-in on each zoneplayer that can be streamed to any other zoneplayer (connect any legacy device like cd/dvd/tape/sat radio/etc.)
*integration with music services (rhapsody)
*integration with internet radio streams
*wireless controller w/ lcd (huge benefit on getting the wife/gf to use it)
*ease of use (anyone can use that scrollwheel interface)
*ease of setup (not everyone is a tech)
Now let's look at the other talked about solutions and compare their capabilities:
Airport Express
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
*line-out to existing amplifier
*can play one audio source at a time (so can either play on my computer, or my airport express)
*walk back to computer each time you want to change anything
Cheapo Dell ($500 - I have yet to actually see anyone get a computer for $299)
=-=-=-=-=-=
*computer functionality at each room [benefit, assuming you have a montior, keyboard, and mouse to take advantage of it]
*no sychronization (might was well have a indepent cdplayers in each room and burn cds)
*need powered speakers at each location (more $$$)
*walk up to computer and change tracks on it
Besides all the extra functionality (link/separting rooms of audio, rhapsody integration, ease of use/setup,...) everyone is missing the most important thing [and what makes the iPod so successful]. THE INTERFACE! Why do people buy iPods in droves instead of getting a regular flash/hard drive based player. It's because the iPod has blended simple but powerful functionality with elegant design. Sonos wireless lcd controller gives that same beautiful abstraction and gives *anyone* control of the audio in their house seamlessly.
I'm a RealNetworks employee, and we recently saw these things demoed after they added support for RealNetworks' Rhapsody service. Add a Rhapsody subscription to the cost of the device, and you get a massive library of music accessible for high-quality streaming. It was pretty impressive.
Hmmm, cool looking product but from looking at the last page of the article, the reviewer rates the ease of setup on WindowsXP 10/10 but gives the ease of linux setup as a measly 2/10.
The reviewer said he had to ask the Sonos community (maybe a web forum?) for help getting it to work under Suse. Apparantly you need to run Samba for the Sonos controller to be able to access the music and gave the reviewer enough trouble that he writes:
"For Linux wizards, this is probably just another opportunity to play and have fun, but for me it was some serious work, and I would not have been able to do it but for the graciousness of the Sonos community. "
It seems that they haven't put a lot of polish on the linux support for the server end yet. I'm wondering why is there no NFS support which should do away with needing Samba... I have my entire music collection on an NFS share, and I'd expect any linux client to simply mount it over the network and away we go.
Should we be giving much credit to a product just because it runs linux if it's really that difficult to make it play nicely with existing linux networks?
Happy Soundbridge owner. Awesome product and great support. The wireless can be flaky(check their compatible router list before buying), but they are constantly updating the functionality. And with a Rhapsody subscription to pipe through it, I pretty much don't buy cds any more....
I'm thrilled to see this post and admittingly biased. I've had 4 ZonePlayers and 2 Controllers for a few months now and can't recommend them enough. I've plugged them into a B&W Speakers and they just rock.
Why is Sonos great? (in no particular order)
1. No need to put your MP3s on it's HD. You store them where you want and simply mount a drive
2. A remote anyone can use with no training. My previous hacked together PocketPC device accessing internal website via 802 was a disaster.
3. Use traditional audiophile grade gear (amps with sonos as preamp) and input devices (DVD, tape deck, LP, etc) as inputs to Sonos. Nothing beats an LP streamed all over the house
4. Play multiple zones "in Sync" (all playing the same thing in time) or each zone plays what it wants
5. It just works. Well. Hugely high Wife Acceptance Factor (WAF).
6. Software upgrades (flashable ROM) to hardware. I've never got an upgrade to my old, black rack audio gear.
7. water-resistant remote
8. Desktop client, if you can't find a remote, use your laptop
9. we just listen to more music.
10. whole home networking without running wires (here in Boston, old home networking can be tough)
11. programable interface
12. active developers community
What I don't love about Sonos:
1. Cost
2. No support for real/MS/quicktime, only shoutcast. For now, hoping for an upgrade
That's really it. The wife and I just love it.
I can't recommend it enough.
Feel free to post questions about the devices if you like and I'll try to answer.