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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.
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
And why is there no bathroom zone in their screenshot? They'd better have a toilet icon, or I'm not getting this...
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
I asked them this exact question at CES in Vegas. First off, it IS a touch-sensitive scroll wheel. Second, they said they had someone else design it and got around the patents somehow (this was their salesperson speaking, not their patent attorney). Anyone from Sonos care to weigh in.
The Fat Man Walks Alone
of things that I don't need, can't afford, will never get, but want anyway, updated.
Yes. The $299 Dells don't have surround-sound-out or wireless, you would have to rig up a PDA or laptop as the wireless controller, and the towers are much larger than the Sonos stations. You would also lose out on the ability to play the same thing in multiple zones all at once without some careful synchronization (also not easy).
For more information, click here.
I assume you are trolling, but here you go.
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.
Ultimately, they will reduce the price by about 50% or they will fail. I looked at the Sonos a while back and it was great, pretty much everything you could want in a multi-room wireless music distribution system, as long as money is no object.
My only complaint is that by making it white and oddly sized, they made it look like a Mac Mini, not like a stereo component. I don't know why so many companies have such a difficult time understanding that oddly shaped/colored components may be a plus in the computer world, but not in the audio one.
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.
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...
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.
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?
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?
Yes. What you save in dollars you'll be spending tenfold in time.
Stop thinking of price as something only measured in dollars and you'll better understand why people buy things like this when they could have something "better".
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.