Sonos, a new addition.

So earlier this month I was at work, and some kit came back from a client. Of which one was a Sonos ZP100. I bought it for our kitchen and hooked up a couple of speakers. A fortnight on and we all love it.

What is Sonos?? Well it is a music system that is networked with your other devices to stream music to any room in the house. With integrated services and controllers for our mobiles devices we love how we can all use its greatness.

Before we would have laptops and iPads from everyone in the house. We would play on these devices and basically have crappy sound and everyone I live with shouting out requests. Not a great solution. Firstly, all the music was played through YouTube. Nothing wrong with that but you have to be patient with the occasional ad and somewhat ropey sound on lower bitrate videos. Also putting together playlists and was annoying between the 6 of us.

So this Sonos proved an amazing alternative. I have also a spotify account which integrates into Sonos somewhat well, but a vast improvement none the less. We all have a controller each, a Samsung galaxy SII and SIII, an iPad and my awesome Nexus 7. We can sit and add tracks to the queue as we think of them. Building a playlist quickly and efficiently. A cheesey 90's pop playlist easily got out of control on a evening with wine and beer. Once you have the playlist the way you want it then its simple to just save for another day.

Music is sourced as spotify mainly, but also my Mp3 library is added by sharing the folder on the network. Also from the latest update music can be streamed from iOS devices. The radio can also be played from the Tunein service, giving a broader range than any DAB radio without signal loses.

The system hopefully in the future will be extended, as this is a multi room system. You can merge rooms and share the playlists over all components. They create their own wireless network for each component and Android users can use SonosNet to extend their wireless coverage.

Drawbacks are the price, to kit your whole house out will be about a £1000, but keep an eye out for preowned units. Also Spotify is not always reliable in any guise as server loads can render it inoperable. And with many people using it make sure you have Sonos etiquette in place before people get happy with the "Play Now" button.

Overall if you like music then this is a very good option for you. More versatile than iPod docks and other media clients. And very stable and use able by all.

Tech on readers

Dom