The perfect audio setup at home with Sonos

SonosWhen my old legay Hi-Fi system died a few months back it was time for me to investigate what’s new on the consumer market and at the end take my checkbook. My requirements: I needed to be able to listen to radios, podcasts and occasionaly some of my own music currently on CD (but only very sporadically). While Logitech has some nice offering in home audio streaming I get completely hypnotised by Sonos. Did not do much more investigation and product comparison I was already almost convinced and when I saw it live at a friend’s place the decision was taken… that was all I needed, and while the checkbook was out of the pocket I also decided to buy a NAS which is a good complement for listening music but also much needed as an in-house backup solution.


My current setup:

First thing was to ripe all CDs (well actually all those that I listen to) and to move them on the NAS. The CDs were put in a box and moved in the basement (after taking a picture in case they got stolen :-).

Lessons learns and thoughts:

  • I am listening much more music from my own collection… all my albums are accessible in two clicks with the controller or the iPhone (yes, somehow interacting with my Sonos that’s all what my iPhone remains good for) and I realized that moving to the CD player to change the music was too much overhead (who said I am lazy ?)
  • Integration with streaming services is actually quite poor. I’d love to see more of them available on Sonos and with all features. I should be able to build playlist on Deezer and Co. and plays it on my Sonos system which does not seem to be the case right now. Very frustrating for instance is that I can not play my Deezer’s friend playlist… or listening what my friends are listening, in some other words I’d love to bring in some social feature in my living room.
  • The system is completely closed… why not opening it up to developers, it could generate some nice services… what about playing songs from my home library depening on my mood that could be deducted from my Twitter/Facebook streams ? (just a thought)
  • While it is a nice device, the Sonos Controller 200 (CR200) is overpriced and not really needed as you can control the system with iPhone/iPad official app and the destop application (Mac and PC). There is also an unofficial Android app.

I agree with Matt… it ain’t a cheap setup for sure but definitively worth it… and yes the futur of radio is connected to the web, it already is for me. I am listening Couleur 3 straight from the IP network in my living room and I could not be more happy!

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