Sonos Wireless HiFi Speakers Part 1

[gutserker]

I'm going to guess that a lot of grievances could be addressed by just having a model that is a stand-alone receiver/amp to drive a speaker of your choosing. with how much these cost, the theoretical cost savings would be put towards your own driver while costing the same. that would address Linus' issue of not having a compelling surround config for his living room.

just give it basic specs like 20w@6ohms/15w@8ohms or whatever. that way you have the OPTION to drive bigger speakers than tiny bookshelf speakers.

[skywake]

I'm going to guess that a lot of grievances could be addressed by just having a model that is a stand-alone receiver/amp to drive a speaker of your choosing. with how much these cost, the theoretical cost savings would be put towards your own driver while costing the same. that would address Linus' issue of not having a compelling surround config for his living room.

just give it basic specs like 20w@6ohms/15w@8ohms or whatever. that way you have the OPTION to drive bigger speakers than tiny bookshelf speakers.

Well they have them but they're not as low spec as that and they're more expensive than a lot of the other products in their range. More expensive as in you can buy two Play 1s for the price of the AMP and have plenty of change. It's there but it's not really a good option. It should be, yes, but it's not.

 

I've been following these guys for quite a while before I actually got them. Earlier on they only had three products two of which were more about the retrofit. Take existing gear and connect it to either their Connect or their Connect + Amp or buy an all in one. All at more than double what their entry level product is now which they only launched last year. The same speaker that got me into them. My suspicion is that people voted with their wallets given that they started with 1 Amp and DAC, 1 DAC and 1 all in one and they have over time expanded the range with three more all in ones.....

 

Personally I think most of the problems Linus mentioned could be addressed with a software update. They should give us more EQ options. The stuff that can't be solved with software? Yeah, definitely, they should make a lower end version of the Connect for $60AU or so. Do one with just stereo in and stereo out. Nothing fancy, no Ethernet, no digital audio, just as basic as possible. With those two things I'd be 100% happy with it rather than 90 something

[TheyCallMeWolfie]

I used to work at a luxury student housing complex in Lubbock, TX. We had the entire clubhouse wired with Sonos speakers from the Playbar to the high end in-wall speakers. Everything was wired through a main switch and each set of speakers was wired to an amp in the electrical room. These speakers are simply amazing. We had a different "theme" in every room for example, in our gym we had upbeat hip hop, in our game room we had 90s music/todays hits, and out by the pool we had whatever people wanted to listen to. We used a PC on the same network to control the different speakers in the different areas.

 

Quality wise, these speakers are top notch. They connect with each other flawlessly and I never had any issues... (keep in mind that they were all wired together, not wireless). For the price of these, I would not personally spend $650 on a sound bar.

[ross06187]

would power over ethernet solve some of the power problems?

[skywake]

would power over ethernet solve some of the power problems?

 

My guess would be that most of the components would draw more power than PoE could deliver. And even if it didn't I doubt it'd solve the "problem" of it being too hard to place them in some locations.

 

Think about the amount of places around your TV you could run a speaker cable. Quite a few. Then think of the number of places you could run an extension cord without tripping over the cord or having to get a sparky in to put in a new point. Probably less spaces but still quite a few, for me I could probably creatively place them without much hassle because I have a couple of power sockets behind my couch. Now how many places could you run Ethernet, PoE no less? I have Ethernet everywhere but I'd need to get a PoE switch and then run cables from my TV for this. And given these things only need power, even if it is doable, would PoE be any easier/cheaper than getting a sparky in to put in a new socket.

 

More to the point if you're into this idea you're probably both happy with these speakers and don't have a surround setup already. If you're in that head space do you really care about the rear channels in the slightest? Or will you just end up after buying the rears for a bundle just putting them in another room to extend the sound into another corner....