April 24, 2006

The Sonos Digital Music System provides a convenient way to play music from your computer throughout your home, office, business or any other place - wirelessly. Whether you already have music files on your computer or would like to get your music collection under control by storing it on your computer, this system is definitely worth a look.

The system consists of wireless Zone Players (Sonos, www.sonos.com $499 each), speakers connected to the Zone Player, and a really cool hand-held wireless Controller (Sonos,  www.sonos.com $399). One of the Zone Players must be connected to the computer containing the music. Connection is via network cable directly to the PC or through a router. The player even provides a convenient 4-port network switch. Sonos uses a proprietary wireless network that is secure, matrixed and able to interact with all Zone Player(s) and the Controller. The Sonos System can manage up to 32 Zone Players, accept music stored on up to 16 different computers and keep track of up to 40,000 songs. That should be enough for most anyone.

The Zone Players come with software that include the drivers needed to access the Sonos System, an on-screen controller and a few setup features, such as which music folder(s) you want to make available to the System. Installation was incredibly easy: just install the software, power up the Zone Player, plug in the network cables and tweak the network security settings. Each Zone Player will be identified by location, such as family room, dining room, garage, or wherever.

The Zone Player is a brick-type unit that measures 10x8x4 inches, weighs 10 pounds and houses a 50 watt stereo amp and the wireless electronics. In addition to the speaker output connections, there are connections for line audio in and out and a subwoofer out. The Zone Players can also input music from your home sound system, iPod or CD player and play the music through the wireless network, but you’ll lose some of the functionality of the hand-held controller using the system this way.

Use your own speakers with the players or buy the Sonos Loudspeakers (Sonos, $179/pair) that are designed to match the amplifiers. Or, using the audio outputs you can play music from the Zone Player through your own sound system. To our ears, the Sonos speakers are exceptionally smooth, solid and pleasing across the audio spectrum.

 The hand-held Controller is about the size of a small pocket book and weighs 13 ounces. It’s splash proof so a bit of water won’t hurt it, and the backlit 3.5 inch color LCD display is "transflective," meaning you can see it clearly even in bright sunlight. No kidding. A sensor on the unit adjusts the brightness of the display according to ambient lighting and even turns on button lights for playing in the dark. Buttons include Zones, Music, Back, Volume, Play/Pause, context sensitive "soft" buttons and a touch scroll wheel for menu selections. The Controller batteries can be recharged using the included AC adapter or an optional desk/wall mounted cradle.

The Sonos Music System provides several options for playing music. Select a single song to play once or repeat until stopped, set up a queue of songs to play and/or save it as a Sonos playlist, play a previously saved Sonos playlist or select a folder, artist, composer, genre and the like and have the system play all the selections thus identified. Play can be sequential, shuffled, played once or repeated. Using either the hand-held Controller or PC, you can command each zone individually. Play the same selection through selected single zone(s), linked zones or all zones. While one selection is playing in one zone(s), choose a different selection for another zone(s). Volume and equalizations can be independently controlled or linked, and if you mute a zone or two, unmuting ramps the volume up rather then suddenly blaring on. One of many nice touches the system offers.

The hand-held Controller and the PC program both display information (including album art) about the selection being played if this info is included in the song track’s metadata. Many songs downloaded from Internet services already contain this information, but if you rip your music from CDs, you may have to enter it manually or use a program that does it automatically. One program that does this is Tag & Rename 3.2 (SoftPointer.com, $29.99, 30-day free trial), which scouts the Internet for metatdata information on an album-by-album basis and automatically adds the metadata and album art if available. This program offers other convenient file and metadata editing features as well.

Sonos Digital Music System offers a lot of usability features in a compact package, and we especially enjoyed its flexibility and convenience when using it with music stored on our computer. The cost for outfitting a multi-room setup can be high, but Sonos offers several bundles to help with the price. Check their Web site at www.sonos.com.

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