For those of you that clicked on the link or already knew about the product it's an interesting idea in quite a few ways. It has the potential to be a multi-room audio system that does room to room wirelessly. This is a big jump in some ways for multi-room and in other ways it falls just a bit short for some people.
The system consists of the controllers , what they call zone players and the other various widgets; Speakers and zone bridges and possibly a networked hard drive are the last of the components really need to get a system off the ground of any size more than a room or two. Place the zone players in each room, attach some speakers, make sure it all shows up on your network and you're off to a good start. Now, about the music. You have a couple of options:
1. Fill a hard drive full of your favorite tunes and connect it to the network
2. Setup the internet music functionality via the network- This could be pandora, Last.Fm, even Sirius internet radio. A fair selection of music
3. Some sort of 'older' source- CD player, iPod etc.... (no, I personally don't think iPod is an old source)
The challenges of a Sonos system are focused on standard source components (CD, FM tuners, xm tuners even iPods etc...). Sonos doesn't control these sorts of devices, and it doesn't even try. If you want to attach one to the system, you can, but you better be pretty close to your CD player or iPod when you want to do track forward or track back.
This is where Sonos falls short. Most of us use iPod's, still have CD's, and maybe have a tuner of some kind at home. To have so little control over these sources really makes the system a tough choice for a fair number of people.
I know you might be thinking that, how big a house could you live in that this is SUCH a heartache, but i'm not the client for this product right now.
Imagine having a two story house, plugging your iPod in down in the family room on the first floor, and walking upstairs to the bedroom and turning the system on. Now, imagine you want to change tracks on your iPod... that you left downstairs, plugged in. Once or twice this is going to happen and you're going to be annoyed, more than that, and you'll probably wind up using the system less and less because you see it as a hassle.
I do think that if the system is well planned and discussed with a professional or if you really give it some thought on how you really live in your home and where you spend your time , this system can be an AMAZING choice for quite a few people. I also think this is the next coming of multi-room audio and automation in nascent form. The idea of wireless communication from room to room amongst all devices in the system, content being primarily "cloud" based and control that follows you from room to room are going to be the tenets of what the industry is in the not so distant future and Sonos is definitely on that bleeding edge.
Once we have our first large scale (for Sonos) installation, which should happen in the next 30-60 days, ill give you my thoughts on how the system behaves and how the client likes this "cloud integration". Let me know what you think in the comments below.
- JTM
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