Sonos Attack

In case of Sonos attack on your district, follow these rules. If you are making love remain in the shelter and use your Sonos remote to stream Hawkwind to your nearest media player. Do not panic. Try to get as close to the sonic source as possible. It's good shit!

Remember, if others make requests for music, play more Hawkwind via the Sonos control on your iPhone. Think only of yourself. Yourself...

With my CD collection just about re-ripped and residing on a 2TB Apple Time Capsule, I was looking for a means of streaming the music round the house. After exhaustive trawling of the web I came across Sonos and decided to invest in a starter pack. This consisted of 3 peces of kit. The ZP90, pctured above, was connected to my router via an ethernet cable, and my amp using a digital audio cable. Connecting digitally meant that the DAC on my Arcam amp was used, which improves the sound quality considerably, if I want to upgrade further at some point then a seperate DAC could be used. As such the quality of sound produced would satisfy the most demanding audiophile. The ZP90 doesn't have its own amplification so is relient on an exernal amp, it also creates its own wireless network to connect with the Sonos remote and other players. Sonos uses its own state of the art network called Mesh to channel music. It has a line in connection, so you can attach an external audio device, such as a CD player, and stream round your house too.

The second box included in the package, the ZP120, has a built in amp and can be connected to a pair of speakers. I placed this in the bedroom and connected up my DAB radio.

The final item is the touch screen remote which has a charging cradle. After installing the software on my Mac and, with a little difficulty, pointing it in the direction of the Time Capsule's network disk, and indexing the music held on it, I coupled the two players with the remote and set about taking it for a spin.

Selecting a few tracks from my collection I routed them through the amp in the front room, sound quality was superb and indistinguishable from a CD. I then used the remote to play an internet radio station, that old favourite Planet Rock. Surprisingly the sound was again crystal clear. I followed this with net music from Last FM and music routed from the DAB radio in the bedroom. Great sound, total control of the music in my house and complete flexibility regarding how I choose to play it. Musical nirvana.

One final bit of icing on Deliah's Let It Bleed cake, I also downloaded he Sonos control Ap to my iPhone, giving me another remote. To get a feel for what you can do with Sonos, give the following video a watch.



So far I'm pretty damned impressed.