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The Age

Tuesday December 2, 2008

Adam Turner

Sounds awesome

IF YOU'RE looking to relax at home, the multi-room audio Sonos Digital Music System will let you pump music around your house.

The Sonos ZonePlayer base stations form a wireless mesh network, letting you pull audio from your home network or the web and send it to up to 32 different "zones" across the house. Once you connect each ZonePlayer to speakers or an amplifier, you can mix and match zones, for example listening to internet radio in some rooms and music from your network in other rooms. You can also plug an audio component such as a CD player into any ZonePlayer and send the output to any zone.

The killer feature is that you can also sign up to online subscription music services, such as Rhapsody and Napster, which are otherwise blocked for Australian users. Such services put millions of tracks at your fingertips and are much faster and more convenient than turning to BitTorrent.

The icing on the cake is the Sonos wireless hand held control, with a colour LCD screen and iPod-esque click wheel interface. You can also control the system using software on a Mac or Windows computer, but the beauty of the Sonos system is none of the features rely on having a computer up and running. And thanks to the recent Sonos 2.7 free firmware update, you can control the entire system from an iPhone or iPod touch. You also have access to the free Pandora and Last.FM streaming music services plus 15,000 radio stations, including dozens of terrestrial radio stations across Australia.

Put to the test in the Upgrade Research Lab, the Sonos gear performed admirably. It's very simple to set up and is one of those rare products that "just works". The combination of the Sonos gear and the Rhapsody music service gives you an incredible feeling of freedom and will forever change the way you enjoy music. The ZonePlayer 120 ($1099) features spring binding posts for connecting stereo speakers, offering 55 watts per channel RMS. The smaller ZonePlayer 90 ($799) requires an external amplifier and offers analog and digital audio outputs. Each ZonePlayer features a two-port 10/100 Ethernet switch, letting you provide internet access to other devices. The $2199 starter bundle includes a ZP120, ZP90 and a wireless controller. By now you've probably discovered the Sonos Digital Music System's key weakness - it's expensive.

You can cobble together similar functionality using iTunes, Airfoil, Airport Express base stations and a VPN service to trick Rhapsody into thinking you're in California. It still won't match the elegance, ease of use and advanced functionality of the Sonos gear. We'd say the Sonos Digital Music System is probably the best product we've ever reviewed. If money is no object, Sonos is the object for you.

The Sonos Digital Music System starter bundle retails for $2199. For more details call (03)98855888 or visit playback.com.au

© 2008 The Age

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