Gavin B.

The Sonos wireless speaker system is a relatively new market product which is designed to manage and play all the MP3 music files on your computer in a new an exciting way.

The basic brain of the Sonos system is a small box called the bridge, which is pictured below:



The Sonos bridge is a small wireless transmitter designed to deliver music to the Sonos speakers. The bridge is connected to your computer's routing device. It comes with a software disc which installs a music management program on your computer similar to a Windows Media Player or a Real Media Player.

The real selling point of the Sonos system are the wireless speakers which come in two different models: The Sonos Play:3 and the Sonos Play:5.



The Sonos Play:3 is the smaller speaker unit in the picture above and delivers a full stereo sound wirelessly with 3 embedded speakers. The Sonos Play:5 is the bigger speaker unit and delivers full stereo sound wirelessly with 5 embedded speakers.

The big advantage of the Sonos system is the speakers are wireless and portable, so you can unplug the speaker and move it to any room in your house and play to your MP3 music library in any room in your house, not just the room where your computer processor is located.

A single Sonos speaker will deliver a far better sound than any pair of high end computer speakers. A single Sonos Play:3 or Play:5 speaker is all you need to acheive full stereo sound. The speakers are small---Play:3 is about the size of a bread box and Play:5 is about twice as big as the Play:3.

The cost of one Sonos Play:3 speaker is $300 and a single Sonos Play:5 speaker retails for around $400. I recently purchased a Sonos Play:3 speaker. The retailer offered to throw in the bridge (which retails for $49) for free when purchased any Sonos speaker. I've noticed that several retailers offer the bridge for free when you buy a Sonos speaker. So the total cost of my entire Sonos system with sales tax was $315.

It took me less than 10 minutes to install the system out of the box and anybody who can point and click at four or five dialog boxes will be able to install the software and get the system up and running. You can install the Sonos Bridge software on any laptop or home computer.

I've moved my highly portable Sonos Play:3 speaker to four different areas of my house and the quality of the music in each room is flawless. All you need to do to move the speaker is unplug it and re-plug it in a new location. The bridge will automatically find the wireless speaker when you plug the speaker back into a wall unit. The wireless signal was strong in every room and the music sounded crystal clear, even when I placed on my back balcony with the sliding glass door closed.

You can purchase additional Sonos speakers and have a permanent wireless music station in any and every room of your house. Each Sonos speaker can play whatever playlist of music you're currently playing on your computer, or play a completely different playlist of music in each room.

There is an app that allows you set up any portable device as a remote control for your Sonos bridge.

There is a Sonos docking station which allows you to directly play the music straight from your iPad, iPhone or iPod, The docking station can be purchased separately, but it's a bit pricey at $100.


The Sonos sub-woofer: for those who want to blow the roof off their house.

If you want arena rock volume levels in your living room Sonos also has killer sub-woofer speaker for $700, which is way more than I'd spend on any single piece of audio equipment. The three embedded speakers in the Play:3 are plenty of power for me.

About volume levels: When I was shopping for a Sonos system, I looked at Play:5 and it simply played music at a volume level I'd never use since I live in a condo and don't want to have my neighbors complaining about loud music. The Play:5 had almost as much power as my two Infinity Primus floor speakers columns, which I dare to never play on a volume over 3.

The Sonos speaker system has become this year's darling of audiophile critics everywhere. Most critics agree that one humble Sonos Play:3 speaker is more than enough to get the job done.

Oliver Amnuaphol's review of the Sonos Play:3 speaker for Digital Trends is typical of the ecstatic praise for Sonos by audiophile publications: I'm not an audiophile but I have a good set of ears and Sonos Play:3 is the best sound system for home computer music I've come across. I planning on purchasing a second Play:3 speaker as soon as I can afford it.

3 Setbacks to the Sonos system:
1. Sonos does not play Windows Media music files, which means if you have a bunch of .wma music files in your music library, you can't play them on Sonos unless you convert the files to MP3 or re-rip your compact disc content in the MP3 format.

2. Another setback is the Sonos music library doesn't offer the advanced features other media players have. I haven't figured a way to automatically find and delete duplicate songs on a playlist. I also haven't found a way to view my music files by download date, which very helpful if you want to make a playlist of your newest songs.

3. There is a finite limit to the number of songs you can place on any given Sonos playlist. I talked a few of the tech geeks at Sonos this issue and they're vague about the song limit for each playlist. Each Sonos employee placed the queue limit at some number between 3000 and 10,000 songs per playlist.

I was assured by Sonos employees that most of my current concerns about the limitations of the Sonos system will be eventually addressed by ongoing updates downloaded from the Sonos tech department.
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Footnote: Janelle Monáe and the R&B group Deep Cotton did a recent "house party" t.v. ad for Sonos, which generated a lot of consumer interest in the the product. A Sonos development partner told me that Sonos speakers have been selling like crazy during the holiday season, primarily because of the television ad campaign.