Xenthar wrote: > Personally I feel that a system that large (twelve Touches) would be > unsustainable in the long run compared to the investment you make. By > that I mean... if hardware starts failing, your entire system will at > some point go into "degraded" mode; this could be the case when you > still have 8 of them left. Then you need to swap over to Sonos anyway. > Which to me wouldn't be an attractive situation in any case, so the > question is just whether you want to invest 220 per item now, and in > 8-10 years replace everything, or invest in Sonos now and only have to > replace the failing components.
I understand and appreciate your point. I've still got 10 year-old SB1's working (apart from the "rubber" paint having gone sticky) fine, so I'm relatively confident about the hardware lifetime. If I buy a couple of spares then I'm probably fine for 10 years or so. Also in a couple of years time I'll probably be able to pick up a spare touch or two relatively cheaply on EBay as others swap out their systems. Switching to Sonos here doesn't necessarily help. They're a one-trick pony, although admittedly a good one. Who's to say that I'll still be able to buy a Sonos box in 5 years time? Seems an awfully big assumption. Xenthar wrote: > I believe Sonos uses Windows filesharing as its protocol? And maybe > something for the Mac. Sonos is just way too expensive for me. I only > bought that many Touches because prices have dropped to make it > affordable to me. Without server software Sonos can't do any streaming, > but it can seek in the file on the remote location so that would > resemble streaming. > > If you go to a Sonos reseller and ask him how does the Sonos communicate > to the server, they won't be able to give you an answer - is my > experience. They are selling stuff to people and they don't even know > themselves how it works. Just THAT it works. Then you have buyers who > realize after the fact that they need to keep their computer running and > that that is slightly problematic to them. Oh yes, forgot to tell you > that! ;-). Personally I don't like to buy something based on the promise > that it works, without knowing the ramifications for my use scenario's > now and in the future. And I feel Sonos is being sold on that premise > that you don't have to worry about any of the details that WILL at some > point start to bite you. Their sale strategy is one of "trust us, just > trust us". But I don't trust vendors with closed systems that cost a > zillion, probably won't exactly do what I want them to do, and keep me > vendor-locked for quite some time. There is a reason why Sonos dealers can't tell you where the server is - there isn't one. Each player is effectively its own server, with a clever system for replicating the music database and playlists along with a mesh radio system for communication between players. Take any one player out and the others will carry on and they don't need an internet connection for local music playback. However, I do agree with the proprietary nature and this puts me off Sonos as much as anything else. At least with SB there's a chance that someone will continue to maintain the server, update plugins and maybe even develop custom firmware as suggested in this thread. Sooner or later this will stop though. Xenthar wrote: > Funny, I just started thinking about fruit... Not an option. I want to be able to stream different stuff to different locations. Fruity systems can't do that as far as I understand. They're also as proprietary as Sonos, but without any of the advantages of either Sonos or Squeezebox. The only real thing in their favour is that the company isn't going away any time soon and you can be pretty certain their products will continue to be supported for many years. Not good enough in my opinion. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ MarkBennett's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=58063 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=96188
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