Hi Annie and Eric, Nice to hear about another Sonos user, I think apart from myself and you, Annie, there is Neil Barnfather and at least one or two others.
By the way, this is a long post as I am reviewing/describing how the Sonos system works in detail. Eric, if the Sonos price tag works for you I can only recommend it. It's an awesome setup and the Sonos iPhone app works well although it has a few unlabelled buttons. Not a big deal any more since you can now label buttons with Voiceover. This is actually one complaint I keep telling Sonos about, I have been asking them to fix this for about 2 years and while their customer service is fantastic, this is something they just don't react to. The Sonos Desktop Controller on the PC also works well with Jaws. You used to have to use the Jaws cursor quite a bit, but with the second last update they totally changed the interface and you can now tab around in the application and do everything quite well, nothing actually reads any more on the screen with the Jaws cursor. I think it's important that those of us who use Sonos and the app let their customer support know so they realize that it's not just one blind guy using it and that they do have to keep accessibility in mind. The nice thing with Sonos is that you can start with just a bridge and 1 player, you could go with a Play:3 and a bridge and you'd be out about $400 (I think it's $299 for the Play:3 and $100 for the bridge). The Play:5 which is their larger boombox type unit is $399 in the States, the CONNECT I think is $399 as well and the CONNECT:Amp which has a built-in 110 Wat Class D amplifyer and connects to regular speakers is $499. I might be slightly off on those prices since I am in Canada and while they ship for free, it is a bit more expensive here. Sonos just announced a new wireless Subwover called simply "Sub" to go with the Play:3, Play:5 and CONNECT:Amp. The fancy high-gloss piano black finish version starts shipping on June 19 and will be $599. I was about ready to order it, but when I called the girl I spoke to told me they will release a matte black version most likely in September and it will be only $599 and since I will most likely put it under the bed or in some corner anyways I don't really care to spend $100 just for a glossy finish. Once you pair the Sub with you rexisting unit everything will automatically adjust to accommodate the frequencies the Sub will take over and given the quality of the other components I am sure it will be a very nice unit. For those who wonder what Sonos is to begin with, you can read about it at www.Sonos.com. Here is my description/review: Sonos is a wireless multi-room music system. You have the CONNECT which either connects to an existing stereo (I have it hooked up to my Sony home theatre receiver in my living room and I have a second one on a high-end system in my basement and it just delivers any online radio stream or any music you have on your computer wirelessly to that receiver. You can connect it either with an RCA analogue cable or a digital optical or digital coax cable. Instead of hooking it up to an existing music system you could also just plug a pair of powered speakers into the RCA output. The CONNECT:Amp is, as I mentioned, a full self-contained amplifyer which hooks up to any regular set of speakers and it also has an RCA input so you could hook up any other music source such as a CD player, an FM Tuner etc. In my application I have built-in ceiling or in-wall speakers in my bedroom, bathroom and kitchen and each room has a CONNECT:Amp mostly tugged away in a cabinet or inside the vanity in the bathroom. You don't really do anything on the unit itself except maybe change the volume and all each unit has is a mute button and a volume up aanddown, they don't even have on or off switches as they consume less than 1 Watt in standby. I also have 1 Play:5 which I can take wherever I want it, the deck, my basement woodworking shop etc. This is their high-end boombox ($399) and it has 5 separate speakers and produces sound that rivals any high- end Bose system. The bridge is a small box you connect to your router and it delivers the signal to all the other units. You can also hook up any of the units to the router instead, the bridge is mainly for people who have their router somewhere in a utility room where they don't want or need music. Also, any source you connect to any of the players with inputs (the CONNECT, CONNECT:Amp and Play:5 can play it's music on any aother player in your house, the system creates a Zigby network among itself, you can play different things on each different unit or put them all in party mode and play the same thing throughout the house. If you do this and press and hold the mute button on any of the units the entire system will be muted in about 2 seconds or you can of course use the iPhone controller to change the colume, mute the entire system or individual players. Lastly, if you have an Airport Express wired to one of the players both with an ethernet cable and a 3.5mm cable (plugged into the jack on the Airport Express) to RCA (plugged into the Sonos input) you basically airplay enable the entire system. You can set up the system so that if a particular source starts delivering a signal it switches to that automatically, so I could be listening to online radio and as soon as I tap airplay on my iPhone and select "Sonos" to play to, the online radio stream stops automatically and whatever I am sending from my phone plays. Oh, and it has a built-in alarm and sleep timer so you can set the alarm to play any music or playlist you have on your computer or any online radio station, I typically set it to start playing BBC News and if for some reason the stream isn't available it defaults to a tone. The system is extremely flexible and full- featured, I have all my CD's ripped to my computer in uncompressed FLAC format so that I get the best possible sound when I am listening on my high-end system in the basement. If you put your music on a network attached hard drive you don't even need to have the computer on to access your Sonos library. Take care, Sieghard -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the "VIPhone" Google Group. To search the VIPhone public archive, visit http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/viphone?hl=en.
