We're now living in a digital music age. Computers are increasingly taking on the role of digital music servers in the home and, as consumers shift their music collections to their computers, the traditional home stereo is waning in importance. Digital music fans are active, passionate and growing more and more comfortable interacting with their digital music collections. And those collections are exploding right along with the popularity of the iPod and other portable music players.

As consumers' appetite for digital music grows, with it comes a natural desire to listen to digital music in the comfort of their own homes. And not just in the room where the PC or Mac is located, but in the entire house. That's where the Sonos Digital Music System comes in. It's the first and only multi-room digital music system (more like a hub) that lets you play all your digital music, all over your house and control it all from the palm of your hand. Available at more than 450 retailers and custom integrators in North America for the last year or so, the system has only just made it over to European shores.

The Sonos Digital Music System is designed ideally for digital music lovers with large volumes of digital music files stored on a home network, people with large digital music collections that are in the market for a new stereo to play their digital music, as well as consumers looking to feed digital music in more than one room in their home. The great thing about the system is that it makes home audio available to a much wider audience in comparison to traditional analogue systems - and at a fraction of the price of a typical mid-range system.

The system is based on a number of components, each of which can be purchased separately and added to at a later date to expand coverage around your home. The ZonePlayer (£379 inc. VAT) is the main peripheral and acts as the amplifier/hub to your computer, the rechargeable battery-powered Controller (£319 inc. VAT) is a jazzed-up remote control for accessing your files away from your computer, and there's a pair of optimised stereo speakers (£149 inc. VAT). For each room you want to supply audio you'll need to buy a separate ZonePlayer and speakers (up to 32 of them), so it could soon get very costly. The Sonus speakers are wired too, which is a shame.

Thankfully, the ZonePlayer offers a four-port 10/100Mbit/s switch, as well as proprietary (not 802.11b) wireless. Only the first ZonePlayer you install has to be wired. Although most users will choose to use the built-in amplifier, there's also a line-level output for using powered speakers or an external amp, and the ZonePlayer even has a subwoofer jack. A 2.4GHz peer-to-peer mesh network passes the audio along wirelessly to the others.

In addition to its high built quality and attractive high-tech design, the ZonePlayer has some really neat features. Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, it's a snap to setup and you'll soon be playing digital music (MP3, WMA, AAC, AIFF, FLAC, Ogg Vorbis and WAV) all over your house, no matter where it's stored (PC, Mac or Network Attached Storage device). And, you don't have to be a technical wizard to set it up.

Unlike other sophisticated audio systems, there are no HEX keys, no WEP keys and no SSID required. To set the device up you simply need to connect the ZonePlayer to your computer, attach the speakers, grab the Controller and then hit play. You do, of course, have to quickly install driver software on your PC and follow a quick wizard-driven setup process, as well as point to the music folders you want indexed. And like only a few other hubs, the ZonePlayer can see network drives directly, not just as mapped drives of desktop PCs.

You can also play Internet radio, which is fantastic for sampling new music or having a break from your collection. The ZonePlayer supplies a sampling of about 70 stations, updated weekly. Support for Rhapsody is available, although you are limited to three different music streams simultaneously - the same as if you were using it on three different PCs in your house.

With Sonosnet, the company's secure wireless mesh network (incompatible with a regular home Wi-Fi network), you won't have to go back and forth to your computer or run from room to room every time you want to turn on, change or turn off your music. And, there are no pointing or line of sight requirements either. The large colour screen on the Controller makes everything easy to see, including album art, and the combination of intuitive user interface, familiar scroll wheel (think iPod) and logical buttons mean there's no steep learning curve to climb. In our tests we experienced no audio dropouts or delays, which is great news, and the way you can play different songs in different rooms by adding more kit is fantastic.

The Controller's 3.5-inch liquid crystal display (LCD) is 'transreflexive', which makes the screen easy to read - whether you're inside at the kitchen table or outside by the pool - and its buttons and screen are backlit and automatically adjust based upon the lighting conditions. If that's not enough, the Controller is splash resistant because every nook and cranny is gasketed to ensure no water ever gets inside, and it sports a motion sensor so it 'wakes up' when you pick it up.

Every ZonePlayer (260x210x113mm, 4.5kg) includes two Class D amps, which deliver deep bass response. The aluminium case helps to passively cool the ZonePlayer, and the analogue audio jacks are auto-detecting, so when you connect a CD player, iPod or Sat Radio to a ZonePlayer, the entire system automatically recognises it and makes the music accessible to every other ZonePlayer.

There's a 4-port switch on the back of every ZonePlayer too, to save you the hassle of having to run to the store every time you want to add a Net-enabled device, and you can mute the entire household by holding down the mute button on either a ZonePlayer or the Controller for 3 seconds. If you mute and then un-mute a ZonePlayer that was playing music really loudly, the ZonePlayer will slowly ramp up in volume to avoid a startling blast of sound. Finally, the shuffle works the way it should, so you can queue your entire music collection, or any subset, by genre, by artist or by album, and play them sequentially or randomly.

The optional, and highly recommended, Charging Cradle (£44.99 inc. VAT) serves two key purposes: it charges the Sonos Controller and makes the controller easy to find. The cradle is designed for desktop placement or wall mounting via a cradle bracket and works with the existing Controller power adapter. It's also fully functional while positioned in the charging cradle.

There are three things that strike you about the bundled stereo bookshelf speakers: acoustics, aesthetics and size. The Sonos loudspeakers deliver on all three, thanks to their rated output of 50-Watts (RMS) and spring binding connections. These high-performance bookshelf speakers provide great sound in a small space and they sure look great doing it - well, they certainly look the part compared to traditional computer speakers. You can even connect your own speakers if want to save a bit of cash.

Overall, Sonos's Digital Music System is one of the best and easiest audio-only media hubs on the market. It's a tad expensive for an audio hub, but is attractively priced when compared to other whole-house audio systems. It can't handle photos or computer-based video, and the speakers are wired and 2.1 only, but audio buffs will be in their element. [8.5 - Editors' Choice]

BIOS, Dec 06, 05 | Print | Send | Comments (0) | Posted In Audio