![]() As it played, Miller exclaimed, “This is the kind of thing you used to have to pay $6,000 for.” But, with help from my tech guy, Kevin Miller, I got my Play:3 system running. And, not being handy, I’m not in sync with the many reviewers who’ve lauded Sonos’ easy set-up. Not being an audiophile, I don’t know about that. (Sonos has also introduced the “Sub,” which the company says boosts audio to supersonic levels.) An optional “Connect” device links Sonos to your sound system, so your original speakers don’t go to waste. As a controller for what music goes to which room, you can use your smartphone, iPad or computer. Sitting comfortably below those numbers is the Sonos Play:3, which, basically, sends audio from online sources (Pandora, Stitcher, Spotify, Rhapsody, etc.), including thousands of Internet radio stations around the world, to wherever you place the Play:3, a speaker containing a pair of drivers and a tweeter. Now, of course, everything’s wireless, and it can be as cheap as a Windows Media Player sending programming to computer speakers around the house-or as sophisticated as a Bose, Lync or Crestron whole-house system, running from $2,000 to $5,000 and up – way up. Otherwise, the amp or tuner controlled everything. If I paid extra, I could get separate volume controls for each pair of speakers. It’s not a review-I’m hardly qualified to evaluate audio equipment-but a report on what it’s like to expand the sound of music to…everywhere.īack in the day-which is to say, when I was much younger-when I wanted to hear the radio or hi fi in different rooms around the house, I had to wire up speakers in each room-or, in fact, hire someone to do it for me. I hemmed and hawed some more (I’m on deadline for a book on Little Feat), and finally agreed to check it out for a possible item in my radio column. Nielsen assured me that it’d be painless. But I thought it’d be a headache setting up an around-the-house system. Sure, it sounded enticing: a wireless system “to bring almost all the music you could ever want – from every corner of the planet – to every room of your home,” as Meyer put it. So, when Thomas Meyer and Eric Nielsen, who work at Sonos, came calling, offering to let me try out a Play:3 system, I put them off. We don’t need our iTunes and CD library wherever we go. It wasn’t exactly the sounds of silence, but close.Īnd that was fine by us. But bedrooms, bathrooms and other areas had to make do with radios-or nothing at all. ![]() Beyond what I hear from the computer, all I need, for both fun and work (my radio column in the San Francisco Chronicle) are my Delphi satellite tuner, a Logitech Internet tuner, and a Radiosophy HD, which serves as my AM/FM radio.īack upstairs, Dianne and I did opt for speakers in the kitchen ceiling and in the living room-just a pair of smaller Bostons flanking a raised fireplace. And in my office, I make do with a pair of Bose Companions. In the family room, I’m just fine with Boston Acoustic A60s in the bookshelves above the stereo-just two of them. But when it comes to audio quality, I’m tuned out. I love music and make my living off of that love, in print and on the air. ![]()
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