My Sonos Story;I have a wife and two young boys and no sound system of any kind in the house other than the TVs (big TV). All in the course of one week each boy wanted a stereo system in their rooms and the wife wanted speakers out by the pool and a sound system in the house, I wanted a surround sound system for that big TV. I live in Florida with no basement and no attic so running and hiding wires is a mess. I also live in an Apple house, if Apple makes it I have a least three of them and what ever I get for a sound system must work with Apple. So I was at looking a three different systems and a whole bunch of wire and money.
So I began asking all my friends what they have and only one of them had a Sonos system. After doing some more research I purchased two Play 3 speakers and a Bridge. Right off the bat I had problems with the system dropping out. I contacted Sonos and they told me to move the Bridge as it was having troubles with my router. That was because I had it sitting on top of the router (not to smart) I moved it a few feet away and now I have a rock solid awesome system.
Like many folks here I have drank the tea and will never have anything else in my house for sound that is not made by Sonos. I now have:
2 x Play 1
2 X Play 3
2 X Play 5
PlayBar and a Sonos bass
I have plans on buying more speakers and another Play Bar soon
I no longer have a bridge in my system as I have one of the play 5s plugged in to the router.
When you first enter this site you may think that Sonos has a lot of problems with their gear. But if you buy a Rolls Royce to go camping with the family in Yellow Stone you my friend have chosen badly. Same goes with Sonos, if you do not understand what it does and does not do you may not be happy with it.
Sonos does all the things my family wanted and a whole lot more. Take the PlayBar for example there are two features that a first glance may not seem like much but are huge. One is speech enhancement, not sure how it works but it brings up the speech levels without bringing up any other sounds. My parents purchased a Play Bar just for this reason and love it and only watch TV with it. The other is the night feature so if I am watching a movie and a machine gun goes off Sonos will turn it down so I do not wake the whole house but still make it so I can hear the rest.
Now when a friend comes over I can tell them to get on my Wi-Fi and down load the Sonos app (free). Once they have done that they can now play their music from their device through my whole house wireless and easily. Be carful here has my friends like to pull up in the drive way and mess with my sound system just to drive me crazy, but I am sure you have better friends than I do.
Let say you have a great set of speakers that you want to move to another room. With a Sonos Connect Amp you can move the speakers anywhere in the house and the Connect Amp will drive them. Yes, you will have wires to the speakers from the Connect Amp but the rest is wireless.
We now have more remotes than I can count as each Apple products can control the whole system. The remote for that big TV controls the Play Bar music levels even when the TV is off. If the boys have their music to loud (most of the time) I can grab any Apple gadget and turn just their speakers down. (They now know that they are not allowed to turn it back up)
The wife hates tech and a first did not want Sonos in the house, as she was sure that it would be too hard to use. Now she is buying Sonos speakers as gifts for her friends and is sure we have saved money by buying Sonos. Had I not gone with Sonos I am sure I would have spent a lot more money and not be as happy as I am now.
All I can tell you is once you have Sonos you will wonder why you did not get it sooner.
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Maybe Sonos should make a video “Advanced Sonos use for the newbie?” Seems like a lot of people here are like me and do not fully understanding what they have and can do with Sonos?
Thank you all for your help!
The yellow minion has been absent this week!? O.o
I am going on day 4 of the 2 play:1 deal and I couldn't be happier. I was actually turned off by Sonos before because of this website and the negative comments I read about Spotify integration...which is important to me. I was looking into newer alternatives; LG Music Flow, beep, gramafon, etc but I don' have speakers so only the LG and Denon were serious choices. They are so new and there aren't many reviews out yet. Someone on here said, "go with the best hardware, don't worry abut the music services" (-Chris) Boy am I glad I listened. My wife loves it and already wants more speakers 🙂 I can't believe how loud the and clear the play 1s are. I haven't even turned them past 1/2 way because I feel like they will blow...or my eardrums will. I am also very impressed with the Spotify and Pandora integration. I have access just to do about anything and everything I want and need. My next purchase will be the playbar and sub and maybe a play:3.
Don't worry about going above 1/2 as the speakers inside the Play:1 have been matched to the correct amplifier so no damage will occur (unless its a super distorted song and you have the speaker up at 100% of course)
Actually I believe he quote was from jgatie. Remember boards like this are 80% complainers because all the happy sonos users don't go looking it up on the Internet to talk about.
SONOS speakers are awesome! As I mentioned in my post at the top of this thread, I have at least one of all SONOS components (Including a BRIDGE and CR100, which doesn't work) excluding the Play:3. They all produce absolutely amazing sound, but the best pair has to be the Playbar and SUB (and the Play:1s as surrounds.)
Myself and other contributors to this thread have spoken very highly of the SUB as it manages to add so much depth to any of the speakers in the SONOS line, whether it be as small as the Play:1 or as big as the Playbar.
Well it has been over two and half years since I wrote this. My Sonos system is still amazing and my whole family loves it. Never have any problems with it.
Neither do I, and I agree with the general message of this thread with some caveats:
While Sonos uses state of the art tech, the nature of the tech and that it needs to be deployed on the foundation of the home WiFi network put in place by a large number of third party providers of kit and services means that occasional glitches can arise. Almost all can be solved, the Sonos support system for this is second to none, but it does take some user interest and involvement in the absence of which the system can rapidly degrade to becoming useless.
Also, Sonos isn't a perfect solution for all home audio needs, and some research before investing is a very good thing to be doing.
While Sonos uses state of the art tech, the nature of the tech and that it needs to be deployed on the foundation of the home WiFi network put in place by a large number of third party providers of kit and services means that occasional glitches can arise. Almost all can be solved, the Sonos support system for this is second to none, but it does take some user interest and involvement in the absence of which the system can rapidly degrade to becoming useless.
Also, Sonos isn't a perfect solution for all home audio needs, and some research before investing is a very good thing to be doing.
Two years later and the whole family still loves Sonos. Bullet proof and just part of the house now. Wife still hates it when I crank it up to show house guests....
Good to see you CapnLes - you've been gone for a while.
These kind of threads make my day. 😃
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