Talk to me about Sonos

[newrecruit]

DH is 40 soon and I thought it might be a good gift.

What do I need to know?

My DH bought it for himself for his 40th

I find it a bit fiddly to use tbh - I mainly listen to the radio not spotify or my own playlists, and you can stream radio stations through Sonos but the app is not very reliable, every 30 mins or so it cuts out and you have too start it again. (This is just with the radio stream, not when listening to own music).

Then if I want to listen to music from my own library it is just monstrously complicated - DH showed me how to do it but it was really hard to remember which options to select from the endless menus so I just give up and put the radio on!

We have it. I'm not very techy so can't really give you much advice but it is reasonably easy to set up and very very easy to operate . We have both the zone players and built in speakers which need a Sonos amp to operate. At least that 's what we have to operate them! I think when we first got it (maybe 7 years ago?) it was relatively new to the market but I notice there are a fair few similar products around now and I don't know how they compare. It's expensive but the advantage is you can add to it as you go
. I love it and we all use it . er anything else?

It's very easy to set up and use (through iPad/iPhone app), and I say that as one who isn't particularly tech-savvy. The sound is good and you can add more players for different rooms (and, crucially, play tracks things in different rooms). All of those systems are only as good as your broadband though.

if your radio is stopping or jumping you might need to change the channel (or something) . I used to get this problem but not anymore. I am really not clever with gadgets but find it really easy to use. If you want music from your music library you select music library then artists or albums or tracks or whatever and then the artist or album or track you want . It should be three clicks

And yes, my children can operate it, so dunno what Marshmallowpie's DH has done to make theirs so complicated!

Sonos is awesome.

Especially when it's twinned with Spotify. Love it :)

We've got it with Deezer and it is flipping ACE. DH looked out for it on Hot Deals UK, now and then it comes up with 10% off. We have got one thing plugged into our stereo and two other speaker things in different rooms. As you can tell technical stuff is not my department.

We have a Sonos 1 in the kitchen which I generally use to listen to the radio on and now have a 3 in the sitting room (which we got ourselves for Christmas).

We can use our iPhones / iPods and computers to control it, but also got ourselves a very cheap 'Go Tab' which is the main controller which the DSs can use (I'm not letting them near my iPhone!).

All the music is now up on Google Play and this makes it really easy to play and organise as we found that iTunes wasn't very reliable.

Will probably get a couple more 1s for the DS's bedrooms in due course and if and when we finally replace the television we'll probably get a sound bar for the new TV.

We've got it with spotify and I love it. I use it with my iPhone, we've got it in living room, bedroom and dining room. I'm not techy but I can use it no problem - I would say it would be a great gift for a 40th.

Super. What's the difference between the 1 & 3?

Would 2 1s be better than a 3?

Schnitzel - I've got the Sonos app on my phone, but I think the problem is I don't use playlists on iTunes, if I was listening to my music on my phone I'd just press 'Shuffle All' and there is no option on the Sonos app to do that (that I've found).

Instead you have songs sorted by Artist, Album, Track, etc etc and no option to just play all tracks in random order. You have to somehow add them to a queue, don't you? - and I can never remember how to do that.

I think that the 1 is fine for the kitchen, but for listening to 'proper' music, although you can make two of them into a stereo system, we decided that a 3 for the sitting room would be better - and it is! We certainly can tell the difference - we even took the 1 into the sitting room to compare.

However, our sitting room is only small, so depending on your room size, it might be better to go for a 5 or two 3s. We might get another 3 for the sitting room in due course (when the pennies are saved!).

I think that the difference is the number of 'speakers' inside each, but I can't remember exactly; but it does say all about the differences on the website.

A great present. I'd start off with two Play:1's and run them as a stereo pair. The sound quality is better than one Play:3 running in isolation IMO. Very easy to set up and the software just works. We use the free app on our imac, ipad and android tablets. If you have a windows phone you have to use a third party app ( I use Phonos for example) as no native app is available from sonos directly which costs about £1.49.

You can then add other speakers and build up your system to suit your needs and budget.