Sonos BU130 Digital Music System Bundle

Let me start off by saying I was just looking for some good wireless speaker when I came across the Sonos System. It seems like every audio speaker website had an advertisement or comment about this system. I went to the Sonos home page and saw the demo and was impressed.

The Sonos system is one of the few electronic in my house that my wife approves of. We use it in conjunction with Pandora Music Radio and we love it. The only thing that I have to complain about is the distance of the wireless. I had to buy a Sonos ZoneBride 100 ($99.00)to help extend the players distance. The ZoneBride is a must have if you live in a large house/apartment, or a place that has interior brick wall instead of plasterboard.

I purchased the Sonos system from Amazon because they had a special going on, when you got the Sonos BU130 bundle they would throw in a Sonos CC100 charging cradle ($34.00) and a set of Polk Audio R150 ($100.00) for free. I was happy to receive my order from Amazon but when I plugged in the ZP100 it would not power up. I came back to Amazon and started on the paperwork to have a new system sent out. Within an hour I received an e-mail saying a new system was already on its way. I didn't even get a change to package up the broken one before a new system was at my door. Great work Amazon!!

I managed to set the system up in less than an hour. I have used it nearly every day for more than four months without any problems. I love this system.

There are some important considerations for audio book lovers that are unclear in the product description -- the lack of bookmarking and ebook support. I purchased this because I am a big audiobook fan and would rather have an audiobook playing throughout the house than music or tv. I am an Audible.com subscriber and have found that Sonos does handle Audible.com content well. However, I also have a significant collection of audiobooks in mp3 format (especially those not available on Audible such as the Harry Potter books).

Unfortuantely the Sonos player is missing the ability to bookmark non-Audible files -- a feature which is commonplace in mp3 players such as the Creative Zen (which offers bookmarking) and iPod (which remembers position on mp3 files). I've examined Sonos' support discussion forum and found that users have been requesting this feature for over a year now. Mp3 book owners should beware. You'll be spending a lot of time fast-forwarding and rewinding in order to find the spot where you left off.

Sonos also doesn't play the protected wma file ebooks you can download from NetLibrary.com (which is offered as a service by many local public libraries).

So the Sonos system is still lacking quite a bit of functionality desired by audio book lovers. Your only option is to download the book to your mp3 player, then hook the mp3 player to the Sonos line-in plug. However, I found this did not work well for several reasons. First, I had to always go to where I placed my mp3 player in order to pause or restart, and the volumne of the line-in seems considerably lower than what the Sonos can do by accessing the files directly. So even with my Creative Zen and Sonos cranked up as high as they will go, the volume is still too low for me.

In short, audio book lovers should take a second look before deciding if this will meet their needs. A simple set of remote speakers attached to your mp3 player may give you better functionality at about 1/10th the price.

This is an amazingly effective product. This bundle had everything I needed to get started. I used the ZP100 with the living room sound system and tied in 2 sets of our door speakers with that player as well using a "speaker switch." I used the ZP80 with the system in the bedroom. The setup was done within 60 minutes with the bulk of the time spent installing the desktop software and indexing the 60 days of music that we have. We did purchase a cradle from Best Buy as it was definitely a missing component. At some point, we'll add on new zone players to extend the system to every room in the house and add a NAS device to hold all the music.

My only complaint is the high cost of each zone player. The cost is quite high but you do get a quality item that works without fail. We have had the controller unit lock up a few times but that problem was resolved very quickly by rebooting the device by holding down the mute and music buttons for a few seconds.

Overall, this is a high quality product and dramatically better than any other music distribution product I've tried.

My husband wanted to get the Sonos a couple of years ago and I was a bit skeptical. After a short time, I was convinced. I LOVE the Sonos system! We transferred our entire CD collection to hard disk and can access it all via the Sonos remote. There is also internet radio and having a subscription to Rhapsody, we are able to listen to just about anything we want to at any time. As you can see, I am a big fan.

I would also like to add, unlike most in-home systems you can easily take this one with you quite easily if you should have to move to another abode. It is also very versatile - if you decide you don't really need it in one room, you just move it to another. Worth the $ in my opinion.