Sonos ZP80 Digital Music System Bundle

I bought the Sonos as an easy way to get sound through our 100 year old house, but found that the wireless feature is only the starting point. The sound is excellent and the seamless integration with Rhapsody means that you can listen to "every record every recorded" at the click of the wheel.

I purchased this bundle about a year ago, and I have not regretted a single day of ownership. The system flawlessly delivers digital music throughout the entire house. The controller is intuitive and convenient. The key to this system is having a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device that contains your music collection. Without one you are required to keep you PC on to deliver the music.

Sonos has delivered a number of music service trials over the past year. This would include trials for Rhapsody, Pandora, and most recently Sirius. The Sirius option is awesome. It is too bad that subscribe to XM, or I would be eligible to add the Sonos service for only $2.99/mo. Perhaps once the merger is approved.

A side bonus to the system is that it can deliver Internet capabilities to any room with a zone player. I have a zone player in my office, but I do not have an Ethernet jack. I can surf the web flawlessly using one of the two available network ports. The system uses AES encryption to protect wireless traffic.

I have tried to do this over the years with other products....with limited success. This one works perfectly. Very well engineered and thought out. A breeze to install. Rather exensive, but worh every penny.

The ideal solution when you need a system that can be used by a technophobe. Sonos is by far the cheapest "whole house jukebox" system available. Established home automation vendors, who usually offer their wares through a network of custom installers, are scrambling to compete, because Sonos offers a system that is significantly better and easier to use than theirs at a fraction of the cost. Moreover, instead of requiring custom programming it's simple enough that it can be configured by anybody with a minimum of home networking experience.
It is more expensive than low-end network music players such as the Roku Soundbridge or the Slimdevices Squeezebox. Still, don't forget you're getting two zone players out of the bundle deal, and a remote that will make just about any gadget freak green with envy. What other system will let you browse your whole music collection (including album art) effortlessly from the comfort of your sofa? It's so intuitive that your most technophobic friend will be able to use it in under five minutes (it might be difficult to get them to give it up!)
It's great to pass it around at a party and get people to add their favorite tunes to the play queue.

Note that one limitation of the Sonos system is that the first box has to be connected to the wired Ethernet LAN. Since it was not practical in my case, I used a Buffalo WLI-TX4-G54HP wireless bridge (available at Amazon) to hook it up to the wireless home LAN. It was easy to configure and works great.

A seldom mentioned feature of the Sonos boxes is the audio input; you can use it to distribute the audio from a satellite radio, for instance. The alarm clocks are also very useful, and internet radio is great. You can also get a subscription with the Harmony internet radio service if you'd like (Sonos comes with a free trial subscription).

Despite its apparently high price, the Sonos system is an amazing bargain, because it's so feature-rich, extensible and easy to use. And if you have any technophobes in your house, there just isn't any other choice, so what are you waiting for? The only question is, wich combo do you want, the ZP-80 or the ZP-100?

After using the Roku system for a few years, I upgraded to the Sonos. WOW, it was like going from a Pinto to a Bently. The Sonos product is top of the line, easy to use and setup and the controller is impressive and powerfull. The wireless capability is more than adequate.

The only caviat is that this won't play protected AAC files from iTunes, but we knwe that Apple wasn't going to let that happen anyway.

I would give this product line 10 stars if the option was available.