Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Off Topic OT: Sonos vs. Squeezebox

Gosh, it was there yesterday. Perhaps the sale ended 07/31/08.

That should be no secret, more so is when it should be ready for release.

The new Sonos units have been announced. If anyone wants UK pricing, then give me a call. Unfortunately I don't have full RRP pricing info just yet.

-Ian

do not see any difference with ZP80 except 2.0 Wireless Network. could be 802.11n-draft instead of 802.11g.

Massive Duet fan here. Apart from one small issue with a firmware update which was solved by pressing and holding back at startup and then updating manually my network of 4 SB3s, 1SBR, 2SBCs, plus 3 Nokia N800 web tablets and multiple PCs running web browsers and/or Softsqueeze runs flawlessly. I'm testing 7.2 (by request, and it is perfectly stable.) The only issue I had when installing what is billed as alpha software was sorting out BBC streaming and that is because the BBC have changed their "listen again" urls to "iPlayer". I posted on their user forums and received a reply from the plugin author in 19 minutes.

We now have two separate servers on the network. My neatly catalogued, tagged, FLAC collection with all album art complete ripped with EAC which sits on my Windows 2003 SBS and my nephew's garbled heap linked to his iTunes account on his Vista PC. He has orphan tracks, duplicates, really poor quality downloaded stuff, plus the odd bit of DRMd stuff he can't play, but I don't have to put up with his mess and he gets to listen to his own music on any player in the house when he has friends around. All he has to do is select the "choose server" menu option and both server's names show up along with Squeezenetwork.

The Sonos Mesh approach wouldn't work for us as we have two SB3s and an SBR at one end of the house and two SB3s 55m away at the other end of the house with three sets of foil backed insulation in between. We have CAT5e and Gb switches in the loft together with 3 802.11n access points which cover the entire house (minimum strength is 68%).

It does take a bit more effort to set the Duet system up but all the third party plugins really make it powerful - I start playing music on the SB3 in my main HiFi stack and my G68 turns on by using the SB3's headphone output as an IR blaster - the volume control on any of the devices I use to control that particular SB3 adjust the volume knob on the G68, though with a 24bit output on the SPDIF port there is plenty of headroom for adjusting the volume on the player before it starts to chop bits. One of it's biggest advantages is that the remote has been designed to be held and operated by one hand. With 7.3 you'll be able to use the remote as a portable streaming player.

There's nothing wrong with the Sonos, it's a great product. early adopters however did get incredbily defensive when the Duet came out. One particularly vocal supporter posting on every third party forum he could find started off by slating the fact that it downloaded the same internet stream once for every player connected. When they fixed that, he had an issue with synchronisation that slips my mind, but it was fixed fairly quickly. He then went on to the fact that his wife wouldn't give it houseroom as it didn't support gapless playback when players were synchronised. That's fixed now and I haven't seen him come up with another one.

The Sonos is fantastic for the non-technical and those who want something that is plug and play in the same vein as a toaster - you plug it in and switch it off. The Duet (and other variations) is better in the hands of someone who is happy rolling his sleeves up to set up a SOHO PC network - it started life in the hands of DIY Home Automaters, but Logitech are doing their best to bring it into the hands of the mainstream user.

Tim

Just ordered a couple of ZP90s, a Zonebridge and controller. Will report back when setup.

Pushed this way because of one problem after another w/my SBs that had once been rock solid. Just want reliable, hassle free playback; don't need a lot of options/plug-ins etc. Hope it's as reliable as my toaster.

" Just want reliable, hassle free playback; don't need a lot of options/plug-ins etc. Hope it's as reliable as my toaster. "

Well , Enjoy !
Im another one who finds my SBs to be even better than my toaster with or without plugins ( nothing gets burned

~M~

That's a shame. I was going to offer to phone you and help you to troubleshoot your issues. (I can phone the US for 10p for a whole hour). There are a set of troubleshooting steps that will fix over 99% of problems - uninstall, reboot, delete the cache, plugins and prefs folders and re-install with the latest nightly.

I just like the flexibility of the slim stuff, and the fact you can use anything to control it. I've just put in a system for a friend and his kids have Softsqueeze on their laptops and control it with their Nokia N95s when they are too lazy to get up and reach for the keyboard.

Tim

I've just noticed your sig Ian. You own a Squeezebox but resell Sonos. How did that come about? I know my local HiFi emporium sell Sonos because a) there's more margin in it, and b) it is easier to support end-users.

Tim

Four years ago I committed financial suicide and quit the rat race to become a garden designer. Now that I am qualified, and found that the reality of garden design is that, unless you are designing gardens for mansions, or are so well known that you get weekly commissions, there is very little money in it.

My background was IT and, in the early days, computer graphics and zero budget games. I have decided to offer training on the CAD package that I use and this resulted in there being an opening to resell it.

It just so happens that the distributors are also Sonos distributors so, with my interest in audio, I asked for preferential pricing on these units too.

Whilst I do not own one nor have not sold any, I am happy to pass on a significant discount to regular hitchhikers who know exactly what they want. This benefits me by getting me better discount in other product lines and regular HH's should get a very good price.


If I was going to start again, I would probably go Sonos for two reasons:
Once you have a controller, or need multiple units, the discount makes the price differential between SB and Sonos not that large.
The PC (500Mhz P3 512MB) that I run SB from is well below the min levels for squeezecentre and more recent versions of Slimserver (or what ever it is called) have run noticable slower on this hardware. As I already run NAS box's and Sonos is stand alone, I would no longer be reliant on an ageing PC for music 24/7.

The only issue that I have against the Sonos is the switches that I use for my backplane are on the network incompatibility list on the Sonos FAQ.

I appreciate the offer Tim, and you may well be able to help, but I'm just tired of uninstalling, rebooting, unchecking some prefs, powering up/down, going to the lastest build and so on. Just want to hit 'play' and hear music, no rebuffering, no stuttering. The last straw was springing for powerline ethernet adapters, which solved any wifi issues I might have been having, but nothing else. Those brought the SB into Sonos territory pricewise anyway.

I have found that unsyncing all players seems to have cured the rebuffering problem which interrupted playback on a few machines, but I'm still prone to the stutters after a few songs. Tried a couple of fixes suggested on the slimdevices forum -- none seemed to work permanently. My computer is relatively new and fast, so this isn't an issue.

I'm thinking that as Squeezecenter has grown in size and complexity, it's become less reliable. Had few problems w/6.5.4, but moving into the v7s, with the added functionalities and so forth has been a step backward reliability-wise, and I don't use 99% of the 'features' anyway. Further, the Duet seems to struggle as a wifi receiver, where other devices have no signal issue -- this limits its reliability and thus utility.

Though I can generally troubleshoot problems, I'm not a computer guy so the above is an inexpert opinion. OTOH, I don't want to have to be an expert, which is perhaps why a closed system that doesn't update much like the Sonos, along w/N wireless and the mesh/repeating nature of the bases may be the answer. The controller looks slicker for controlling multiple zones too.

Anyway, got a good price on the Sonos -- if I can sell a couple of the SBs and the Duet/Receiver, and maybe the powerline adapters as well, I'll not have spent too much.

Should be able to press play on it next week and we'll hear...

As a SONOS ZP80 and ZP100 owner who has the option to return the above units for the newer ZP90 and ZP120 units I would appreciate your thoughts as to whether it sios worth upgrading to the newer units...

A somewhat related point...is SONOS providing discounted upgrades to those who recently purchased their product.

TIA.