I got one of these for Christmas, I know I know, I’ve been a very good boy this year. I wasn’t expecting it, to be honest, although I was vaguely aware of them, I wasn’t really too sure what all the fuss was about. I mean, I have Airplay at home, isn’t it just like that? Well, after playing with it every day since, I have to say I started off not understanding it, now I wonder how I ever lived without it.
For those of you not in the know, Sonos is a wireless speaker system at it’s most basic and a full on internet streaming service at it’s best. Setup is simple, really simple, like Apple simple. Out the box, you plug in the Bridge to your router, plug in the speakers to your power supply, run the software and 5 mins later, you’re up and running. Suddenly Spotify has been reborn. iTunes has a new lease of life, and then you get to internet Radio etc.
The iPhone and iPad both have free apps built for Sonos and they could not be easier to use. Linking speakers together for that “through the house” sound, or playing different streams to different rooms, are a few easy clicks away. And you can forget about having to use the computer to control it, or even have it turned on, as once you have your iSomething hooked up, everything runs from that. Just you and the speakers.
Configuring the system to access your iTunes was a synch, as was setting up Spotify & Last FM etc.
But as I like to tinker with things, I got wondering about Airplay.
I had a spare Apple Airport kicking about and knew the Play 5 had a line in at that back. So I did a bit of scouting about and found you can hook it up quite happily.
The only draw back to the Airplay support is that it feels a little bolted on, a little bit like an afterthought. While it works well enough, it’s not quite as slick as the rest of the system.
That being said, in no way does it detract from a great experience over all.
Finally, as I like to watch movies and I like to stream them from the iPad while doing so, I wanted to know if it was possible to stream the movie soundtrack through the Sonos using Airplay.
Short answer is yes. But this is the only area that it falls down on. The syncing of the Airplay movie and the soundtrack is out, by at least 4 – 7 seconds depending on what your playing.
I think part of the reason is a lag behind the signal from Airplay and it being processed by Sonos, and also that Sonos syncs the signal to other speakers. There it must buffer the information coming in, adding further to the lag.
I’ve used CineXPlayer and Good Player and they both have the same issue. You maybe able to get round it if you could delay the movie and the soundtrack and get them to match that way, but after even more reading, the only software I could find that could do that was VLC. But that app has been pulled and I’m not even sure if the app was able to do, or if it was just the Mac version.
Otherwise, I could not recommend this system more. The quality of the sound is astounding as is the build and the software. At the time if writing this, there were a couple of offers kicking about for the Play 3, Play 5 and the bridge all together in one package. If you have a bit of extra Christmas money burning a hole in your pocket, and you like listing to your music on a quality system, you could do a LOT worse.