O/T Wireless Music Streaming

[JB-L]

My apologies if the quick search I did missed a thread dealing with this?

What has been people's experience of Wireless Music Streamers eg: Sonos or similar?

Any recommendations?

[squirejo]

Sonos. Particularly now they have expanded the range for every room size / need from boxes to connect to hifi, to tv sound bar and a diddy one for your study etc.

Works faultlessly every time. i use Napster for music source, £5 a month and always works.

[myatt1972]

I bought the Mrs a Revo Axis about 18 months ago and its a great sounding bit of kit, dab, fm, internet radio, streamer and I pod dock, I was that impressed that I bought a dab tuner / network player to connect to my audiolab/kef hifi, the results were.....................crap !
I think I need to spend considerably more money as the audiolab stuff is so unforgiving.

[tanick]

I've spent a small fortune on Sonos and its always letting me down.

1. When I run the app on my mac it can't find my system.
2. It stops for no reason.
3. I can't play music from itunes folder for no apparent reason (mac sharing issue?)
4. It only does the above when I am entertaining guests.

to try and fix 1&2. I extended the wifi network in my house but it is still dodgy. I now have both the bridge and one of the Play 5's hard wired to the network.

Usually I have to connect the mac up to my router for it to find the system again and then I can use it for a while.

Its a goods system in spite of the above, but seems fragile to me, and problems are so intermettent that by the time I get their helpdesk on the case its resolved itself and runs OK for just long enought for me to forget about it.

If you are in a relatively compact space with good wifi then it is probably good. I'm probably asking too much of it and I'm sure part of the issue is that Macs don't share well. Its better with Spotify or the radio but i don't use them so much.

Also, how difficult is it to be able to write the sonos software so that it will take the feed from the soundcard. If I want to play sound from the internet or mix stuff on Traktor, I have to hardwire a sonos player to the headphones out socket. Sonos seem to think this is acceptable.

A good system but it does have its issues for me anyway.

[squirdan]

a lot of stuff now comes with Airplay which is v v easy to use if you have Apple products..litreally just cliuck the logo on your phone or ipad and you are streaming to an airplay device

I have also used Jawbone jamboxes v successfully (not airplay but bluetooth)

depends what you want...unless you want multiroom the above wok v v well

if multiroom then Sonos does seem to be the standard... I will be wiring up my Sonos Playbar at the weekend

[Mr Pharmacist]

I have been using the apple airport expresses to stream music around my house for several years now.

You basically buy an (or several - i have 5) airport express units for around £70 plug it in set it up via a utility that runs on pc mac or iphone/ipad plug in some speakers or connect to stereo or whatever and off you go.

You can control music remotely via iphone / ipad using the apple remote app or you can control it from your desktop. You can access your itunes library & internet through the app or you can use airfoil (that runs on pc or mac) to add more control (ie play from other music sources on your computer - any audio source - spotify, napster, any browser etc).

For the money compared to Sonos its a very good system. I've had no trouble with it other than when the Mac recently updated its software and airfoil was a couple of days catching up with its update. Its not quite as versatile as Sonos but unless you want to stream lots of different music to lots of different rooms it does the job (but you can stream to individual airport expresses using airplay on an iphone/pad if you want to have different music in different rooms)

Of course if you havent got an iphone it might not be quite a good a system. I think Roku do some device similar to airport express.

I tried several other streaming systems before i moved to apple - netgear, roku, logitech - none of them worked well (if at all!) but that was the early days of streaming tbh. The only one i haven't tried is sonos - mainly due to the initial cash outlay required.

[JB-L]

Thanks as ever guys for the input!

[Nige]

I just turn the sound up to max in the room where the hifi is, I can then hear it in every room of the house and all the way down the garden.

[Bootsy]

I wear wireless headphones and ignore everybody and everything around me.

[Mike]

I'm a recent convert to the latest Sonos gear and have to say I love it.

Particularly wanted to be able to select music/rooms etc from the iPhone app so perfect
for me and the sounds great, though does vary dependant on your file source of course.

Still have to set it up with Spotify, but if Napster is half the price might have to try that!

[40 scout]

I just turn the sound up to max in the room where the hifi is, I can then hear it in every room of the house and all the way down the garden.

-

Steve

[nrc914]

I've also been looking at Sonos recently as it seems to be the standard and a few friends have various bits of the system.

It is not cheap however to buy multiple bits for around the house and the playbar is £599 if I remember correctly and have never heard one so would be interested in how squiredan gets on with his. If you're using the optical cable for connection to the tv go careful as there are quite a few secondhand ones around with damaged optical connectors so assume it is a weak spot!

Cheers

[Mr Pharmacist]

I've also been looking at Sonos recently as it seems to be the standard and a few friends have various bits of the system.

It is not cheap however to buy multiple bits for around the house and the playbar is £599 if I remember correctly and have never heard one so would be interested in how squiredan gets on with his. If you're using the optical cable for connection to the tv go careful as there are quite a few secondhand ones around with damaged optical connectors so assume it is a weak spot!

Cheers

Just been looking at the sonos stuff because it is very cool but £599 for the playbar, £599 for the woofer to go with is and 2 x £170 speakers to get 5.1 surround?

Am i reading it right though that once you have one of their wireless systems (either the playbar or one of their other boxes) you just need a £40 bridge in each additional room connected to speakers to stream the music to those rooms?

[squirejo]

the sound bar is actually the only thing I have not bought Sonos-wise cos the cost seems stupid. Instead I have a TV-matching Samsung soundbar and subwoofer (that only requires power cable to it) and then have sonos basic box plugged into sound bar aux input. Which kills 2 birds with one stone for half the price.

I am however impressed with the sound quality of the sonos standalone units and their flexibility. Radio 4 to rocking a party, all good.

[gridgway]

I've tried and used some streamers (some for a very long time). I'm not a great fan of the single speaker solutions from an audio point of view. I like separation - oo er.

Having said that, the Sonos stuff with a NAS seems to work really easily. No reliability issues at all for me. Perhaps it's less happy in the Mac/iTunes world.

I have a pre-logitech Slimserver system with some original Slimp3s and some Squeezeboxes. This is with cheap amps and speakers and is in most rooms playing Mp3s.

I also have two Linn streamers - a Linn Sneaky DS (streamer and amp in one) and a Linn Klimax (oo er even more) DS with the proper hifi, both playing flacs.

As I have long since spent all my money on hifi and Radical racing and have none left for a classic 911 my current project is to use a Raspberry Pi as a music streamer. I am looking at two configurations. One using the analogue audio to play MP3s which will replace my elderly Slimps as they expire and one to play lossless (here http://www.raspyfi.com/).

The first is just software fun the second involves yer actual electronics starting with a DAC from here http://www.diyinhk.com/shop/. Then I'll add a cheap class D amp kit from ebay and see how it does. I also fancy building a tube amp like this http://www.ankaudiokits.com/kit1mk2.html. I love the idea of cheap computing driving nice hifi! I wonder if it will do a good job?

I think I may have strayed from the original topic!

Graham