I told you of my two amazing finds at January’s Macworld right here for you all gadget freaks to feast your eyes on and now I can tell you, firsthand, one of those finds IS even more amazing than when I held that 3.5″ diagonal color LCD controller in my boyishly excited hands for the first time. I’m referring to the Sonos controller (CR100) that displays all the magic before your glazed eyes. It’s what really entices one’s interest to further dig into this amazing little music wonder of technology.

Before I get into too much detail about this wunder-system, I must give you some background on my digital music exploits. Working in the heart of Silicon Valley since before the beginning of the World Wide Web and MP3s, I became an early adopter of the digitally compressed music format from day one and have really never missed the superior sonic quality of the compact disc. It was a great luxury to have my tunes with me on my hard drive at work as opposed to bringing my CDs in a large box daily. Case Logic helped, but just couldn’t cut the mustard when it came to leaving the tunes on a hard drive. My hard drive’s collection quickly grew as more and more people joined the Napster network. That, coupled with me ripping my 1,000 plus CD library via AudioCatalyst, fattened my My Music folder to 20GB in a mere three months. I was hooked!

It didn’t take long to become addicted to MP3s and only listen to my music while in the home via an MP3 player. My top notch Sony CD player quickly grew dusty and CDs were only of value in my car. Since I had networked my home myself while it was being built, I was able to network my MP3s off the server to a local PC connected to the Denon AV system. With speakers located throughout the house and even outside, I always had access to my now 50 GB of music any time, anywhere.

But there was a problem: convenience. WinAmp sucked for managing my tremendous library and MusicMatch wasn’t much better. Further, any time I wanted to play, pause, or change my music, I was chained to the computer. I had to Control-Alt-Delete to login, and I always fat-fingered my complex password, and then went to the player to make the adjustment. Sure, at first it was cool to do it from the garage’s PC while neighbors were over watching and had yet to still even discover broadband Internet let alone networked MP3s, but to me, it was a drag. Something better had to exist.

Well, in short, nothing did. In the beginning of the new millennium, units started appearing and a few caught my eye, but still required that ball-and-chain aspect of running your own music. This digital age was supposed to advance my music, not hinder it. I would have to wait five long years before stumbling upon a magnificent booth in Moscone Center one early January morning in 2005. The brilliance and ease of the now extremely popular iPod could be found to control my home music system. Sonos was here!

Within, like, one minute of the demo from one of the Sonos engineers, I was sold. I kept cutting him off and asking, “When’s it out?!” He’d begin to answer and I’d just cut him off again and ask, “How much?” I felt like a high school kid on crack! I needed it now! Well, I didn’t get it then, but I did get it a few months later and I can tell you, straight up, Sonos rox!

When I got the demo units, it was a matter of removing them from their well-suited packaging and tossing the directions to the side. Who needs directions? I grabbed one ZonePlayer and plugged it in. Grabbed the CD-ROM and installed the software. Configured it to find my two network music folders and then realized, ‘Crap, where did I put the directions?’ Yeah, you need the directions. Not because it’s complex, but because there is one simple step you need to implement before you’re running and that’s for the software to find the ZonePlayer and set it up. With the pressing of two buttons, a couple of flashing lights, and a big smile from my mug, I was in business! Folks, I’m a computer engineer and I can tell you that you don’t have to be me to set this up. My mom could set this up and her VCR still blinks 12:00!

Okay, so the puppy is set up and the supplied Klipsch KB-15 bookshelf speakers are plugged in. I pick up the controller and, just by doing so, it comes alive. Yup, it’s motion sensitive and wakes up the little beast for your use without the need to press a button first. I gaze at the screen and it shows me my zone, family room, and an empty playlist. I hit the Music button and off I dive into my music library much like I would my iPod. No learning curve. Seconds later, Jars of Clay’s “Coffee Song” fills my darkening family room as the sun sets behind the hills of Central California. I skip songs, I pause them, I add to my playlist, I delete my playlist, I get all giddy. Am I supposed to be having this much fun with 192kb compressed music? With Sonos, it’s hard not to.

Okay, so how easy is this, really? I mean my mom is a logistics specialist, so she’s not dumb, just a technophobe. What happens when you hand the controller to a four-year-old? Mmm, she starts playing Donut Man through those prime bookshelf speakers! Of course her two-year-old brother’s got to get into the action and starts yelling, “I want to do it! I want to do it!” So she hands him the controller and even though he can’t read a single world in any language, it doesn’t take him long to figure out, pause, mute, volume down, and his favorite button, volume up. Sonos: So simple a two-year-old can do it. Do I get royalties for this?

Now of course I’m oversimplifying it a bit here. In all seriousness, my two younger children can fully manipulate the current song playing. Playlist building is a bit tougher and does require intervention from mommy and daddy, but once that’s built, it’s a Sonos party for the two kids.

Speaking of party, Sonos did send me two ZonePlayers. Each ZonePlayer can be given one of many predefined labels such as Living Room, Family Room, Garage, and Office. The second unit I put into my office and labeled it as such. I used the supplied Klipsch speakers with these, too, for the first few days but quickly tapped the ZonePlayer into my Altec Lansing FX6021 desktop speakers via the line-out on the back of the ZonePlayer. Now I could listen to Sky-FM’s Jazz station at my computer. And since I had complete control over the ZonePlayer via the Windows desktop controller, I could adjust the volume independent of my computer’s output. Further, since I used a KVM, no matter what computer I was on, Sonos was always on.

Since I’ve brought up the line-out on the back of the ZonePlayer, I should touch on the rest of the ports on the back of the unit. Along with a dual channel output, there is also a dual channel input. It allows you to crank in a tape deck, TV, or something and literally stream it throughout the Sonos systems at any time (as long as the source is active). Dude, there’s even a subwoofer output! George Lucas would be proud. Right next to those RCAs you’ll find the familiar RJ-45. One jack is where you plug in the “main” ZonePlayer and the remaining three ports can be used as a 10/100Mbps switch that includes auto MDI/MDIX. Next to that are the spring-push speaker jacks driven by the internal 50W amp that belts out the dynamic range of 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz. These 50 watts are enough to make you think you just slapped a nice AV receiver into your system. It’s a nice sounding amp without any doubt. But remember, the weakest link in this stereophonic bicycle is the music source, so don’t expect SACD caliber sound.

Now once you have one ZonePlayer slapped into your wired network, you’re free to do what you want with the other ZonePlayers. See, Sonos came up with its own peer-to-peer wireless mesh network and it’s also secure. No, it’s not Wi-Fi (aren’t you reading?), I said it’s secure. I tested this out and placed my Family Room ZonePlayer right on the fireplace brick while it sucked the streaming music via Sonosnet from the wired ZonePlayer in my office upstairs. No hiccups, not even one. The baby just played. Taking it outside gave the same effect: sweet music. Have AC power, will travel.

Okay, what about my iTunes files? Mmm, let’s talk acronym soup. Sonos supports MP3, WMA, AAC (MPEG4), WAV, and streaming MP3s (Internet radio), but it does not support DRM (Digital Rights Management) music, in particular, FairPlay (Apple’s DRM for iTunes Music Store.) Trust me, this is not the fault of Sonos; it would like more than anything to support the number one online music store, but Steve Jobs has his own ideas of what fair means when he plays. But as my cousin in Australia always says, no worries, there’s something else. Real’s Rhapsody is fully supported by the latest firmware of Sonos and I must say, even for this iTMS snob, I’m impressed.

Sonos and Real supplied a media test account for my listening and reviewing pleasure and, as I type this, I am listening to The White Stripes’ “White Moon” using Rhapsody through my office ZonePlayer. To be able to search the hundreds of thousands of songs on Rhapsody and be like that kid in the candy store and say, “I want this and want this and want this,” and get it is pretty darned fun. I built a sweet praise and worship playlist that I and the family really enjoy off Rhapsody that would have cost me nearly a hundred dollars if I would have purchased it song by song. User beware, however, as Rhapsody ate 50MB of my RAM to run (which must be running for Sonos to stream the music). Not a biggie if you have a Gig like me, but most people aren’t like me. Also, if you miss one payment for Rhapsody, goodbye every single song. Now if you are like me and already have, like, 5 GB of iTMS songs living on your server, it’s a bit tough to just walk away from your investment. Again, the iTunes con comes back into play, but if you’re not invested too much into iTMS, Rhapsody and Sonos are a perfect match!

I found myself listening to a lot of MP3s, AACs (iTunes ripped, not iTMS stuff), Rhapsody, and Internet radio during my review of the Sonos Digital Music System. In fact, I probably was listening to Sky FM - Smooth Jazz and Sky FM - ’80s more than anything else. Sonos makes Internet radio work. I kept joking with my wife about how much I enjoyed the Internet radio by ripping off a popular commercial we hear in our car daily: “Beyond AM, beyond FM… even beyond XM: Sonos Internet Radio.”

The zone in ZonePlayer is where the real magic of this system really reveals itself. With Sonos’ basic kit, you get two ZonePlayers, which allows you to put them in different parts of your home, such as my example with one in the family room and one in the office. Each ZonePlayer can be independent of the other, allowing it to play whatever you would like. So while my kids and wife listen to Donut Man downstairs in the Family Room Zone, I rock out to Falling Up’s debut album “Crashings.” At another point, I wanted to check out John Mellencamp’s new greatest hits release, so I popped it into my Sonos playlist using Rhapsody as the source. I noticed the Family Room zone was also streaming off Rhapsody, as well, and was pleasantly surprised that you could stream more than one ZonePlayer from Rhapsody at once. Nice touch, Real and Sonos.

Now you don’t have to be a separatist in all that you listen to as everyone can join the celebration via the party mode. This allows all ZonePlayers to listen to the same thing together. This is just as a great feature as the independent zone playing if you think about it. I mean, if it’s just you jamming to some Marc Antoine upstairs and you want to continue listening to “Preludio” in the kitchen when you’re refreshing your Coca Cola, then, dude, party mode is the way to go! The volume can also be linked or left in its independent volume preference if you desire. Cool, very cool.

Zones aren’t all that good, though. With every great powerful feature comes a very hostile effect, and the ZonePlayer is not immune from that. If someone is in your zone on their controller and doesn’t realize it, it can make for a very unpleasant moment when they are attempting to raise the volume for their zone and nothing happens. Yes, they just keep holding down the plus key while you are jolted to hysterics as your zone blasts away your current music selection. You learn quickly to identify the mute button in situations like this. My two-year-old son isn’t the only one to have done this to an unsuspecting zone listener as Sonos told me that a parental volume lock-out is a highly requested feature, one that it’s looking into and may have for us zone-loving Sonos users soon.

Wrapping this long-winded review up, I’ll briefly throw out my remaining thoughts. The desktop controller replicates the handheld controller perfectly with the added benefit of being able to use your keyboard for naming playlists and deleting songs. One thing that did bug me is that you can’t do multi-select using the Windows software. The control and shift keys are powerful tools in this day and age, and not having them at my disposal was a bit disappointing. You also cannot alter playlists beyond append. Meaning, you can only add songs to the end of your current playlist and you’re unable to reorder the song order. This would be a very nice feature to have for both the desktop and handheld controller in a future version. As for that LCD controller, there is a docking station coming for it. You’ll be able to use your current power brick as the AC source and you can either wall mount it or leave it on your desk. Sonos hopes to have more information on it by late summer as it’s still in the design phase.

Now as to the battery life, I rated it mediocre because my demo unit just didn’t seem to hold a charge very long. If I put it into a deep sleep after two hours of no sleep and to regular sleep within one minute of non-use, the controller still needed a charge the following day with light use. Sonos’ tech support told me that was very unusual as I should be seeing five times the longevity. It is graciously sending a replacement and I’ll update this review when I get it and play with it for a week or two. My feeling is that, being a demo unit, the poor little battery in the controller just got a beating.

In closing, I have to say this is one of the coolest products out today. My wife, who never gets as excited as I do about technology, kept saying for the first week, “I love this!” It allowed her to easily create the appropriate music for the day without having to get up from what she was doing and go to the computer. She and the kids together could sit on the couch and select their songs as they willed, giggling while they saw the album cover come up on the display. And it’s not just my wife who loves this - my kids do, too. Anything that looks somewhat similar to the Sonos, you know, white and silver and boxy, my son exclaims with glee, “Sonos!” I don’t know how many items he fingered as Sonos the other day while he sat on my lap watching me Web surf. It was comical.

In the end, folks, if you can afford the pricey $1200 for the two ZonePlayers and one controller, I’d encourage you to buy it. This system is so versatile with its file support, Rhapsody, and Internet radio, that it just doesn’t make sense to look at anything else. And since the firmware is easily upgradeable, I’m sure when Steve Jobs sees the sales continue to go higher on these units and little two-year-olds everywhere yelling, “Sonos!” at anything white and silver, he’ll be calling Sonos CEO John MacFarlane faster than that of the news of Apple switching to Intel chips.

Support
Through my review, I needed very little support, but when needed, the Sonos support team was on it. In fact, one bug I found in the way iTunes handles IDv3 tags was nearly immediately figured out and reported to Apple. I can tell you this is a company that stands behind its product.

Recommended
Yes

Pros
Brings your entire digital music lifestyle into any room of your home with absolute ease.

Cons
No iTunes Music Store song (FairPlay) support and a bit pricey.

The Bottom Line
If you’re sick of being chained to your computer to play all your digital music and just want the most simple, practical, sonically amazing sounding, and just plain cool unit to do it all for you, then you need a Sonos!

Ratings
Overall: 4/5

Ease of Use: 5/5
Durability: 4/5
Battery Life (Hand Controller): 3/5
Sound Quality: 4/5