Best alternatives to Sonos

mattyg · 8 May 2017 at 16:52

Don't forget one advantage with SONOS is the ability to play different music in each room

Psycho Sonny · 8 May 2017 at 17:02

mattyg said:
Don't forget one advantage with SONOS is the ability to play different music in each room

i can do that with my amp. albeit only the 2 zones. i'm sure with music cast speakers you can play directly to a speaker or group of speakers too.

i heard a sonos soundbar and sub for the first time the weekend before last. for the best part of £1400 i was amazed by how mediocre it sounded. i'm sure a £700 yamaha soundbar could beat it.

you have bought it so obviously your are going to be biased. it is overpriced for what it is. mediocre speakers with a good wireless setup and interface.

MOOGLEYS · 8 May 2017 at 17:14

You can play different audio in each room with the Yamaha too. The 2700 sounds considerably better than the Sonos playbar even with sub. I returned nearly £2k worth of Sonos.......

mattyg · 8 May 2017 at 18:06

Psycho Sonny said:
i can do that with my amp. albeit only the 2 zones. i'm sure with music cast speakers you can play directly to a speaker or group of speakers too.

i heard a sonos soundbar and sub for the first time the weekend before last. for the best part of £1400 i was amazed by how mediocre it sounded. i'm sure a £700 yamaha soundbar could beat it.

you have bought it so obviously your are going to be biased. it is overpriced for what it is. mediocre speakers with a good wireless setup and interface.

I've not heard the soundbar BUT I believe it is the weakest speaker in the setup. The new play5's are way ahead of anything theyve done before.

But saying that. I didn't choose SONOS as an Audiophile. There are much better/Very expensive alternatives.

Its ease of use and ease of upgrade are a massive plus point. When I moved it took me 20 mins to pack a house full of audio away. Not including the 7.1 system.

Plus its wife friendly.....

It comes into its own with a large family all wanting to play different music in they're own rooms. And the boss can control how loud it is too. 10+ rooms all playing different music all linked in, and all separate at the same time. Some of the money to buy the speaker goes into the app too so your buying into more than just a speaker. Its an Amp, a Speaker and an Controller.

Psycho Sonny · 9 May 2017 at 10:24

sonos is much like apple. your buying into an ecosystem. once you buy 1 you have to keep buying more. if you stay away then you can find better or cheaper options.

i think my tv's built in speakers are better than the soundbar. it didn't sound like £1400 worth of gear at all.

james.miller · 9 May 2017 at 10:34

Psycho Sonny said:
i heard a sonos soundbar and sub for the first time the weekend before last. for the best part of £1400 i was amazed by how mediocre it sounded. i'm sure a £700 yamaha soundbar could beat it.

you have bought it so obviously your are going to be biased. it is overpriced for what it is. mediocre speakers with a good wireless setup and interface.

Oh, so when you said this three weekends ago

Psycho Sonny said:
subwoofer is £599 as is the soundbar.

however anybody that wants wireless they would be mad not to buy sonos, it's the best wireless setup out there.

running speaker cable around your home from a central point to me sounds like madness. you will need both an expensive thick copper cabling and also a powerful multizone amp.

essentially sonos turns out to be not that expensive at all.

you could go down a budget route of a chromecast audio into a cheap chinese amp playing into speakers, however it's going to eat more leccy and have lot of wires and power cables, etc.

sonos all the way. it was made for this purpose from the ground up

You'd never heard one ? and now you have you've changed your mind entirely?

Why am i not surprised?

Psycho Sonny · 9 May 2017 at 11:55

james.miller said:
Oh, so when you said this three weekends ago

You'd never heard one ? and now you have you've changed your mind entirely?

Why am i not surprised?

it's great if you absolutely must have wireless. it's compromised elsewhere as a result. comparing chalk and cheese here as well. that guy was planning on running 30m of speaker cable from 1 end of the property to the next which isn't ideal. obviously a wireless solution in that situation would always make things a lot easier.

Django x2 · 14 May 2017 at 15:23

So I opted for two SONOS PLAY 1 speakers in stereo and I'm not disappointed. Very good stage and easily identifiable left and right signals. All I can say is, I'm glad I live in a detached house

nicknack35 · 14 May 2017 at 16:11

I was looking at the Sono's playbar and Sub i wasn't that impressed by it either went with the Dali Kubic One and the Dali E9F sub and so glad that i did very well made sounds better then the Sono's well to my ears it did love it

Skynet5 · 16 May 2017 at 22:37

I have sonos. Its not HiFi. But I have no complaints, and don't think it is at all expensive for what the eco system gives you.

I don't have the soundbar...as its a joke really...the product manager for that product item must have had some difficult times. I have a ysp-2700

If I had my time again I would probably go to bluesound, but I have no regrets.

Minstadave · 17 May 2017 at 02:19

The playbar was always hamstrung in terms of features even at release in 2014.

The fact the playbase has exactly the same features and no more 3 years later is laughable. I love my Sonos kit but they're not getting my money for either of those bits of kit.

Amp34 · 17 May 2017 at 04:20

Psycho Sonny said:
sonos is much like apple. your buying into an ecosystem. once you buy 1 you have to keep buying more. if you stay away then you can find better or cheaper options.

i think my tv's built in speakers are better than the soundbar. it didn't sound like £1400 worth of gear at all.

So ignoring the soundbar what about the rest of the systems?

The soundbar is a specific part of Sonos, a part that many people that have Sonos won't bother with.

I have several Sonos speakers as an example, but am not going to get a soundbar for my TV, I'll get a proper surround sound system.

There are at least eight different Sonos options to chose from, yet so far all you have talked about is the TV entertainment part.

For something similar I guess you could look into chrome cast, but personally I don't think it's as fluid and simple as Sonos.