Multi Room setup on the cheap.

orange_smurf

orange_smurf

orange_smurf

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Lo, looking for a muti room setup for listening to music in lounge, kitchen and bedroom. iPod dock would be nice. It's for family so I'm leaning towards an off the shelf solution. Sonos, B&W is too expensive. Cheaper the better.

Any ideas?
 
Well, without reference to a budget but presuming that £169 per room for Sonos Play:1's it too much, and presuming that your family would be none too impressed with a bunch of cobbled together components in some kind of Heath Robinson solution, then the next logical choice would be three Pure Jongo T2's at £80 per room. I mean it has to be a wireless speaker/receiver/player all-in-one just to keep the costs down.

Pure Jongo is cheap. But compared to Sonos you're sacrificing a lot of creature comforts that I think would make the Pure solution quite irritating after a while. For example, there's no support for playing your own music from PC or NAS; no Apple Lossless support, you can't access Spotify or any other 3rd party streaming services directly from the device but have to subscribe to the Jongo library instead. You can stream from a phone or tablet using Bluetooth, so you can access Spotify etc that way but Bluetooth only works to one speaker at a time which means you can't use the phone/tablet as a music source and have multiroom. There's also reports of gaps between tracks as the controller app sorts itself out in playlists. Speaking of which, you can't mix 'n' match sources in playlists. On the plus side though you do get a Line Input and a USB input. I'm not sure what they support or whether you can use them to port music to other Jongos in your multiroom setup though.

Sonos might be more money, but most of the above are not issues with their players. There's a broad range of file format support. Streaming direct from phones/tablets is there so you don't really need a dock. Sonos has very wide support for 3rd party streaming libraries and there's no issue streaming music from phone/tablet/NAS/PC/online to one/some/all speakers in any combination you wish. Sonos doesn't have it all its own way though. There's no physical line inputs and file support doesn't extend to high resolution audio files such as 24/96 or 24/192. There is support though for FLAC. Finally, you'll need either a direct Ethernet connection from one of the speakers to the house router or to purchase the £40 wireless bridge if cabling is not convenient. Oh, and it's more money. Personally though, I haven't any customers who have purchased Sonos and regretted it, even when it has been a bit of a stretch financially. They forget about that once they find out how easy the system is to use and live with. For what it does, it's unrivalled IMO, and worth the extra compared to any other multiroom system.
 
We're coming up to Christmas so I'd expect to see the Bridge's being given away with every speaker to be honest.
 
Minstadave said:
I think Sonos have done away with the need for a bridge now and can natively stream over wifi.
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It can stream direct, but there are some limitations. As far as a system based on Play:1's would be concerned, you'd lose the SonosNet repeater function.

What that means is that each speaker would talk to the router directly. Any speaker out of WiFi range or in a black spot would then lose signal. That's rarely been a problem with the SonosNet connected topology because each speaker connects to its nearest neighbours as well as the bridge. If one speaker is out of direct range of the bridge then one of the other speakers acts as a repeater. This mesh network is far more robust.

The existing bridge is still available going forward. I've got them on promo for £30. There's also a high power version called boost which retails for £79.

The current Sonos sponsored promo is 12 months of Deezer Premium+ for free with any player*. The normal subscription rate is £9.99/month. This promo is slated to run until Dec 31st. The standard Wireless Bridge is being bundled free with PlayBar + Sub packages.

Given that the wireless bridge may or may not be needed depending on the room/house layout, and the fact that there's a promo worth over £100 already in place and slated to run until the end of the year, and the popularity of Sonos accounting for something like 60% of all wireless player sales, I wonder if Sonos really need to throw any more promotion at products with a starting retail price of £169, especially in the run up to the busiest sales months of the year.


* "Player" means Play:1, Play:3, Play:5, PlayBar, Connect or Connect: Amp
 
I've not seen any "proper" multiroom setup that's cheaper than running a Sonos Play:1 in each room and buying a £30 Sonos Bridge. Everything cheaper has too many compromises in my view.

If you're on a budget start with 2 rooms then add more as you have the spare cash rather than waste money on something cheaper.
 
as much as i dont love apple i would pick airplay stuff. granted it forces ios use and itunes but its cheaper than sonos plus you get a bit of choice in speakers. sonos locks you into their stuff and to an extent their own speakers. that i do not like.
 
mark2410 said:
as much as i dont love apple i would pick airplay stuff. granted it forces ios use and itunes but its cheaper than sonos plus you get a bit of choice in speakers. sonos locks you into their stuff and to an extent their own speakers. that i do not like.
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Hmmm.... not sure how substituting Apple for Sonos qualifies as being less "locked in", particularly when the choice of streaming sources gets cut down to "Apple's way or the highway".

Although multiple Airport Expresses can be used at the same time, I'm not convinced that it qualifies as a fully fledged multi-room system. What I can't quite see though is the value angle. Airport Express needs either an amp + speaker or an active speaker to work. Some will suggest a £25 T amp and some budget bookshelf speakers like Diamonds, but once the Airport Express is included the cost mounts up and the "system" looks a bit crappy. A half-decent pair of active speakers is going to be £60, and with the Apple box a total of £140. Unless I'm missing some important feature with the Apple it just seems like a lot of compromise for not much saving. :(
 
its slightly less locked in, in that there are a variety of companies that make airplay compatible speakers.

im not saying its a totally free and open system, its apple so of course its not but you get more options than with sonos.
 
mark2410 said:
its slightly less locked in, in that there are a variety of companies that make airplay compatible speakers.

im not saying its a totally free and open system, its apple so of course its not but you get more options than with sonos.
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I can see from the point of view of the number of manufacturers. But would a bunch of Airplay speakers work seamlessly as a multi-room system? My understanding is that Apple restricts the way Airplay works with 3rd party devices so it's limited to a single connection at a time.

There's a 3rd party app workaround, but the source is then limited to an iPhone. That's not ideal if the family hasn't iPhones already or doesn't want to dedicate one just to running the music system. The other workaround needs a dedicated Mac computer. That makes even less sense if there isn't already one in the house.

Maybe it's me, but any attempt to fudge a "cheap" multi-room system just looks like a whole bunch of messy compromises when there's already an extremely effective solution ready to use. When the alternatives are evaluated and costed it turns out that the Play:1 system is actually pretty good value. I suppose it's only natural to rail against the market leader. Quite a few have had a good at taking the crown, but no company seems yet beaten Sonos at their own game.
 
i will confess i have not heard of any such restrictions but from apple, i could see them doing that just to be awkward.

my real beaf with sonos is that their amp and their dac units are so prohibitively expensive and i can see absolutely no reason why other than to make people say, may as well spend an extra £20 and get the speaker. i find companies that do such things offensive and exploitative.

but they and apple are really the only games in town, so the proverbial rock and a hard place.
 
Hi, I've been away from my PC so I've been unable to come back to this thread. I wasnt expecting so many responses so thanks for that.

To give you some detail, this is for my sister who has recently got herself on the property ladder. As you would expect her budget has been blown on fancy wallpaper and furnishings and she's left little for AV.....hence my reason for looking at a cheaper option.

Until broadband is installed I'm not sure how good WiFi coverage will be... so for now her ipod will be the primary source of music. I've picked out a Sony TV with free soundbar. Hopefully the sound output will be ok for music in the lounge. In the kitchen, a Sony ipod dock will do at £70.

In the long term the choice will be Sonos as recommended. Music will be moved to a Twonky media server connected to router. Sonos Play:1 will be installed in the bedroom and kitchen. There's no room for a seperate Hifi so Sonos Play:5 will be fine for the Lounge if music is a pain to access via the Sony TV. Hopefully that will keep her happy.

The current deal with Deezer subsription is not really appealing so I will wait for another bundle as there's no reason to rush but I might get her a Sonos Play:1 for xmas to start her off!
 
Managed to pick up the Play 1 in the Littleewoods misprice, just under £100. Turned up today, lovely bit of kit. Got the Play 5 coming later this week.
 
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