Sonos BU80 Network Streamer @ [H] Consumer

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Chris_Morley

Former [H] Consumer Managing Ed.
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[H] Consumer takes a look at high end components from Sonos, but is the performance worth the price tag?

Relatively new to the technology stage, wireless media streamers have thus far been plagued by complicated set-up procedures, lack of support for various popular audio codecs, and uninspiring performance. Yet, the market appeal is undeniable—you’ve spent countless hours ripping CD’s to your hard drive, wouldn’t it be nice to enjoy the convenience of having your entire music collection at your fingertips on a device other than your personal mp3 player?
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Read all about it here!
 
Hi there,

Been there making my homework on such products to make a smart buy the past three or four months and finaly get a Squeezobox v.3
The Sonos look good but as you stated in the review is far from delivering what its marketed team say about the product, also you have to keep in mind that not every buyer out there is tech savvy enaught to address out all the glitches you have to go trought.

So, do your homework before buying a sistem like this. I tell you go for a Squeezebox v3 to acomplish an excelent audio experience, and excelent user experience, excelent support, widely OS support, but dont take my word do your research, maybe what is good for meisn't for you.

Regards.
SZP
 
While a thorough review of the Sonos hardware, I thought that some of your issues were a bit out of line.

First, you say that there was that initial problem of not getting the second zone player located. It was about 75 feet away through walls and HVAC. Considering that the users guide states it has a maximum range of about 100ft, it's not surprising that through all that it couldn't connect. The same goes for the 30 seconds of dead air you experienced. You shouldn't hold you choices of test location against the Sonos.

When you do your listening test, you say that you used lossless compression. If you are using lossless compression, and then piping it out digitally to the receiver, there should really be little/no perceptible difference in sound, since the waveforms should not be tampered with inside the sonos as it is not amplifying the sound. I know you rate it well for sound quality in the end, but the review seems to say that the Sonos is decreasing the quality of the sound itself, when through digital transmission, it would be doing no such thing.

"...if the user plays a single track, the player will not automatically play the next song on the album, and there doesn’t seem to be a way to change this."
Of course it does not play the next song. Sonos is a queue-based system. Changing how this works would be alot of fluff work. If you don't want to deal with navigating the folder-view and its enqueuing limitations, you should tag your music.

Finally, in the 'Bottom Line' section of the review, you say: "But with additional ZonePlayers costing $350 a pop, the price could easily jump into the $2000-$3000+"; as if that is a large sum of money compared to "a wired whole-house music system". For $3000, one could buy 4 ZP-100s with speakers (I know it's not a digital connection to the speakers...) and have 2 controllers. While some people's houses need more than 4 zones, and 2 controllers, I can't imagine a wired system of that size going for less than that price, especially when you consider that a wired system probably does not have an iterface like the CR100 controller. Most wired systems still need to have music 'pushed' to them (you select source on the system and then hit play on whatever device you want to listen to, like a computer or iPod) rather than having the system 'pull' the music from the sources you make available to it.

I would suggest looking at the Sonos forums (http://forums.sonos.com/index.php ) to get a considerably broader view of all the ups and downs of owning (and using) a Sonos.
 
From the listening experiences described in the review I suspect that the D/A converters and/or other analog output components on the receivers are sub-par. Degraded sound quality was experienced with all source material, both compressed and lossless audio formats. AAC@320kbps actually sounds so good it's difficult to distinguish from lossless even with studio monitors, and should be more than sufficient for "normal" home audio, although the source format itself (CD-audio 16-bit/44.1kHz) leaves a lot to be desired. Hence, given that the digital transmission is flawless, it is likely the Sonos output stages are the weak links... sacrificed for design and looks... not acceptable, the score could have been even lower than 7.
 
A few things about this review surprised me, being as I setup an entire 6 zone system in my house in <20 minutes, most of which was plugging it into the wall and connecting speakers. I really don't see how the setup could be any easier. Honestly, if you have difficulty setting up a Sonos you should probably stay *FAR* away from a computer. All the other systems out there are either way more complicated or require you to be in front of your computer to change the music.

Couple of things:

1.You cannot blame Sonos if a piece of software is blocking the file sharing ports on your computer. For that problem you should call Zone alarm and ask them why their port forwarding is not working.
2. I am surprised it took you 90 minutes to disable zone alarm and move a zone player from one room to another. If you called their tech support you would discover that they are not only helpful, but extremely tech savvy and can dial right into your PC/Mac and fix it before your eyes. Voila!
3. If you are having issues with the wireless, did you try changing the channel on the system? I switched mine from channel 1 to 11 and it ran much faster. It was probably interfering with your wireless router; after all, all these wireless devices operate at either 2.4 or 5.8Ghz.
4. You didn’t mention the zone linking or any of the really cool features of the system, like that fact that the controller is water resistant (which is SO important for parties).
5. You mention that removing your laptop from the network broke the pointer for that particular file share…duh?

I dunno, just seems like if you are going to give a system a “terrible” rating for ease of setup you better have some pretty good reasons. If it would not connect from your bedroom then why would you expect it to start working when you moved it back there without changing anything? (not even your wireless channel)
 
It seems like for Joe Consumer, this is a good idea


but it seems like enthusiasts could do better
 
I think you were being way to nice giving this product a 7. any product that has to frequently be moved from its permanent destination to be resynched (The bedroom unit) then the product is useless. How many calls from the wife would you take where it starts out. "Honey the radio in the bedroom isn't working". Do you try to to walk her thru carrying it to another room and then messing with the software to synch it backup. If WAF factor is 0 then the product is useless and will most likely endup as an expensive peice of crap stored in a box.

For a grand I would rather build a couple MCE boxes and have a lot more capabilities.

Thanks for the review.
 
zan780 said:
Honestly, if you have difficulty setting up a Sonos you should probably stay *FAR* away from a computer.
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That was wholly unnecessary and extremely insulting.
 
any product that has to frequently be moved from its permanent destination to be resynched (The bedroom unit) then the product is useless.
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The only reason the product needed to be moved was because it was out of range. Since the bedroom unit could not originally be 'seen' by the wired unit, it would stand to reason that putting the unit back into the bedroom after the inital connection with both units in the same room would be unsafe for the network's stability.

As I said before, you shouldn't blame the Sonos for your choice of test locations.
 
philstyle said:
As I said before, you shouldn't blame the Sonos for your choice of test locations.
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Test location? It was a bedroom right. How more real world can you get than testing in a house where I assume you would use such a device and most likely have a bedroom. Krikies. Three griefers on two threads today.
 
While I'm sympothetic of the reviewer's problems, this is the only bad review I have ever read concerning Sonos. There are a lot of heated threads concerning Sonos and its competitors like the Squeezebox, but I do think something was missed in this review. If 75 ft is too far, then it is too far, that is a limitation being on its own network, but do you take into consideration that it is using Mesh networking? So if you were in a real world situation, you probably wouldn't have a receiver in your bedroom, (at least I don't ;) ), so you would have an amplified ZonePlayer there and maybe put the ZP80's elsewhere. What I'm saying is that you're not limited to one access point. You can put ten of these things across 500ft and maintain control over your music. What else can do that?

Next, the scroll wheel isn't good on the handheld? Compared to what? The iPod? You mean the technology that is patented by the Apple Corp that NO ONE will ever copy without the fear of being serial crushed by Apple? Be serious, it uses a different technology, while not as good, is far from bad. Being an iPod and Sonos owner, it took some time to learn the handheld, but I was able to get used to it and love it. Not to mention, compare it to any other controller on the market for this type of system.

I feel that the reviewer also missed some of the highlights of the product, like the ability to play the same song at the same time without a hiccup. I haven't seen a single setup that can do that as of yet. No airports, no multiple PC's, or anything else that I see suggested. It never becomes out of psync, ever, period. It also supports every major file format except WMA Lossless.

I'm not here to bash, and I may be biased as I own the product, but I felt that the review was biased against the product and felt the need to post. Why didn't you call their support? Why didn't you check their online FAQ on setting up your firewall with Sonos? I would think that part of the review would be calling their support line to test it. Isn't that what you do when you test out your consumer computers and whatnot?

How about this. Take all the competitors and review them along side Sonos and tell me what you think. I find it hard to believe you will rate it "substandard" at that point. At the same time, call their support lines, and hit up their forums.

Thanks for reading.

-RK
 
Seems a little wordy and technical for a "consumer" minded review.
 
rayman2k2 said:
It seems like for Joe Consumer, this is a good idea


but it seems like enthusiasts could do better
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What else is out there for an "enthusiast"? I'm looking for a whole house audio solution and Sonos seems like the best fit for me. I have yet to find a product that will give you the kind of control that Sonos offers. I could build a couple of media PCs, but how do I control them? The Sonos remote is perfect since it will gives you a display of what you're looking for. I'd gladly consider something else because the price of Sonos is a bit spendy, but I need a direction to look in...
 
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