Sonos Play 1

I'm waiting for a Play:3 for the office. I've heard a Play:1 operating as a single unit and for what it was I thought it did a good job. The sound will vary a lot depending on placement. My plan is to make the Play:3 the start of a household and out building background music system. I'm not looking for a second system. We might even get a 1 for the garden.

Your plan is similar to the one I'm living with and now looking to develop further. I think the 'I'm not looking for a second system' comment resonates with many these days. Sometimes you use this stuff so much you might wonder if it is really the 'first system.' The interface is interstellar as I am sure you know.

I've had a Connect for years and a Play:5 for a couple of years. Looking to experiment with a stereo pairing of the Play:1's.

Would be interested to hear your experience with the Play:3 as I've not heard it either. Did you hear them paired?

I didn't hear a pair but I expect they would sound good. When you consider the performance for the outlay I don't think there's much to dislike, provided they stream smoothly. I will feed back on the 3. I'm not expecting miracles but am hoping to be pleasantly entertained. If they hook up and pull the files OK, I expect I will be. 

I had a tinker with the Play 1 in John Lewis, it sounded better than the small package would suggest.  I wish they did a battery version, it would be great in the bathroom.

We have a Play 5 in our study which we are very pleased with and Connects for Conservatory and Kitchen running into the Bose Lifestyle (sorry!) systems which make for pleasant and unobtrusive background music.  Also have a connect feeding into my NDX for QoBuz.

I think the Play 1's paired would give a single Play 5 a run for its money.

Harry, don't be concerned as to whether it will stream smoothly, it does, always. Before I was able to get my NDX wired I used an ethernet port on the Sonos connect into the NDX as a bridge, I could stream 24/96 using the wireless network of the Sonos even when other zones on the Sonos were active.

I'll be interested in learning how the Play 3 performs, I've never been so keen on the form factor/appearance of this one, but the price point is probably a good one as the Play 5 is quite a stretch if you want multiple units.

Richard

Do B&W make these as OEM units for Sonos ? The drivers, construction and size look very similar to the B&W MM1. 

I can see the similarities. However, I don't think there is overlap in the internals. The Sonos is less than half the price.

I wonder if Naim / Focal will get into this. Maybe an offering in various sizes up. Something smaller and bigger than the Focal Easya but with a DAC-V1 and NAP 100 built in.

Hoping to establish this but suspect you're right. The Play 1 pair won't have the range but the stereo separation will offer other compensation.

We have the B&W A5 and it has proved to be a PITA in some respects. It is well built and sounds good, depending on how and where you place it. The problem for me is it's dependency on Airplay. Getting a router which supports it seamlessly was more difficult than anticipated but this was a transient issue and was sorted some time back. Drop outs are not uncommon, even with it wired into a fully wired network. 

The next issue is how to play music back through it.The only app I could find to reliably control playback on PC is iTunes, which I'm not keen on. Because all our music is stored on NAS in WAV, either ripped by HDX, ripped on PC or downloaded, iTunes will not just see it and index it. I have to manually set up a link to every album. Cover art support is poor also. 

Latterly it's been living in a room where Helen likes to sit and fiddle art, knitting, etc. She uses it with her ever present iPod and for this use it works well and sounds very good. Still intermittently drops out though. 

My plan for 2014 was to get a Qute and small speakers in the office. But this is a financial sledgehammer for some background music. The Sonos solution appealed for outlay, convenience and the possibility of positioning unobtrusive units throughout the house, in the shed and in the gardens. 

Thank you for the reassurance Richard. This is encouraging. I should have it in the next two weeks and it could be the start of something more extensive.

Harry

That doesn't sound a good experience with the A5.

We bought our daughter a Pioneer X-SMC3 which is a slim FM radio, DNLA and Airplay client with an iPod dock.  We have found Airplay on this to be very reliable, even on a wireless connection.

Regarding Sonos you are aware that the first zone needs to be wired to the network or you can use the inexpensive bridge if this is not feasible?  From there on you can use wireless, range permitting.  

Richard

Sure thing Richard. The dealer was well clued up on this. I thought I would need a bridge to kick it off. However, my office unil will be wired, via a switch to my router, so it effectively acts as the bridge in the first instance and more units will use it as such.

When you start doing some focused research into the plethora of devices and systems that can do streaming, those which will actually lock on to a music network and stream from what you already have stored on something like a NAS are not too plentiful. The way the HDX tags (or doesn't) WAV files means that the Sonos controller software won't give a visually rich view, but it will show folders and at least it will see the files without my having to setup and configure it all over again, album by album. 

The A5 is a visual treat, solidly built, sounds very good, but for me was a pig to set up and remains a bit clunky playing back. I've suggested to Helen that she goes with something like an Arcam cube. But the convenience of just tapping an icon on her iPod and not having to remove it from its case and dock it, is for her a good enough facility compared to the occasional, brief drop out. It would drive me nuts. In fact it does drive me nuts.

Harry

It is a pain about the WAV library. Could you convert the library to FLAC and transcode?

Sonos can also access UPNP Servers, it is an option in the settings.  

I have this enabled and this may give a better experience, curiously I can't see that it is showing on an iPad but the Windows, Android and Sonos hardware controller does show it.

I've just started an album playing off my Asset UPNP Server this way and cover art comes through OK.

Sonos allows you to save the current queue as a Sonos Playlist so for frequently played music you could do this using the Windows Desktop controller and then access the music via Sonos Playlists which are accessible via the iPad.

Email me if you want further info on this.

Richard

Are Naim servers the only ones that see Naim-ripped WAV files with the metadata properly presented? I have wondered about Sonos, but would be put off if this is not the case.

Why would this be if the UnitiServe is a UPNP server and the Sonos is a UPNP client? Doesn't seem very universal.

Keith

I'm kinda wondering that myself keith. Andrew took me through it and it all looks straightforward.

Richard. Thank you. I appreciate your kindness. I did do a project a few months back, slicing off some of my music collection (copied obviously) and converting it to all the formats that iTunes could pass onto the A5 and that the A5 might be able to play without occasionally stuttering. I was hoping to get better setup and presentation in iTunes and if necessary I would have used a copy of the entire music collection in an appropriate format. It ground to a halt quite early because I could hear differences between formats, even when played through something as basic as an A5. Oversensitivity, over active imagination, just plain defective hearing - who knows? It was at that point I thought I would save for a Qute and some nice small speakers. It also gave me reason (other than guilt) to really clear out my office and get it properly organised. After that, I realised that building a second office system would cost similar to having background music distributed house wide. This is more appealing to me. If I get stuck I will take you up on your kind offer. Thanks again.

I believe if you get the album cover in each folder named as folder.jpg the tags are immaterial to seeing the album art in the Sonos software.

To do this, you can either copy/rename the cover image the HDX uses or locate cover images on the internet using one of several applications. Both can be completed as one operation with the right know-how but you may want to supervise the precise selection made with the latter. The former of the two would seem easiest.

Agreed. The issue was in presenting tags from the original WAV files to iTunes, which couldn't be done. I was prepared to copy my collection and retag where necessary but iTunes would still not use the folder.jpg convention. But the beard stroking stopped when other formats I tried sounded a bit thinner and more diffuse than WAV, even through the relatively humble A5. Probably OK for background music but still too much messing about in prospect. I believe the Sonos will play my original collection out of the box with *maybe* a bit less visual niceness. Won't be long until I find out.

I was gifted a Play 1 for Christmas (already have 2x Connect and Play 3 + son has Play 3 also). 

Play 1 has assumed radio/alarm duties at my bedside and small form factor makes it perfect in that role (if a little expensive). SQ more than good enough. 

Son hasn't taken his Play 3 back to college and I've been experimenting with a pair of Play 3's in our family room. They look nice and take up little space but cost is north of £500 now and I don't think the SQ is good enough (ALAC) for that money. Almost as space efficient and as good on the eye are Connect + Arcam R-Link + Focal XS Book, this combo produces a sound I could live with very happily for a long time for about £700. My plan is to retire my Connect + Music Cocoon + KEF Eggs in favour of this. Play 3 will go into the kitchen and replace Roberts radio. 

No drop outs ever and I bridge i-player into our Smart TV over the Sonos network without any problems. 

Olly

I can't figure out how to edit my last post but I meant Arcam SonLink DAC.

Olly

These are surprisingly good and Great value. the absolute blessing of sonos is the simplicity of set up flexiblity and spotify integration etc 

At £165 or or so sometimes with a free bridge it's a blinder

i went of course and got a linn DS. Whilst the sound was great the interface was so by comparison to sonos. I now use a Mac mini itunes /audioirvana with naim dac v1 and a sonos connect through optical for spotify

bloody great