Appletell | Apple, Mac, iPhone, iPod | News, Rumors, Reviews, How-Tos

Provides: Wired/Wireless music streaming
Developer: Sonos
Minimum Requirements: Mac OS X v10.4 or later, iPhone 3G or 3GS running OS 2.2 or later (optional)
Price: $399 for the ZonePlayer S5, $99 for the ZoneBridge (optional)
Availability: Now

Sonos is a company that has been making a lot of great products lately, and the recently announced and released ZonePlayer S5 wireless music system is no exception. A nice addition to their lineup of speakers and audio streaming devices, this product comes in a simple, one unit form factor. And while Sonos does sell other speaker systems and hardware remotes for their units, this product can also be controlled through a free iPhone application, making it fit in even more perfectly to your lifestyle. This device is meant to simply be placed in a room, quickly set up, and then used to stream the user’s audio from its source to that room (or rooms). The best part? That’s exactly what it does.

Setup

The initial unboxing of the unit reminded me somewhat of opening a new Apple product. It comes in very simplistic packaging and contains straightforward and simple documentation that walks you through exactly how to get it set up and streaming. The steps are as simple as the design (which we’ll get to later), and it only took me about five minutes to get the whole thing running. With what this product is capable of, I was expecting spending quite a bit of time going through various router and file sharing settings, but that’s not at all how it was. It just worked. All that’s required is:

1. Plug in any ZonePlayers or ZoneBridges to the appropriate wall outlets or Ethernet ports.
2. Place the ZonePlayer in the selected room.
3. Install the included software (which runs on Macs or PCs). This was about 80MB in size and took only about 3 minutes on my MacBook Pro.
4. Add a Sonos controller whether it be your iPhone or Sonos Controller.

As I said, getting the whole thing up and running was not stressful at all; the software you install on your computer walks you through it step by step. The ZonePlayer itself can be plugged into your router if you want the music in the room with the router. However, if you want it in a separate room, you will also need to purchase a ZoneBridge ($99.00), which simply plugs into your router instead of the speaker. To get these connected to one another as well as to the computer from which the music will be streaming, all you do is press the button on top of the ZoneBridge and the two buttons on top of the ZonePlayer. It’s literally that easy, and the software walks you right through it. The only downside to the way it connects is that if you decide to unplug the ZonePlayer to move it to a different room, you will have to set it up again through either the iPhone or computer. However, all that requires is pushing the two buttons on top again, so it’s extremely quick and painless.

Mac Application

The Sonos Desktop Controller is installed through the CD that comes with the product. It is responsible for the initial setup and connection with the Sonos ZonePlayer and ZoneBridge as well as interacting with your audio, at first. When you add speakers, you select the “zone” (room) that they are in to differentiate them from other ZonePlayers you may also have. These appear along the left hand side of the software. Next to that are the typical music controls and displays such as the album art, song progress, play/pause/volume, as well as the song metadata. However, below that is where the software is different from players such as iTunes.

In order to play music through this app, you must set up a queue. To do this, you first must point the application to where your music is, which is easily done during the initial setup. After it indexes for a minute or so, the music appears in a drawer type view along the right side. It is organized in a way similar to iTunes and allows you to navigate by album, artist, etc., and even search. Yet I would have to say that this part of the software could be more streamlined. When you find the audio you want, you add it to the queue via a button on the bottom. While at first it appears as if you’ll have to individually drag each song into the queue to play music, that’s not true. You can simply drag “All Tracks” to a queue, put it on shuffle, and enjoy it as if it were coming from iTunes. Much like playlists in iTunes, the queues can be saved for later in case you have different ones for different parties, etc., in your house. If you add music to iTunes, you then must update the index in the application for it to appear, which only takes about a minute.

If you are playing audio from your computer’s hard drive through the Mac application, it must be awake in order for the Sonos to be able to access the audio. If the computer is asleep, you can still stream radio and services such as Pandora via the iPhone application, but it will tell you that the file can’t be found if you try to stream audio from your music library. To resolve this, you can either set your computer to never go asleep or download an application such as Caffeine.

The Sonos ZonePlayer also allows you to stream radio stations over the internet. These radio stations can come from anywhere, but there is also the ability to search for your local stations. I was able to find a lot of stations I know from around my area, so I would assume they have access to quite a bit of radio stations. If you don’t care whether the station is local, you can also simply search through the stations by category (country, rap, etc.) or type (talk, sports, etc.).

Lastly, the Sonos also lets you stream music through various music services if you register the product as being in the U.S. This will give you access to websites such as Pandora, Napster, Rhapsody, and SIRIUS. While some of these cost money, others—like Pandora—are free. For a service such as Pandora, you simply select the service, enter your log-in information, and then enjoy a list of music similar to one of the artists or tracks you entered. It’s a great service to check out if you are into music and looking for new bands, and the Sonos player makes it easy to do so.

iPhone Application

While Sonos does offer their own hardware for controlling their devices, you can also download their App Store application. This free, 6.8MB application is compatible with both the iPhone and iPod Touch provided they’re running iPhone OS 2.2 or later. Much like the Mac app, the initial launch of this application will have you connect to the various pieces of hardware in the same simplistic manner. From there, you simply begin controlling your music seamlessly.

The iPhone also lets the user control the speakers room by room by simply selecting a zone. From there, the interface looks somewhat like the iPod.app that comes with every Apple iPhone or iPod Touch. You control the music and volume along the bottom as expected and get the same album art you would through iTunes. However, the iPhone application not only allows you to stream your iTunes library, but it can connect to radio stations through the Internet as well. Using various tables with categories and stations, it’s very easy to find the station that appeals to what kind of music you like. This part of the application is very similar to the radio options on the Mac app. As with everything involved with this product, everything in the app worked seamlessly as well.

The iPhone application also allows you to set up alarms to wake you up in the morning. These alarms, much like those of the built in Clock.app, give you the ability to change what music plays, when it plays, and how frequently it goes off. It also allows you set the volume on a per alarm basis. Believe me, if you’re a heavy sleeper, putting the ZonePlayer S5 on its highest volume would undoubtedly wake you up. And maybe even your neighbors.

Design

The design of these products fit right in with the design Apple uses and has been stressed a lot in this review: simplicity (see the first image in the review). The ZonePlayer S5 is one large unit that comes with two ethernet ports, a line in, and a power plug in the back. The whole face of the product is a speaker. The only buttons present on the device (which would may Steve Jobs happy) are a mute button and volume control on the top. As I mentioned earlier, these are used when connecting the device and also if you don’t want to open the iPhone or Mac app to adjust volume.

Furthermore, if you are using a ZoneBridge to achieve the wireless aspect, it also uses a minimal amount of space. Smaller than a Mac Mini, it has two ethernet ports and a power outlet on the back. This product only has one button, though, which is only pressed once during setup of it. As I mentioned earlier, this is simply plugged into your router to allow wireless streaming of your audio. Other than that, you can place it out of the way with wherever your router may be.

Overall Thoughts

This product is outstanding. The packaging was as simplistic as the setup and use of the device. The audio that came from it was just as good as any other speakers I’ve used, if not better. And as they say, it really did fill the whole room with high quality music. I don’t have any complaints whatsoever about the hardware, but there were a few things I thought could be added to the software. For instance, it would be nice to see a menu bar element added to control the music to make using various Spaces on Mac OS X easier. However, part of this is also that the F keys for controlling music on Mac keyboards don’t integrate with the software. This means that to play or pause it, you have to go to the app itself and click the button as opposed to simply hitting the keyboard keys as I’ve grown so used to with iTunes. I’m sure there’s a way to get them to map, but I didn’t see any way to do it with the Sonos software.

While that alone wouldn’t stop me from telling someone to not get this product, the price may. Each Sonos ZonePlayer S5 is $399.00 alone, and the ZoneBridge to enable it to be wireless is $99.00. This is certainly worth it for the quality of hardware, but it isn’t exactly a small purchase. That said, it is also much cheaper than other ways of getting audio throughout your house, and it integrates more easily with your existing products (iPhone, Mac) than competing products may. I doubt you could find any other way of wirelessly streaming music throughout your house that is this easy and fun.