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Technology news and Jobs 
Fuzzy Logic Sonos upgrades music experience in home
Fuzzy Logic Sonos upgrades music experience in home | Sonos upgrades music experience in home |
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| by Alex Zaharov-Reutt | |
| Thursday, 25 October 2007 | |
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Part of the appeal of Sonos has been their wireless network setup that gets configured by pressing one button on each device, and the Sonos player itself which comes complete with iPod-style click wheel, large screen and minimal buttons. Now Sonos have upgraded their music player’s software to version 2.5, giving users the ability to link into the Napster music store, offering access to over 5 million songs for a US $9.95 per month rental fee, while also, for the first time, allowing users to quickly search through that library for specific songs. Previously no search tool was included, forcing users to scroll through lists of artists and albums. Now the search feature lets users type in any song name, artist name, album name etc and much more quickly find the track they are looking for out of millions of choices. Napster’s music library also includes access to Sirius satellite radio, as well as a plethora of commercial free Napster radio stations, playlists, automatic playlist creators based on your favourite music styles and plenty more – the smarts behind intelligently organizing playlists from millions of tracks are as up to date as they’ve ever been, giving music lovers an incredible instant library of any music they want to hear for that US $9.95 monthly rental fee. The 2.5 version of Sonos software features other improvements, including the ability to work with Microsoft’s upcoming ‘Windows Home Server’, as well as Wi-Fi networks using Apple’s Airport Extreme hardware. Sonos have also launched the ZonePlayer 100, which retails for US $99. As Sonos uses standard 2.4Ghz Wi-Fi wireless to send music wirelessly to different rooms of the house, one issue for some owners, especially those with large homes or walls that make it difficult for a Wi-Fi signal to pass, occasionally some rooms wouldn’t feature perfect wireless coverage. This made it difficult – and expensive – for users to force a better wireless signal in different parts of the house, but the ZonePlayer 100 fixes this by acting as a wireless bridge, boosting the signal in weak wireless zones to eliminate the wireless deadspot problem, at an inexpensive $99 price. Sonos has never been compatible with music purchased with DRM from the iTunes store, as you’d expect, but especially now that DRM-free music can be legally purchased whether on CD or from iTunes or Amazon, this is a very minor problem. Sonos have created an affordable multi-room wireless music system that has just gotten better thanks to a great software and hardware upgrade – if you’re looking for multi-room music, Sonos should be on your list of solutions to consider.
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