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How the other half lives

raysablade said:
I've been going out with and then married to my wife since we were 19, that's 31 years.

In all that time I've bought every bit of audio equipment we've listened to, apart from one and soon three.

Initially it was me who fancied a Sonos for casual listening in the kitchen and so I bought one. I put the app on her Ipad just in case she wanted to use it too and thought I could forget about it. Since then a she's asked for, and paid for, a Sonos connect for the front room, which is plugged into my Naim System and she is now planning to buy a Sonos 3 for the Bedroom and another for the room where she does her work.

Illustrates a lesson I learned a long time ago at work, that for 95% of people good technology all about the user interface.

It also shows that that if your focus is on music rather than sound, an infinite jukebox, via Spotify, is a wonderful and valuable thing.

Its interesting that whilst all this stuff has been available on her mac and her later Ipad for years she was happy to stick to her radio. I guess the Sonos trick is to make some a hideously complex technology look like a radio and then build the UI into the Ipad, the one piece of technology she understands completely and loves.
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Is the Sonos stuff easy to set-up and keep working as well? If they've mastered that as well as the usability that really is something.

I'm tech support is my household and there are some days when I really could do without having to deal with the phone is not working, the Sky box is not working, the wifi is down, iPlayer on the TV is not working, etc :)
 
On reflection the point of my original post is that whilst in sound quality terms, Sonos is good but run of the mill, they have an innovation that persuaded my wife to spend hundreds of pounds of her own money.

Quite an achievement when she's an accountant and the functionality was effectively already available on: her ipad, the TV, and her phone. What sold her is that it always works and Sonos have developed a UI that she is happy to use to (re) discover music.

Before this she was content but clearly not as happy with BBC radios 2,3,4 & 5.

I'd have thought that there is a lesson for the industry somewhere in this.
 
raysablade said:
On reflection the point of my original post is that whilst in sound quality terms, Sonos is good but run of the mill, they have an innovation that persuaded my wife to spend hundreds of pounds of her own money.

Quite an achievement when she's an accountant and the functionality was effectively already available on: her ipad, the TV, and her phone. What sold her is that it always works and Sonos have developed a UI that she is happy to use to (re) discover music.

Before this she was content but clearly not as happy with BBC radios 2,3,4 & 5.

I'd have thought that there is a lesson for the industry somewhere in this.
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Absolutely - though for a lot of enthusiasts I think part of the enjoyment we get is from getting the most out of stuff that does not have the Sonos level of usability. Something that you just get out of the box, plug in and use takes away all that fun!
 
raysablade said:
What sold her is that it always works and Sonos have developed a UI that she is happy to use to (re) discover music.

I'd have thought that there is a lesson for the industry somewhere in this.
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Naim should be in that list. When I bought a Qute I was shocked at how awful their ipad app was, in the end I plugged the Sonos into the Qute and just used it as a DAC and used the sonos app instead.

I had:

Vortexbox server > Wired LAN > Sonos ZP90 > Coax > Unitiqute

and it did sound very good.
 
Really? I love the Naim iPad app. Took a day or so to adjust, but I think it's excellent, especially the info button that gives artist and album info.
 
thebiglebowski said:
I have heard a mod'd ZP90 and it does sound a lot better but nowhere near £1000 better. As soon as they release an update to support 24/96 I'll buy one again. The hardware in the newer Connects does support 24/96 it's just the firmware that doesn't and apparently Sonos say that their users aren't audiophile enough to really need 24/96 so they haven't got any short term plans to support it.
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I have the Wyered for Sound (formerly Cullen Circuits) modded ZP 90 myself: http://www.wyred4sound.com/webapps/p/74030/117839/539960. At $890 Its approximately double the price of the stock ZP90. I dont think this price is unreasonable.
 
That looks a lot cheaper than it used to be, I think they've rolled the mods into one and dropped the price a lot.
 
thebiglebowski said:
That looks a lot cheaper than it used to be, I think they've rolled the mods into one and dropped the price a lot.
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Just looked up what I paid in september 2010 and it was $989 for the modded ZP90 plus a stock Sonos bridge. As far as I know there were never any different levels of mods from Cullen, so perhaps you are thinking of another modding company.
 
andrewd said:
Just looked up what I paid in september 2010 and it was $989 for the modded ZP90 plus a stock Sonos bridge. As far as I know there were never any different levels of mods from Cullen, so perhaps you are thinking of another modding company.
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Audiocom maybe? I don't think they do the mods anymore.
 
Think I was fidelity audio although there were two companies doing them at the same time, audiocom may have been the other.
 
I took my, then, GF to one of the hifi shows back in '83-'84. We wandered around and ended up in the Syrinx room...LP12-syrinx-something-Isobariks. She said, "I want some of those". We used my married man's tax rebate to buy our first pair, and later on she decided that we had to go active ( we still have them - electronic by Linn). Later still, she decided that we needed a 50" TV and a Meridian digital active surround system. She recently granted me permission to purchase a modest Naim system for my new study.....with the proviso that I fit out the kitchen with a "good" sound system - will probably be a Meridian 100 series driving Kans.

Moral of this story - marry an engineer with a fine LP collection!
 
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