Anyone tried the new wireless speaker HiFi systems

Raptor Mike

Raptor Mike

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At the moment for music we use our panasonic home theater thats got an ipod dock with an iPod classic in it. The sound is great but themproblem is you have to put the tele on to access the iPod menu, and its a bit slow to load. We went into Currys on Thursday to look at HI-FIs and spotted the wireless multi room systems. You can send all your music from your phone or tablet etc to it via WiFi, also live streaming and web based radio.

So I did a little research and saw in a Panasonic video for the speakers they had a device sending music to their normal music system. So I looked it up

Am I right in saying that I can get this little box that I can can connect to my home theatre system and send my music to it from my tablet or phone?? It just seems too good to be true!!

 
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Friend has a Sanos system and it's great!

And generally speaking the Sanos is said to be the best.

The bit rate is a little low on most wireless systems (inc the Sanos) but you're unlikely to notice to be honest.
 
Buck said:
Search for Sonos. A far better system IMO.
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I was going to laugh at that suggestion until I looked at the 2nd link. IMO that Panasonic device (which basically converts a wifi stream to an RCA output) should be about 60 quid. At £200 it is right in Sonos money territory - and I honestly don't think anything of a similar price can compete with Sonos on quality and ease of use.

I have a mate who is well into bistreams and sample rates and stuff and he reckons Sonos delivers excellent quality. I just listen to music and have 4 Sonos components (used to be 5 but one died) and just love it. BTW my mate reckons a pair of Sonos 1s will give better sound quality than a Sonos 5 for a shade less money.
 
JonathanRyan said:
I was going to laugh at that suggestion until I looked at the 2nd link. IMO that Panasonic device (which basically converts a wifi stream to an RCA output) should be about 60 quid. At £200 it is right in Sonos money territory - and I honestly don't think anything of a similar price can compete with Sonos on quality and ease of use.

I have a mate who is well into bistreams and sample rates and stuff and he reckons Sonos delivers excellent quality. I just listen to music and have 4 Sonos components (used to be 5 but one died) and just love it. BTW my mate reckons a pair of Sonos 1s will give better sound quality than a Sonos 5 for a shade less money.
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^agree.

Mattyd said:
Friend has a Sonos system and it's great!

And generally speaking the Sanos is said to be the best.

The bit rate is a little low on most wireless systems (inc the Sonos) but you're unlikely to notice to be honest.
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There is a new lossless streaming service coming on line with Sonos as well. Good if your internet bandwidth can run it :)
 
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I have Sonos throughout out house. Not cheap but worth it. Plus when we move it only takes 5 mins to strip the house of its audio system.
 
tbh i would go sonos. You can get the connect and run your stereo through that and then buy the play 1 speakers for other rooms in the house. Tbh they are brilliant little speakers and i have 2 as a stereo pair and they are brilliant. I will get a 2nd play 3 tho at xmas and stereo pair that too any maybe get the sub too lol
 
If anybody is interested in Sonos then post a want ad in the classifieds (and send me a PM so I don't miss it). I have a Connect that I'd rather trade in for a 3. Sound is far better on the Connect (I run it through an amp with some nice MS speakers) but the 3 would be more useful to me.
 
One other thing. Panasonic uses something called ALLPLAY which means you can use any speakers that use ALLPLAY so you're not tied in to Panasonic. Is this the same with sonos?
 
Raptor Mike said:
Ahh found it. The connect connects to an amp, whereas you can use the connect amp as an amp and connect speakers directly to it. Obvious really lol
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'xactly ;)

IMO the best sound quality of all the boxes comes from the Connect because you can use your choice of amp. But the one in the Connect:Amp sounds nice enough to me.

Raptor Mike said:
One other thing. Panasonic uses something called ALLPLAY which means you can use any speakers that use ALLPLAY so you're not tied in to Panasonic. Is this the same with sonos?
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No. Once you get into the Sonos ecosystem you can only use Sonos components. I don't really know anything about Airplay speakers but in practice being tied to Sonos isn't a huge issue if you don't already have kit. The Play:1 starts at £169 and the cheapest Airplay speaker Google could find me in under 30s is about that.
 
Ah yes. The good thing about standards is we have so many to choose from :)

I know even less about Allplay than airplay ;)
 
Another vote for Sonos. To have 2 Sonos 3's, which can be used as separate units or paired for an excellent stereo unit. Great for playing music, using iphone, tablet, etc.

Just listening to "Hall & Oates" and they're sounding great :D
 
Raptor Mike said:
Can I ask you, can play music stored on you tablet/phones memory? Thanks for your help with this.
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Yes. Works with iDevices and all recent Android versions.

Note that you can't stream music downloaded from Google Play onto your phone to Sonos (it has to be d/l to a computer first - no I've no idea why, I guess DRM) but you can stream from Google Play / Amazon Cloud directly to Sonos anyway (i.e. stuff that isn't on your phone).

Buy a Sonos "soon" and you get a year of Deezer. I use it with a NAS containing all my owned music and a Spotify Pro subscription along with (free) TuneIn for radio and a free 8Tracks account. You can also now stream Soundcloud and pay for access to a whole bunch of other services. It's seldom I can think of a tune that I don't have access to.
 
JonathanRyan said:
Yes. Works with iDevices and all recent Android versions.

Note that you can't stream music downloaded from Google Play onto your phone to Sonos (it has to be d/l to a computer first - no I've no idea why, I guess DRM) but you can stream from Google Play / Amazon Cloud directly to Sonos anyway (i.e. stuff that isn't on your phone).

Buy a Sonos "soon" and you get a year of Deezer. I use it with a NAS containing all my owned music and a Spotify Pro subscription along with (free) TuneIn for radio and a free 8Tracks account. You can also now stream Soundcloud and pay for access to a whole bunch of other services. It's seldom I can think of a tune that I don't have access to.
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Sounds good. Thanks. I am researching it all on line too, I'm not being mlazy and just asking you guys lol. I read somewhere that you can't use music stored on your tablets memory or SD card. NAS is something else I'm going to look into when I get home from work today.

I have to admit the only thing putting me off the sonos is that it is only compatible with other sonos speakers. Although to be fair I'm really after the ability to send from my tablet more than multi room.
 
Raptor Mike said:
Sounds good. Thanks. I am researching it all on line too, I'm not being mlazy and just asking you guys lol. I read somewhere that you can't use music stored on your tablets memory or SD card. NAS is something else I'm going to look into when I get home from work today.

I have to admit the only thing putting me off the sonos is that it is only compatible with other sonos speakers. Although to be fair I'm really after the ability to send from my tablet more than multi room.
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Mike

Sonos isn't just compatible with Sonos speakers. You plug your choice of speakers into the rear of the Connect:Amp. For example, I have Bose on one set; one set of B&W; One set of Mordaunt-Short and two Blu-cube ceiling speakers! The beauty of the Connect or Connect:Amp is that it gives you the choice.
 
strumstrum said:
but Mike has mentioned being happy with his current system which is a home theatre system so why does he need the expense and space of the sonos and added speakers? a bluetooth adapter is all that is needed surely???
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Actually, if the amp has a line in then a bit of wire may be all that's required ;) I think the problem is that he has a "smart" dock which puts stuff up on the TV screen. A dumb bit of wire might be quicker.
 
strumstrum said:
are you meaning using the headphone out on the phone/ipod? this will result in a loss of audio quality.
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Yes I meant that. Does it degrade sound? I thought Apple has done some magic there. No appreciable difference in running my old iPod through a dock and directly through the headphone socket.
 
JonathanRyan said:
Yes I meant that. Does it degrade sound? I thought Apple has done some magic there. No appreciable difference in running my old iPod through a dock and directly through the headphone socket.
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that is a surprise, headphone jacks use a different voltage which will often mean you have to ramp up the volumes; but more importantly if you use the headphone jack you are not bypassing the devices audio chip so you have to question what is the point of a nice quality amp and speakers if you are letting an inferior signal pass through it. headphone jacks are for headphones, even the so called dual purpose line out/headphone ports reproduce a muddy sound and not as good as bypassing the chip altogether.
 
strumstrum said:
that is a surprise, headphone jacks use a different voltage which will often mean you have to ramp up the volumes; but more importantly if you use the headphone jack you are not bypassing the devices audio chip so you have to question what is the point of a nice quality amp and speakers if you are letting an inferior signal pass through it. headphone jacks are for headphones, even the so called dual purpose line out/headphone ports reproduce a muddy sound and not as good as bypassing the chip altogether.
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You're probably right. Thinking about it, the iPod we have set up like this is for the only area that isn't Sonos'd up. It's next to the rowing machine and only plays dance and rock at building shaking volume. Quality isn't the primary metric we use there ;)

I assume from what you're saying the the BT output should effectively be a line out rather than a headphone out.
 
JonathanRyan said:
You're probably right. Thinking about it, the iPod we have set up like this is for the only area that isn't Sonos'd up. It's next to the rowing machine and only plays dance and rock at building shaking volume. Quality isn't the primary metric we use there ;)

I assume from what you're saying the the BT output should effectively be a line out rather than a headphone out.
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yeah if we were talking cameras BT would be the RAW to the headphone jacks JPG...

@Raptor Mike just found this one gone cheaper, APTX codec too.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/...m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_r=1G29JE3KZT9MHRE6TEMP
 
Thanks for all the help guys.

Then reason for using the dock and not the headphone socket is so that I can select music using the home theatre remote. When I went to bed last night I did think about Bluetooth. There are USB sockets in the front and back of the unit, although I'm not sure what the connectivity and quality will be like.

The reason I mention about using other speakers other than sonos is because I wouldn't want to spend the earth on a speaker for the kitchen for example. Also it does seem like putting all your eggs in one basket, but thats the optimised in me lol. Also I read somewhere else again you can't use music stored on your device, but can only stream or use a nas. Is this right though. Although a I will probably end up with a NAS its not on the cards at the moment.

Multi room isn't a must but it seems this is the way things are going and when I by tech I like to get as up to date as I can afford.

I'm just gonna check all those links you've been kind enough to put up for me (y)
 
strumstrum said:
yeah if we were talking cameras BT would be the RAW to the headphone jacks JPG...

@Raptor Mike just found this one gone cheaper, APTX codec too.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/...m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_r=1G29JE3KZT9MHRE6TEMP
Click to expand...

I think I'm gonna give this a whirl. Multi room is defiantly the way to go but it all does seem a bit betamax vs vhs/blue ray vs hddvd at the moment what with so now, airplay, allplay etc.

Also I just wanna say thank you to all who've posted for your advice. :D
 
Raptor Mike said:
Also I read somewhere else again you can't use music stored on your device, but can only stream or use a nas. Is this right though.
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It's going to depend on the device's DRM. I.e. Sonos want you to play it ;) It's possible to have music on a device that some apps can't legally access. Usually it would "live" inside a DRM'd app (like Spotify offline or Audible - though I think both of those will stream).
 
I only have the one speaker but I love my Sonos :)
 
I noticed this bit:
'IMPROVED SEARCH ON MOBILE DEVICES (iOS AND ANDROID)

Easily find the music you love by searching across all of your sources, including tracks stored on your mobile device.'
 
Raptor Mike said:
I noticed this bit:
'IMPROVED SEARCH ON MOBILE DEVICES (iOS AND ANDROID)

Easily find the music you love by searching across all of your sources, including tracks stored on your mobile device.'
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Yeah - I've had that on Android for a while. Wish they would update the OS X client ;)

As the guy in the local hifi shop put it to me, you have to remember that Sonos aren't an audio company. They are a bunch of software engineers who outsourced the hardware to pretty decent audio firms (there are guesses over the trade press who makes designs for them - some big names are thought to be behind the playbar). At the end of the day, they do software and they do it pretty well.
 
Some of you may have seen I ordered the Sony dongle from the Amazon link above but it never came.

However I'm still on a mission to get this all sorted and something occurred to me. The problem with using the music on my tablet or phone is that it uses up a lot of memory but there is another way. Like I've said I have the iPod classic so if I can send the music wireless from that to the home theatre then I'm on a winner. Guess what, you can http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=sr_nr...lassic&ie=UTF8&qid=1419163555&rnid=1642204031

So when I've sorted another dongle this is the plan. Basicly the iPod would be like a music remote with a display on it. I'll let you know how I get on. Thanks for all the advice :)
 
Regarding music using up space, on phone or tablet, what I do is to use the Google Gmail music manager. Can have up to 20000 tracks sort and access them over the internet. Obviously no good, where you don't have an internet connection, but as I play most of my music at home it works great.
 
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