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WiFi Speakers Not Wired for Sound


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I am looking for a retrofit system to allow me to play music in different rooms.

 

I'm not really an audio nerd - really want to avoid any major wiring, and need the capability to stream music / radio to selectable rooms.

 

This is not something I have considered before, so any comments are most welcome.

 

Cheers

 

Ferdinand

 

(Cliff Richard, eat your heart out. Really not sure about those pastel shade roller suits or Cliff's roller skills. Very 1981.)

 

Edited by Ferdinand
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Sonos all the way. Idiot proof, and child’s play, with one of the most robust platforms I’ve come across so far. 
Or, cheaper but coarser, something like a Lithe Bluetooth speaker, multiples of, but I’m not sure if these will network with one another.

@Barney12’s, largely Sonos, system will exfoliate you. Tres bien :) 

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As Nick has said you really can’t go wrong with Sonos. If you’re not an audio nerd then you’re unlikely to be disappointed by a Sonos One in each room. Relatively low cost and infinitely expandable. The gen 2 units have voice control builtIn (Google Assistant and Alexa) if that’s your bag. Even if it’s not then you’ll grow to love the simplicity of just asking it to play your favourite music or radio station when you walk into the room. 
 

Go buy yourself a Sonos One and try it. If you buy direct from Sonos you’ll get 100 days to try it and if you’re not happy send it back for a refund. 
 

As Nick eluded you can go “big” with Sonos. I have 5 central Amps, 3 subs, several standalone speakers and a 5.1 setup using a Soundbar, Play 3’s and Sub in the TV Room. In whole house mode cranked up you can “feel” the music and it’s not muffled, distorted crap either. The only slight draw back is that I have to go round and straighten all the pictures on the walls after an evening of dancing ??????

 

P.S. I’ve had the dubious honour of having dinner with Sir Cliff. After coffee he pulled out his acoustic and did a few renditions of his classics. My overriding memory is “bloody hell he’s thin”. ? The worse part was we had to drink his own wine from his Portuguese vineyard. It was not exactly great. I believe he’s flogged it now as it was something of a failure. 

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1 hour ago, Barney12 said:

. In whole house mode cranked up you can “feel” the music and it’s not muffled, distorted crap either. The only slight draw back is that I have to go round and straighten all the pictures on the walls after an evening of dancing ??????

 

 

For historical reasons the first tune will be the excruciating "Herbert". Cranked up won't quite work.

 

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

A supplementary question.

 

How does one integrate Sonos with say Alexa? Can an Alexa stream different things to different rooms?

 

Hopefully it is just plug and play, without the plug?

 

(This is an area of profound ignorance for me; have always been a speech radio World Service man. But now is a time to ring some changes.))

Edited by Ferdinand
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@Ferdinand depends which Sonos devices you have. The newer integrated speakers, like the Beam, have Alexa built in. 

Others you need to buy an Alexa echo or whatever they call them to pair with it, which should be relatively PnP (little plug, lots of play) 

 

To get started, in the Sonos app go to Settings >  Services > Voice - Add a service

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Full disclosure: I only bought into Sonos recently to try out, largely due to this thread, so still a novice and have not integrated voice control.

The Sonos Amp I bought is DOA and waiting for an RMA authorization to send back, so I'm hoping for some magic when it is replaced

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Thanks.

 

At this point I have nothing and an Amazon Prime subscription.

 

The Sonos Ikea stuff looks interesting, once I had recovered from the idea of £300 for 2 speakers as the low-cost end of the range.

 

My requirement is

 

1 - just to play music in 2-4 downstairs rooms, and probably have some variability.

 

When I started the thread, the idea was to have music where parts could be excluded if different people had different tastes.

 

2 - The ability to play 2 or more channels would be nice.

 

3 - Extendibility in future would be a nice-to-have.

 

Ferdinand

 

Edited by Ferdinand
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Yeah Sonos must be the best all round option to meet those three requirements.

I have avoided it due to the sticker shock and fear of buying into  premium priced lock in, but the IKEA collaboration went some way to address both those concerns. 

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On 03/12/2019 at 06:35, Ferdinand said:

 

How does one integrate Sonos with say Alexa? Can an Alexa stream different things to different rooms?

 

Interestingly it looks like Sonos recently acquired the leading independent, non-cloud dependent voice assistant tech company Snips. Not content with being about the only manufacturer to have both Alexa and Goog assistant integrated inside their devices, they're now rolling their own? Not all happy in the world of home automation though, be interesting to see which way it goes from here.

https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2019/12/03/sonos-shutting-down-local-voice-option-snips/

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  • 1 month later...

I just got an email from Sonos to say that from May a couple of my products will be classed as "legacy" and I can either "Trade Up" with a 30% discount or get no further support.  Apparently when you trade up they brick the old device.

 

Cheeky American rip-off b*******s!

 

Previous hi-fi lasted 25 years.

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8 minutes ago, Mr Punter said:

I just got an email from Sonos to say that from May a couple of my products will be classed as "legacy" and I can either "Trade Up" with a 30% discount or get no further support.  Apparently when you trade up they brick the old device.

 

Cheeky American rip-off b*******s!

 

Previous hi-fi lasted 25 years.

 

So they stop you from making any money back by selling them on? Top recycling by them

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Very glad I haven't got any amps fitted yet!

 

I really hate this idea of being blackmailed like this.  It's what puts me off companies like Apple and Microsoft - their stuff looks lovely and performs well, but the level of devotion that they require just isn't for me.  I recently got a new desktop as my old one from 2008 was in need of an upgrade and W10 installation but the new version of MS office and outlook hacked me right off when I found that the only way to get support on the product was by effectively signing up for an annual subscription.  I installed all the free equivalents from LibreOffice and Thunderbird email and they're working very nicely for my purposes. It's not that I don't want to pay for anything, it's that I'm not paying a whole heap of cash for something that won't get support (the one-off Office) or risk something disappearing into the ether if I no longer want to subscribe.

 

And, yes, the inability to recycle is awful.  I still have my 30 year old hifi which is just as well, because OH still plays his even older vinyl on it.

 

Grrrrr!

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