Sonos + Rhapsody = Crazy Delicious
A few years ago, I was pretty excited to pick up my first Apple Airport Express, so I could start streaming music from iTunes straight into my stereo system at home, instead of through my tiny laptop speakers. I liked it so much, I picked up a second Airport Express and a cheap bookshelf stereo system so I could also stream music into my office. I like to listen to music while I work, but headphones distract me, and for reasons that are best left to the realm of Weird and Irrational Artist Ooga Booga™, I need to have music come from some place other than my computer or desk, and the Airport Express was perfect for this.
The system served me well for a very long time. I added a nifty app called Airfoil to my Mac, which enabled me to take any audio source from my computer and stream it to an Airport Express, so I could listen to my favorites at Magnatune.com, as well as some online radio stations that only had web-based players like KROQ of the 80s. I could also take my last.fm player or Pandora, and stream them. Then, about 8 months ago, something went all hinky (that’s a technical term) with the airport card in my Macbook, and streaming music was like watching anything in the realplayer circa 1997: buffering … buffering … buffering … and now we’re crashing.
Sonos: Decidedly Not Hinky
I went on a quest for an alternative, and ended up with the Sonos Multi-Room Music System. Sonos is, as the product description implies, a system that makes it easy to stream music all over your house. You do this by defining zones (living room, kitchen, office, bedroom, etc.) and attaching a Sonos player to each one. Once you’re set up, you can stream different content to each zone, or link them all together for something called Party Mode (woo). This lets the damn kids in your house listen to whatever it is the damn kids today listen to out in the living room, while you listen to something sensible in your office while you work, like The Circle Jerks. It’s almost as easy to set up as the Netflix Player from Roku, and the controller software for the iPhone/iPod Touch is really slick.
Sonos accomplished all the tasks I missed from Airport + Airfoil, plus it gave me access to about 25,000 online radio stations from all over the world, searchable by country, genre, and even by program. You obviously don’t need a Sonos to listen to all those stations because they’re already online, but the interface makes it as easy to search the entire planet for a station as it is to spin the dial on your car stereo during your morning commute; there’s something outrageously cool about listening to a classic rock station from Japan and then tuning into a local music show from a former Eastern Bloc country while you’re waiting for the Joe Frank show to start.
Sonos also seamlessly integrates support for major online music services, like Pandora and Last.fm (bonus feature: it’ll scrobble eveything you play, if you want it to, increasing the relevance of your recommended stations quite a bit), as well as Napster and Rhapsody. I was curious about Rhapsody, because my friend John Scalzi has been praising it incessantly since digital watches were a pretty neat idea. I activated the 30 day free trial, and I haven’t looked back. I’m sorry I ever doubted you, John, because Rhapsody is awesome, and Rhapsody + Sonos changed the way I listened to music at home, even more so than when I discovered Pandora, or bought my first Slacker Media Player.
Rhapsody, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Yacht Rock
If you’re like I was until recently, and don’t know much about Rhapsody, allow me to explain. Wait, there is no time. Let me sum up: it’s a subscription-based music service with different types of membership. I have the streaming membership.For $13 a month, I get access to a music library that spans nearly a century of recordings, in every genre I could ever want, by thousands of artists I love (and many that I don’t care about; Jesus Jones, I’m looking in your direction.) I can search the library for specific artists, tracks, and albums, adding things I like or find interesting to my personal library. I can also listen to hundreds of different commercial-free, genre-specific stations, just like the ones I make with Slacker or listen to on satellite. It’s pretty awesome. If I get the crazy urge to listen to Hall and Oates (it happens more often than you’d think), if I’m curious if the new Depeche album is any good (it’s not), or if I wonder what the big deal is about Amy Winehouse (guilty pleasure, I’ll admit it right now and blame Secret Diary of a Call Girl) I can be listening in a matter of minutes, and when I get on some crazy Yacht Rock kick, I can quickly and easily build a playlist without investing a hundred bucks that I’m going to regret as soon as I realize that I’m listening to Yacht Rock. Oh! And I can also listen to stations inspired by artists, so if I get in the mood for some nice Bauhaus-inspired gloom, I just load up the Bauhaus artist station and let the Love & Rockets carry me all the way to Skinny Puppy.
Is Rhapsody worth the monthly fee? It is for me, without a doubt. My musical tastes are so diverse – it’s easier to just tell you that I don’t like Top 40 and Country than it is to tell you all the stuff I do like – I have built an immense library that takes up almost as much storage space as my comic book collection. Rhapsody is perfect for letting me virtually drag out all my 70s punk records, or my Grateful Dead live shows, or even my embarrassingly-comprehensive collection of lounge music whenever the mood strikes me.
Now, here’s the thing about Rhapsody’s streaming membership: you don’t own the music you add to your library, and when you stop paying the subscription fee, it goes away. But … so what? I don’t use it in place of actually purchasing albums, anyway. I know what I’m getting into, and if I like something so much that I want to own it, well … I buy it, usually from Amazon’s MP3 store (which really needs to incorporate simple gifting of albums via e-mailed online gift certificate, like the iTunes Music Store.)
Wonder Twins, Activate
I probably wouldn’t be as happy with Sonos and Rhapsody as I am if I had them in isolation of each other, but joining them together makes a musical baby that’s so beautiful, you’ll want to take it home and pet it and hug it and love it and call it George.
However, all this praise and heaping, bucket of stinky panda love aside, there is a huge, glaring, you-have-got-to-be-kidding me drawback to the whole thing: Sonos is incredibly expensive. If you’re looking for a way to get music from your computer and the internet into your home stereo system, there are other options which are less expensive...and less elegant. You absolutely get what you pay for in this technological arena, though, and I believe Sonos delivers the very best bang for the buck, especially when you team it up with Rhapsody. Like Slacker and Pandora before that, it's fundamentally changed the way I listen to and find music.
Wil Wheaton is quite content, now a little bit older.
Johan Aulin on May 11, 2009 at 10:22 PM
I liked this post. It's informative and humorous at the same time.
I've got a similar solution with an Argon iNet-1 from Danish Hi-Fi klubben. It's not Sonos, as it's just one unit, but for under $200 it's got a lot of features, such as an extensive and user-extensible list of web radio stations, uPnP, WiFi and Ethernet.
For streaming music with most modern and older performers available (except for a few grumpy ones) I use Spotify. From this article, it sounds like it does about the same thing as Rhapsody. The only difference is that Spotify is free, with an ad (usually a performer's album plug) about every 10 songs. That rocks!
@jaulin
Codey Carta on May 12, 2009 at 02:50 AM
I think I've put a finger on it- you're like Dennis Miller - except I GET YOU.
When I have need and cash, this would be a system that would please me. I appreciate anything that brings Daryl and John closer to my office space... and my red stapler... . Thanks for the review, Wil.
Form of stinky panda love!
Shape of an Eagle!
Now where's Gleek and that darned bucket?
;)
Will Cate on May 13, 2009 at 12:15 PM
Enjoyed reading that, Wil. You are as witty as you are informative. Slingbox has been my streaming device of choice lately...
Ed on May 13, 2009 at 12:40 PM
I agree with your good points about Rhapsody, but my problem is that the player, frankly, sucks. My problem is that I started with Musicmatch streaming service, which rocked (literally and figuratively). Super clean player, great interface, reasonable price. Then Musicmatch got bought by Yahoo, who forced me onto their streaming player. The player was far worse than Musicmatch, but the selection of music was better. Overall, I'd give it a B. But then, they sold out to Rhapsody. The selection I'd give an A to, the player, a high F. I've used it on laptops, desktops, XP, Vista, all with really high bandwidth and the player sucks bigtime on every platform. It's slow, clunky, logging on takes 10 times as long as on my previous services, the streaming would periodically become filled with hisses, pops and skips (at which point, their tech support would always have me delete their bloated cache file - why it couldn't do that itself.?..) and finding music is not nearly as easy as it was on previous players. So I cancelled my subscription in January. Unfortunately, there is essentially nothing out there that's better, so I'm thinking about going back. My problem is just that the experience has gotten progressively worse with each system I've been forced into and there's just no reason for it. For anyone who used the Musicmatch service and player from several years ago, using Rhapsody is like moving from CD players back to 8-Track. You can't help but remember how great it was.
dtohmatsu on May 13, 2009 at 03:33 PM
Expensive.... are you kidding me???? Compared to what. Expensive compared to a pair of cheap computer speakers maybe, but comparable to a good audio quality single room system... and dirt cheap compared to other multi-room decent quality audio systems.
John on May 13, 2009 at 06:01 PM
I agree, Sonos does totally change the way I and my family listen to music and other things and Rhapsody is a big part of that. I initally purchased it to stream music to rooms around the house from our NAS box. Then I subscribed to Rhapsody, and that is the way I listen to almost all music, often including things that I already have on the NAS box because I'm so much in the habit of going to Rhapsody. I do have to echo the sentiments of the commenter who said Rhapsody's computer based player isn't easy to use. Of course with Sonos you never use that; you use the Sonos controller, or better yet the IPhone/IPod touch app to control the Sonos.
On top of Rhapsody, I do listen to things like radio from far off places. In addition to music you can usually find a home radio station of any distant sports team you might follow. Also, many podcasts and audiobooks are on our NAS box and all of the various type of audio can be listened to from anywhere in the house or the back patio through our numerous Sonos zones. Of course we can also link together zones seamlessly and effortlessly as desired.
The funny thing is how often I talk to rabid Apple fans about it and tell me it's just like Airport Express. When they finally use it they understand what I've been trying to tell them all along as I tried to put it in terms they would understand. Sonos makes Airport express seem like what Microsoft would have made if Apple had made Sonos.
David S on May 13, 2009 at 08:58 PM
This is all exactly right but it misses three of the best things about Sonos. Number one is that all the audiophile reviews cite its extremely high WAF - Wife Acceptance Factor. It's not just for geeks. Two is being able to pick whichever rooms you want to listen to the same thing -- or different things -- in, so if WWOZ New Orleans or KEXP Seattle or WXPN Philadelphia is playing great stuff, your whole family can listen all over the house. This means that as you buy more of those great but expensive Sonos boxes, your experience gets significantly better because more of your house is wired to share this cool sound experience. Having four Sonos boxes is much better than two. Number three is that Sonos is the only tech item I know of that improves with time. The company makes many of its upgrades in software and gives them away to existing customers. So we bought Sonos a few years ago, then it added Rhapsody capability, then last.fm for a fee, then last.fm for free, then a search capability, then a free music promo from emusic.com, then better radio capability, then the free iPhone player, etc. The order of these improvements is a bit wrong, but the idea is that roughly every six months our Sonos system has gotten significantly better and newer, for no additional charge. It was great when we bought it, and it's much better now. How many gadgets do you say that about?
Steven T on May 15, 2009 at 03:14 PM
Seems Great. BUT.... how does it sound? ? ? I'm thinking of getting the ZonePlayer90 which hooks up to an existing stereo and no one is saying anything about sound quality. The other thing is that it will work with SIRIUS® Internet Radio but what about XM® Internet Radio?
Robert Bailey on May 22, 2009 at 02:51 PM
Watch out. The drive to have it "all" is deceiving. I have had Sonos a little less than a year. Sonos corporate support is non-existent. The system is loaded with flaws in the software and the connections to various ancillary systems is uncertain. My installers are pretty helpless--"our works fine."
Careful with those expectations.
Hardwire is still preferred, unless you like to play with your stereo like a kid in college. Or you are good with the Apple Express (reco).
This is NOT the system for busy people who want to simply enjoy their music when they want. If reliability is important to you in a music system, stick to iTunes with a bunch of Express'. And be content with your leisure time listening to the music, rather than futzing with equipment.
Will Warshauer on May 28, 2009 at 09:32 AM
I have had the Sonos system for years and couldn't agree more -- when you pair it with Rhapsody (and lately Pandora) to stream all this great music around your house, it fundamentally changes the way you listen to music. Altho Robert Bailey (previous commenter) seems to have a bad experience, the vast majority of reviewers + 100% of the friends I've recommended the system to have loved it and not had problems. That's the beauty of Sonos --- it just works, so you can spend your time listening to the music rather than fiddling with the technology.
Thad Bissell on June 05, 2009 at 04:17 PM
Robert Bailey - I completely disagree. I have a pretty big house (4500 sq. ft.) and only have one wired connection for one of the players. All three other players wirelessly sync flawlessly, as do the controllers, even all the way up in our bedroom.
WAF factor is extremely high. My wife hates technology, bugged me to get a music system she could use, and indeed she can and does use it. Plus - If you have Sirius, you can also stream that as Sirius has an internet service for subscribers (though Howard Stern house-wide is a bit much). But Coffeehouse is great.
Expensive at first blush but my brotherinlaw was quoted $12k for a whole house audio system and this will only cost him $2k for the same thing. We actually now use all the speakers we had installed when we renovated.
Frank Castro on June 12, 2009 at 04:03 PM
Everything this person said about Sonos is absolutely true. Sonos is simply amazing. iTunes with it's AirTunes is a piece of garbage because it doesn't handle interference from all the factors that can affect your wireless network at home. I don't know how Sonos does it, but it works flawlessly.
Now, Rhapsody is not so good. This person obviously lives extremely close to the Rhapsody servers, but for me I can't play a Rhapsody channel without it cutting out every time. Mind you, neither Napster, nor last.fm, nor Pandora, nor any other Internet radio that I listen through Sonos has the problems that Rhapsody has.
People let us remember that Rhapsody came from Real Networks. What a piece of garbage that was. I don't see anyone having a real need to play .rm files.
Stick with Sonos, but forget about Rhapsody.
Sincerely,
Frank Castro
Craig Stantin on July 28, 2009 at 12:22 PM
When I renovated the house I bought in Baltimore, I wanted a whole house music system that I could control from each room. I, initially, went to an all hardwired system designed by XXXXXXX which would at least allow me to control volume in each room. The I heard about Sonos.
I have 9 zone players, all located in the basement. I wired each set of speakers in 9 rooms directly into a Leviton media panel and then into each one of the zone players. All the zone players are also hooked into my house's LAN.
Then I subscribed to Rhapsody and went to heaven.
I've got Bose in walll speakers throughout and they sound better than the more expensive speakers out there.
All in all, I will never have a house without Sonos and Rhapsody ever again.
Glyn Hughes on October 11, 2009 at 01:57 PM
My experience was exactly the opposite to Robert Bailey...
Why anyone would ever want Sonos Corporate Support is totally beyond me as Sonos was the easiest, quickest, most reliable system I have ever purchased...period.
The software is clean & stable and the free iPhone app is most certainly the icing on the cake.
I was aware of Sonos for many years but had written it off in my mind as complex & expensive and I never really liked the bulky CR100 Controller. However when I saw the CR200 Controller on display and got my hands on it I was hooked.
Just one ZonePlayer needs to be wired to the network which in my mind is a Good Thing and after the system just works...wirelessly & flawlessly.
When I saw I could save nearly $400 by downloading the free iPhone/iPod Touch app for Sonos I had to have it there & then so I bought a single ZP90 thinking that would be that.
Not so. The following day found me in the shop buying another ZonePlayer and the only problem with Sonos is now I want more ZonePlayers!
It even kept me up all night rediscovering music and I have listened to some great tracks which I had forgotten about and many more Artists who I wouldn't normally have listened to in a month of Sundays.
To paraphrase Roberts post & summarize;
This IS definitely the system for busy people who want to simply enjoy their music when they want. If reliability is important to you in a music system go with Sonos. And be content with your leisure time listening to the music, rather than futzing with equipment.
Only downside is Rhapsody, Pandora & Sirius is not available in the UK but Napster is and yesterday they cut their monthly subscription by half!
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