Testing the Sonos-AirPlay solution

Hard to beat Sonos....until Airplay can stream different sources to different units at the same time, Airplay loses. With Sonos, I can listen to an iTunes playlist in my bedroom, while my wife listens to a different iTunes playlist in the Kitchen, while my kids are in their rooms listening to iTunes or Last.fm, SiriusXM, etc...all from Sonos. With airplay, you ALL listen to the same thing, unless you are using different macs. In addition, the Sonosnet network is very good, possibly better than the wifi.

Once you go sonos, it's hard to go back!

I also just did this in my living room with an AE plus some powered speakers (AudioEngine2's - quite nice). As someone who has all their music on a Mac I had a hard time finding good resources about how to best bring audio to a room in a house, particularly if there's no TV in that room. I think an article about that would be really interesting. There are a few AirPlay enabled devices (how can there not be more?), this Sonos solution, and the AE solution. Is there anything else? Which option is the best? What are the best speakers? What about bringing AirPlay-enabled audio outside? Can you put an AE outside? All questions I think could make for a good article.

I will say that the AE + speakers solution is very nice. And I'm especially happy that the new Sirius/XM iPhone/iPad app supports AirPlay.

Sonos is more expensive but it is better, a lot like macs are more expensive then windows machines but better.

I love my sonos system, do. It regret it for a second.

As the first commentor said, you can achieve the same setup using only an Airport Express and a regular speaker. That's the whole point of Airplay with an Airport Express -- just plug a speaker into the AE and you're all set to stream wirelessly. This article doesn't describe what the Sonos system buys you. In other words, why would you buy a Sonos system if you already had an Airport Express? Or why would you buy both when you could achieve the same result by only buying an AE?

Also, with the Sonos+AE setup it appears you need to use two different apps in order to control where the audio is being played. First you use iTunes or your iPod app to select the Airplay device (Sonos, in this case), then you have to switch to the Sonos app to select which speakers to play through.

It appears you only need a single AE connected at one point to Sonos, even if you have multiple Sonos speakers throughout the house. If you go with a pure Airport Express solution you need one AE for each location in the house. Say you want to play audio in 3 locations in your house. You either need 1 AE + 3 Sonos players, or you need 3 AEs and no Sonos players. So, the question is, which is cheaper?

I wish the article would have done a better job of comparing Sonos to a pure AE solution.

"You can stream to an Apple TV, but that is a single output device".
Unless your ATV is connected to a stereo which supports multiple zones. With this solution you may not be able to control the volume and such of your individual zones but I just use the volume control on my iPhone. Just set the volume in iPod on your phone to 50% and adjust the volume on the reciever to 50% as well, then using your phone you can go up or down from there.

I built my own home system without the sonos, just with a few airport express basestations and small amp/speakers. I have whole house ethernet, so this gives me ubiquitous wifi throughout the house (large house 3 floor + finished basement) and yard, and can play from any of the iDevices or macs to anywhere. Just used old amps/receivers sitting around, put in some speakers, and voila. I put in a zone in the backyard with "rock speakers" in the bushes, and some buried cable which goes to an amp in the basement.

It was cheap and works flawlessly. This solution seems to be if you already had a sonos, otherwise there are much cheaper ways to achieve this.