Utopia as defined by St. Thomas More may not be within our immediate grasp, but a version of paradise is as close as your computer, your broadband Internet connection and a Wi-Fi router. Streaming Internet radio, to which your own computer-based music easily can be added, is, I believe, the next big thing.
For about a year, I’ve had a Logitech Squeezebox Boom on hand. It connects via Wi-Fi to my broadband network and can be programmed to pull down a world of radio stations. Many of these are commercial-free and a vast number originate outside the U.S. Of course, local and other domestic broadcasters are well represented.
Recently, I integrated the player with my iTunes music library, again over the Wi-Fi network. A few clicks of the remote and - presto! - Alabama 3’s “Woke Up this Morning” pops up, in brilliant stereo sound, streamed from my computer to the player, which could be just about anywhere in the house. Sweet.
This week, the next level of such wireless entertainment is due to be unveiled by Sonos Inc. of Santa Barbara, Calif. (www.sonos.com). The company is known among a growing circle of audio cognoscenti for producing simple-to-use wireless audio systems.
The firm is releasing — and hopes to ship by the end of the month — the $399 Sonos S5, which it bills as a wireless radio and music player that you control with an Apple iPhone, or with a special Sonos controller, price $349. The controller, according to John MacFarlane of Sonos, will work with a wide range of the company’s devices.
In fact, both for the iPhone application and the separate controller, multi-room audio management is a key feature: You can “bridge” all your Sonos units to play the same music in every room, or you can control the music — both type and volume — in each room.
Once integrated into the network, which happens by pressing two buttons, each device can be named and then controlled from a single iPhone.
The Sonos product, the firm says, “works seamlessly with the most popular music services to provide computer-free access to millions of songs and stations from the likes of Last.fm, Napster, Rhapsody, Pandora, SIRIUS Internet Radio, and Deezer.”
Some of these online music services are free, including Last.fm and Pandora, while others, including Napster and Rhapsody, are subscription-based. The S5 also gives users access to any iTunes library stored on any computer or Network Attached storage device, such as an Apple Time Capsule. (For this, however, you’d need to add a $99 “Zone Bridge” that would clamp onto your network router.)
The Sonos idea isn’t the least-expensive way of doing all this, but it seems to be one of the most elegant. The firm’s main products are smallish players that can attach to speakers or home theater systems, again connecting wirelessly to a broadband network and/or computer or file server to send music around the home.
What’s appealing is the idea that you can do all this streaming wirelessly. Previous home music installations required that a player be connected to a network using a cable; the Logitech Squeezebox and, yes, the Sonos players, each have Ethernet ports for this very purpose. But without having wired your home for Ethernet in each room, the prospect of stringing cable throughout the house is not appealing.
The idea of wireless computing is, of course, what has made Wi-Fi so ubiquitous and attractive; now, apparently, that same attraction is carrying over into audio. Mr. MacFarlane said the S5 player is built to withstand a level of humidity, so it could be placed in a bathroom, for example, as part of a whole-house network.
What this means in application is that you can create your own daily “playlist” of radio stations (and even TV audio with a little effort), so you can start your day with a morning TV news program as you wash up, move into some music in the breakfast room and news or talk for the home office. College football games could follow you around the house, and the firm says you easily can carry a Sonos S5 unit out to the patio for use at a party.
What I can’t tell you — right now — is how the Sonos sounds versus its competition. Mr. MacFarlane says the S5’s five speakers and advanced engineering will give it a sound that surpasses docking systems from Bose and other rivals, but that’ll wait for a review, which you’ll read here soon, I hope.
• E-mail mkellner@washingtontimes.com.
• Mark A. Kellner can be reached at mkellner@washingtontimes.com.
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