Sonos slims wireless music playback box

Multi-room digital music rig gets cheaper too

By Tony Smith, 11th April 2006

Sonos will this month cut the price of its multi-room digital music system. Its latest ZonePlayer wireless playback device, the ZP80, provides the same core functionality as Sonos' ZP100. However, to get the price - and the size - down, Sonos has stripped out the integrated amplifier used to drive speakers directly from the ZonePlayer.

The ZP80 provides RCA output and auto-detection input connectors, a pair of digital audio output ports - optical and co-ax - and two Ethernet connectors, down from the four on the ZP100.

sonos zoneplayer zp80

The player can handled music encoded in the MP3, WMA, AAC, Ogg, Audible, Apple Lossless, FLAC, WAV and AIFF, but as yet there's no support for songs protected using either Microsoft or Apple's DRM technologies. It will pull songs from shared folders on Windows XP/2K, Mac OS X and NAS systems.

The ZP80 fits in with existing Sonos digital music networks. Standalone boxes will be priced at around £269, but for new customers the company is bundling a pair of ZP80s and its colour-screen, iPod-like wireless controller for £779. On its own, the controller, which can select the music playing on any one of up to 32 ZonePlayers on a given network, costs £319. Prices include VAT.

sonos zoneplayer zp80