Sonos brings wireless to multi-room music rigs
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Multi-room digital music streaming specialist Sonos has finally gone completely wireless. Today, it rolled out the ZoneBridge BR100, a WLAN add-on for the company's ZonePlayer units that replaces the system's last wired link.
Sonos' ZoneBridge BR100: wireless adaptor
You'll need one BR100 to connect to your broadband router. With the BR100 in place, a simple button push gets it communicating wirelessly with however many ZonePlayers you have installed. The music data is encrypted to AES standard and sent over the same proprietary mesh network that connects the ZonePlayers to each other and to Sonos' handheld Controller.
ZonePlayers have always communicated wirelessly, but until now have always used a cable to make the last link of the chain, into the router. Sonos has avoided using Wi-Fi - the obvious solution to the problem - because it believes the standard isn't sufficiently secure.
Sonos currently offers two ZonePlayers: the ZP80 - reviewed here - which is designed to be hooked up to a hi-fi or powered speakers, and the ZP100, which has its own, on-board 50W-per-channel amp.
Dual-port switching
Sonos also announced today integration with Napster, allowing its customers to access the online music service directly from their Controllers. New Sonos kit will come with a 30-day free trial, after which customers who want to stay with the service can pay £9.95 a month to do so.
The BR100 is available now and costs £69/$99/€99.
COMMENTS
Get your facts right
"Multi-room digital music streaming specialist Sonos has finally gone wireless ... To date, ZonePlayers in different rooms have had to be connected with Ethernet cabling, or via mains electricity networking boxes."
What rubbish... The ZP80 and ZP100 have always been wireless, using their own wireless mesh technology. As far as I know the only limitation is that at least one player needs to be wired to a network. Any players after that will communicate wirelessly with the first. This product obviously just removes the need for any players to be physically wired as well as acting as a wireless bridge between distant players.
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