Sonos Playbar

[RDTiling]

i was in John Lewis the other day and listened to the demo of it, and thought it was nice sounding, however I spotted that they had cleverly placed the Sonos Wireless Sub to one side of it and realised that it was contributing to the sound. I'm interested to hear if anyone on here has only the playbar and how you rate the sound performance in a home environment.

i used to have an AV amp and two floor standing speakers, but due to space limitations in our new house, I've had to get rid of them, so thinking of the playbar to allow for expansion at a later day - plus, anything wireless is only a good thing in my opinion.

Rich

 

[Qwerty]

My brother has one and the sound is very good indeed

 

[cam_low]

I am currently saving for one at the moment ! I will look forward to getting the add on speakers for the other rooms. very expensive though.

 

[RDTiling]

Thanks Geoff. Glad to hear it's well rated in the home environment.

im always nervous about 'in store demos' as they are usually optimised and also the size of the space the product is in. It was quite clever of them to place the sub just out of eyesight - not far enough though!

a bit like a friend of mine bought some ridiculous sized TV because it looked good in store - unfortunately it looks even more ridiculous in his living room! To say it catches the eye as you walk in the room is an understatement!

 

[RDTiling]

I am currently saving for one at the moment ! I will look forward to getting the add on speakers for the other rooms. very expensive though.

That is my only gripe about the Sonos is the price - but once you get the playbar and sub, the add on speakers seem 'cheap' in comparison.

All being well, I'll hopefully have it on Saturday - can't wait!

 

[cam_low]

I have a few more priorities to take care of first. Hopefully going to buy a house/flat and flip it with my plasterer soon...so every penny is spoken for ish !!!!

 

[RDTiling]

I was hoping I could make do with the built in tv speakers for a couple of months, but after taking away my amp and floor standers, I lasted about 5 minutes and realised how rubbish the sound was. Even the missus noticed it, so it must be bad!

 

[cam_low]

my lass hates the boom boom boom surround crack. I dunno why she loves it in the cinema. FFS

 

[Colour Republic]

I use the Somos system as the back bone of multi-room sound system we install. However not the all-in-one players.

We pick a cupboard somewhere central to the property (or under the stairs) then install the sonos amps in there and run speaker cables for either ceiling speakers or wall-mounted to all the rooms required.

Just never been that impressed with the sound from the all in players, well not unless you buy the bigger ones and the sub. In which case you could have got 2 rooms for the price of 1

For example if for movies you'd buy the playbar and the sonos sub, they are £599 each so = £1,200. That's a lot of cash for one room.

Instead get 2 sonos amps, £399 each, 2 pairs of B&W ceiling speakers @ £200 a pair, and you can pick up a decent second hand sub for £100. I bought my Kef one for £120 (£450 new, you gotta love serious audio freaks who change their set up every 6 months), So that's 2 rooms for £1,300, then add each room at a later date for £599. Much better sound and more discreet. We do use the Sonoslay 1/3/5 now and again but only really for kids rooms where the HO doesn't want them blasting their senses out or isn't too bothered about sound quality.

The B&W ceiling speakers I like at the moment are these - B&W CWM382 in-ceiling speaker - Bowers & Wilkins | B&W Speakers which you can buy online for £200. I get them trade for £150, in fact get the sonos system trade too but there isn't huge amount of mark up on the system, so could sort you out although isn't worth it after postage unless you were getting a few pieces as it would only save you £30 on a single component.

If you don't want to run speaker cables under floors/ceilings, then you can get wireless ceiling speakers but these are still fairly pricey, give it a year or 2 and they will be much cheaper but just not now.

i'll upload some pics when I get to our current job

 

[Colour Republic]

B&W wall speakers, the M-1's

B&W Ceiling speakers

And this is where all the sonos amps will go, 5 in total and also a where the router will be

 

[RDTiling]

After a bit of deliberation, and some serious thought about Colour Republics suggestion, the cupboard under our stairs houses our boiler so there isn't a great deal of space for anything else, so I ended up with the Playbar on its own for now.

i have to say that the sound quality it produces is fantastic. I will add a sub to it at some point, but hopefully they will come out with a new and improved model and will bring the price of the current one down. I think my next addition will be a couple of Play 1's or Play 3's to act as back speakers as part of a surround sound setup.

 

[Colour Republic]

You only really need the sonos sub if you want the wireless feature. you can plug any sub in to the back of the playbar

 

[RDTiling]

I'll keep that in mind - the sonos sub is extortionate!

 

[thompsonbrown]

Have a B&W Zeppelin "great sound" only let down by needing an ipod.
24bit flac tracks sound great.

 

[Colour Republic]

I'll keep that in mind - the sonos sub is extortionate!

For the same money you could get a very nice high end sub.

My current set up is a pair of acoustic energy radiance 2's and a Kef PSW 1000 sub. All powered off a sonos amp. It says something when originally I powered off a great Yamaha, then a NAD amp only to switch to the sonos. The speakers are ££££ but the sub i've just checked on ebay is going for £60-80 which is steal! At that money it's worth getting and even as a stop gap that you throw away in a years time (not that you'd want to) you'll get your money's worth out of them.

Honestly you can get some bargins off ebay with second hand speakers (about the only bargins left on the damn site), before the AE's I had a very nice set of Missions as my main speakers. Worth a stupid amount of money new, yet I paid a fraction of the price just a few years after release. As long as they haven't been driven too hard it's almost silly to buy new.