buy it now

Sonos is a young company. Based in California, it employs a little over 50 people. Manufacturing is in the far east, indeed the handsets are made by the very same people as Apple use to manufacture the iPod.

This new product has arrived on the UK market in a remarkably mature bug-free state with integration software that runs on PCs, Linux and Apple Macs. Indeed, the whole premise is refreshingly straightforward : you almost certainly have music stored on your existing computer system and, if you have broadband, the odds are that some form of ethernet distribution is already in place.

Even if none of this is true, the biggest cost hurdle in "conventional" distributed audio - the hard drive recorder - can be massively undercut with the substitution of a standard PC, Mac (OS X), or Linux machine.

The only radio provision is for Internet feeds. There is a huge choice of stations but it might be something of an issue if you want the big four BBC stations. We are trying to figure out a work-round on this. Beyond this limitation, and the fact that it has no provision for video distribution, it really is plain sailing.

So, how does it work then? Simply connect one zone player to the computer network where a PC or Mac machine has music files, load the Sonos software and allow it to set itself up. Each of the nifty steam - proof rechargeable handsets can control all or any of the zone players (there can be up to 32 of those) and the iPod - like interface is intuitive.

Providing one zone player is in direct connection with the ethernet network, all the others can link purely wirelessly. Each zone player need only 'see' one other unit for the whole system to be controllable from any point. The range is good but any single unit can be wired to the network, should the wireless link prove to be an issue.

Each zone player can access stored music or Internet radio independently of each other. Unusually for this type of system, it can also allow zones to be joined together for use at times of parties. This can be all zones together or any permutations. Volume levels can be grouped or managed individually.

Each zone player can accept a single analogue input (say Sky TV stereo sound or an FM radio tuner) which can be made available to any or all other areas. There is no provision for RF control of other devices, however.

The system can be set to access music files on a variety of computers (a mixed Mac / PC network is not an issue) so that every member of a household can have their own iTunes music database available anywhere in a very large house.

The computer desktop application (see left) allows full control of any zone in the house, along with any setting up of playlists, access to additional machines.

Dammit, it even sounds pretty good, in fact it is actually quite impressive, providing the music is in either WAV format or high bit rate MP3.

We have the Sonos system running on permanent demonstration. Why not book a visit?

Better still, buy it now!