Sonos Bundle for £699

[HomerJ]

I was looking at buying a Sonos bundle for ages, but the price for a setup I required were way high

Looks like Sonos have finally answered my prayers and released the new BU130 Bundle;

- 1 x ZP100
- 1 x ZP80
- 1 x Controller

All for £699 inc vat.... Not bad I think...

http://www.simplysonos.co.uk/acatalo...Equipment.html

[JohnG]

I noticed that offer as well and was confused because it's cheaper than the 2x ZP80 bundle. The ZP100 on it's own is £100 more than the ZP80

[lazymatt]

I reckon it's a pretty good deal. About time they bought their prices down a bit I think.

[Empgamer]

I've literally only just started looking at this kit following looking at the forums for earphone reviews but it looks very interesting.

Only thing that puts me off a little is that from the very limited amount I've read so far I need to have my home PC running all the time in order to play and access music. That said I did see a reference to a 'NOS' on a review but it didn't make it clear what that was. Basically it seemed like an off-PC storage device but Sonos don't actually do one from what i can see. Is it just a generic name for any device capable of storing MP3 etc (e.g. an Ipod) or is there a separate Sonos box/widget that your music gets dumped into as well.

This set up looks very interesting but I'm not sure I'd be that keen on having and electricity guzzling PC switched on all the time. Also, am I correct in assuming that the Sonos connects to your PV by an ethernet cable and not a wireless router (it seems the sonos has its own?).

[JohnG]

I think that reference you saw would have been a "NAS" or Network Attached Storage.
This is a hard drive that connects to your network and acts like a very small computer. This means you can access this hard drive from anywhere (including the Sonos system) and it only uses a fraction of the power of a full sized computer.

[Empgamer]

Ah yes that's it, NAS. Thanks. I've ploughed through the Sonos site and am trying to find how the NAS might be integrated into a set-up (e.g. does it need to be near the PC, near the router, near or connected to a zone controller) but can't seem to find much on them. Maybe they aren't that commonly used. I do fancy not having to have the PC whirring away from dawn to dusk though :-(

I can see an order going on soon mind

[JohnG]

The NAS can sit anywhere as long as you can connect it to the router. You can then put all your music (and any other stuff you want to share across the network) onto the NAS and when Sonos is started up you can tell it to look on the NAS for your music. Therefore you only have to leave the NAS switched on all the time if that's what you want. I have mine set to "sleep" between certain hours, most good NAS boxes allow you to set startup and closedown times so that it's not on 24/7.
If you do a search through all the forums on here - try the computer hard drive forum as well as this one, you should find plenty of other posts where people have set up systems using Network Attached Storage.

[lazymatt]

You basically plug a NAS and Zoneplayer into your router, and then put your second Zoneplayer anywhere else in the house, and they talk to each other wirelessly. You can then search for all your music using the (very cool) remote control.

See if there's a local hi-fi shop near you that has one on demo...it's much easier to understand when you physically see one set up. Plus there's little deviation in price, so a shop will sell you one at about the same price as the internet.

Buffalo NAS products work very well with Sonos.