I’d
like to have music available in several rooms in my house, but I really don’t
want to install wired speakers in multiple rooms. Is there some wireless sounds
system that works well?
Kens’ house came wired for sound in
most of the rooms, and the wiring connects up to an antiquated system of wall
plates that allows you to change volume and sound source, but nothing else. In
a modern world, you should be able to change the content easily without having
to trudge back to the audio source. In addition, adding wired speakers to an
existing home is difficult and expensive, normally, because it involves
invasive work inside walls. We suggest you avoid this if at all possible!
If you’re just sitting in one
place, or if you want a portable speaker you can move from room to room, and if
you’re interested in playing music you have stored on a portable device, almost
any Bluetooth speaker will do. There are a ton of battery-powered Bluetooth
speakers available, and each of these uses the short-range (up to 30 ft)
Bluetooth standard to connect to almost any portable device. If you’re
interested in this sort of arrangement, you might find this article useful in
making a shopping choice: http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/the-best-bluetooth-speaker/.
If, on the other hand, you would
like a whole-home audio system that you can control from a handheld device (or
a computer), we highly recommend the Sonos system (http://www.sonos.com). It isn’t cheap, but it
doesn’t sound cheap either. Sonos
speakers use their own wireless mesh network to communicate, and only one of
the Sonos devices in your home needs to connect to a network in order to
retrieve music from the Web and to be controlled by your devices.
Ken got turned onto these speakers
a few years back, and has three Sonos devices in his home. The nice part is
that not only are the speakers small, somewhat portable, and easy to set up,
they sound great. In addition, you can control all aspects of the sound system
from a phone, tablet, or computer, using the Sonos software. You can easily
have different music in three different rooms, or group all three rooms together
so that the same music is playing in all three simultaneously. You can stop and
start any room’s music from your device or computer, and you can stream music
from a large number of sources, including online radio stations (most radio
stations stream their content online, including our local stations), Spotify,
Pandora, Sirius/XM satellite radio, and more. If you have local MP3 files (or
any other type of digitized music), the Sonos software can find it and play it,
as well. All in all, we’re very pleased with the Sonos system, and highly
recommend it.
Sonos isn’t the only option—Bose
and other companies make comparable systems, using slightly different
technology. We haven’t tried them, however—that doesn’t mean they’re not great,
but we can vouch for the Sonos system.
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