Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie
Speaker hub question
Options
-
23-01-2018 4:55pm#1
Comments
-
-
-
-
-
wexfordman2 wrote: »That was the system I had. The sonos btw can take multiple inputs if you have the units located next to each input. For example, I used to be able to send the audio from sky all around the house, using the living room zone player inputs.
To be honest, the Sonos system is excellent, but for comparible money now, you will get say a google home max which will do the same thing and more, by virtue it has google assitant built in. There are a lot of very competitive products now alongside sonos, which was the master for years.
I had a six zone sonos system using ZP100's, and I had them for 10 years or more I think, and never failed me. But in the last 12 months, I have gotten rid of them (removed the ceiling speakers and filled in the gaps, celiling speakers are a terrible idea) and replaced them all with google homes. I plan to maybe get one google home max for the kitchen, where we might need the louder volumes at party time :-) and also plan on an outside zone using a chromecast audio.
Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't sonos now support alexa? As in there is a sonos skill for alexa allowing you to control all sonos speakers and zones from alexa compatible devices (https://www.sonos.com/en-us/alexa-on-sonos). Which means you can now use sonos + alexa for audio assistant control.
Out of interest why are ceiling speakers a terrible idea. The obvious reasons I've heard is sound quality. I'm going for a mix myself, something like a playbar under the television and 2 ceiling rear speakers for surround sound. Then in the kitchen 4 ceiling speakers. I'm going for ceiling downstairs because of the elegance of the approach and how minimal it looks. Wall mounted speakers can mess up your options for furniture/shelving, wireless speakers need to be mounted somewhere or on top of something. So I really like ceiling speakers for these rooms. One other reason I am thinking wired ceiling + amp is that I am not tied to a specific system. If sonos become crap or someone offers something better I just replace the amp(s), if better speakers come out replace the speakers. (P.S I'll figure out upstairs/bedrooms after I live with this system for a while downstairs
). 0 -
Advertisement
-
Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't sonos now support alexa? As in there is a sonos skill for alexa allowing you to control all sonos speakers and zones from alexa compatible devices (https://www.sonos.com/en-us/alexa-on-sonos). Which means you can now use sonos + alexa for audio assistant control.
yes, alexa support sonos, so you can control sonos if you have an alexa device, but you need to have a sonos AND an alexa in each room. Unless you go for I think the smaller sonos play one, which has alexa built in, so you can use the sonos play 1 as both a music speaker and as an assitant, ie it will listen to you and you can command and control it and other devices/lights etc via voice. I beleive google assistant will be comming to it as well
However, thats only the play1, so while you can have an alexa device control all the other sonos players, you still need a sonos device + alexa/google home device in each room to do so, which is a bit overkill.
Thats why I would be looking at something like the google home max as a comparison to the sonos higher end music systems, because it is both a speaker and an assitant built into one. Two products in one.Out of interest why are ceiling speakers a terrible idea. The obvious reasons I've heard is sound quality. I'm going for a mix myself, something like a playbar under the television and 2 ceiling rear speakers for surround sound. Then in the kitchen 4 ceiling speakers. I'm going for ceiling downstairs because of the elegance of the approach and how minimal it looks. Wall mounted speakers can mess up your options for furniture/shelving, wireless speakers need to be mounted somewhere or on top of something. So I really like ceiling speakers for these rooms. One other reason I am thinking wired ceiling + amp is that I am not tied to a specific system. If sonos become crap or someone offers something better I just replace the amp(s), if better speakers come out replace the speakers. (P.S I'll figure out upstairs/bedrooms after I live with this system for a while downstairs ).
Main reasons I would be against built in ceiling speakers are
1) Sound quality for two reasons, first sound radiating down is not as good, second, the speakers I find at higher volumes will tend to vibrate in the ceiling a bit.
2) Aesthetics, dont like the look of them
3) Draught:- No matter how well you try, you always get a draugth down them, now my house was a bungalow, so it was more of an issue than if it was downstairs in a two story or dormer.
4) When I built my house, I went the hole hog, put in lots of tech, some still there, some not, but the one rule I would say to anyone now, is do not build electronics into the wall of your house, or the ceiling for that matter. No matter what it is, anything electonic has a lifespan that is way shroter than bricks and mortar, and you will eventually replace it with someting else, or get rid of it. I cant count how many times I've seen "smart homes" with multi room systems and ipod docs built into the walls. How many versions of ipod docs are we at now, who even uses an ipod doc now ?
And for all the reasons I pointed out in number 4, I would use each of those as an argument acutally for wireless speaker system (or ethernet wired even), each thing in point 4 is an argument for a wireless seaker system
With respect to the point about Sonos lifespan being one of the reasons to go for your proposed setup, I would say, that Sonos is around long enough they are not gong anywhere, and also Sonos was the leader in speaker systems, lots of others followed with near identical systems, so there are lots of options for a similar type setup.
All being said, I still think the option I would go for would be google home max and google home deivces, no question. And I am a huge Sonos fans, I loved it, used it and have no hesitation saying its a great system, but at the moment, there are a few other products with an edge over them.0 -
Sorry for hijacking thread OP but this is an interesting discussion. Great points, i have the intent to have an echo dot in all rooms that I'll spend time in. So sitting room, kitchen, bedroom, home office. I've intentionally separated out the voice assistant from the speaker system to modularise the system and stop me from being reliant on one company/tech/system too much. So sounds like we're coming at this from different directions. But great point that you need an echo/echo dot/one of the other crazy amount of echos/fire devices in each room you want voice assistance.wexfordman2 wrote: »yes, alexa support sonos, so you can control sonos if you have an alexa device, but you need to have a sonos AND an alexa in each room. Unless you go for I think the smaller sonos play one, which has alexa built in, so you can use the sonos play 1 as both a music speaker and as an assitant, ie it will listen to you and you can command and control it and other devices/lights etc via voice. I beleive google assistant will be comming to it as well
However, thats only the play1, so while you can have an alexa device control all the other sonos players, you still need a sonos device + alexa/google home device in each room to do so, which is a bit overkill.
Thats why I would be looking at something like the google home max as a comparison to the sonos higher end music systems, because it is both a speaker and an assitant built into one. Two products in one.wexfordman2 wrote: »Main reasons I would be against built in ceiling speakers are
1) Sound quality for two reasons, first sound radiating down is not as good, second, the speakers I find at higher volumes will tend to vibrate in the ceiling a bit.
2) Aesthetics, dont like the look of them
3) Draught:- No matter how well you try, you always get a draugth down them, now my house was a bungalow, so it was more of an issue than if it was downstairs in a two story or dormer.
4) When I built my house, I went the hole hog, put in lots of tech, some still there, some not, but the one rule I would say to anyone now, is do not build electronics into the wall of your house, or the ceiling for that matter. No matter what it is, anything electonic has a lifespan that is way shroter than bricks and mortar, and you will eventually replace it with someting else, or get rid of it. I cant count how many times I've seen "smart homes" with multi room systems and ipod docs built into the walls. How many versions of ipod docs are we at now, who even uses an ipod doc now ?
And for all the reasons I pointed out in number 4, I would use each of those as an argument acutally for wireless speaker system (or ethernet wired even), each thing in point 4 is an argument for a wireless seaker system
With respect to the point about Sonos lifespan being one of the reasons to go for your proposed setup, I would say, that Sonos is around long enough they are not gong anywhere, and also Sonos was the leader in speaker systems, lots of others followed with near identical systems, so there are lots of options for a similar type setup.
All being said, I still think the option I would go for would be google home max and google home deivces, no question. And I am a huge Sonos fans, I loved it, used it and have no hesitation saying its a great system, but at the moment, there are a few other products with an edge over them.
1) Agreed but at the same time high end ceiling speakers should have on par/ better performance with a goodle max? so there are pros/cons of both there.
2) I'm the opposite to you there but important for anyone considering either solution to see in person both solutions if they can. It's amazing how something you think you would like when you see it in person you can dislike
3) Thankfully won't be an issue for myself but combined with the vibrations in 1 I can imagine how annoying that would be and is also something for me to keep in mind for upstairs so thanks
4) I've heard a great way of looking at this as layers in your house and how they change. You have your base layer, walls and the like which are ultra slow moving, you should not need to change them. Then you have layers you attach to them/supplement. These layers can range from slow to fast moving. The ipod docs are great examples of fast moving layers if you attach these to slow moving like your wall example that is risky. This is the same risk as putting wireless speakers in walls is dangerous (permanently attaching fast moving to slow moving). In-ceiling speakers and cables are slow moving layers, they don't change much so putting these in the walls/ceilings is lower risk. Ipod docs are ultra fast moving layers so yeah that's pretty crazy. So I would say there is a bit more subtlety to it then saying no to electronics in fixtures. You have to think through the risk and the design choices which I'll agree most people don't have the experience to do (I'm hoping I have).
By the way up till two weeks ago I was planning to have your system (but with echo dots + sonos) but what swayed me was where would i put the speakers in the kitchen, would I need to put in new perment shelving? For the sitting, yeah I'll get better quality sound but again would now need to either fix them to walls, put in tables/shelves/mounts. So essentially these speakers would restrict me from using that space for other things.
OP by the way I 100% agree with wexfordman's logic, we want the same things but have our priorities ordered differently 0 -
Advertisement