The Palm Lodge Whole House Audio project has some simple requirements, that have, up until now, have either not delivered or come in under budget. Below is the final solution that actually works ! The requirements were : Ceiling Speakers (no wires) MP3 (and other formats) playback Wall mountable control - with several units Zone control - Allow all zone playback - Allow specfic zone playback The budget As cheap as possible ! There are systems out there than partially fit the bill but they are very expensive, and my system would require over £10,000 ($18,000). These also require some sort of front end control system, and a PC solution was looking promising using an iPaq. Unfortunately, systems such as XLobby or Telcanto did not deliver - appalling speed and zone synchronisation in the former, and zone control in the latter. Then along comes Sonos (sonos.com) - launched at CES in Las Vegas 2005, this system promises much. I can safely say it delivers ! There are two products, the Zone Player and the Controller. The first thing to be done for the Palm Lodge Multi Zone project were the speakers. These are single Kef twin-drive units (see here) , except in the Lounge where there are 2 (to allow for stereo sound for TV/Plasma - a future project). For music delivery, the system talks to my NAS system where all the music is stored. This can all be configured from the Controller or via the PC software. Note : you do not have to have a PC in any way to setup or control this system. Now below are some pictures of the Sonos gear, and how easy it is to add a new Zone Player. The Zone Player is the main decoding device. It has an on-board 50W amp to directly connect a pair of speakers. A Zone could be a room (ie Lounge). Zone Player Rear Connections Each Zone Player also has a line-out, and a line-in - and if you connect something to the line-in of a Zone Player, the whole network can make use of it as a "stream". For example, plug in your Sky box and you can have MTV around the house. The system also has internet radio support. The Controller is just that - it allows you to select and control your music. For multi zone control, you can have a track playing in one zone, all zones, or group zones together where they all play in sync together. You can have up to 32 devices on the Sonos network. Apart from the first Zone Player in your setup needing to be hard-wired (or via a bridged access point to your existing wireless network), all other Zone Players can work wirelessly. All the controllers work wirelessly. They all connect via Sonosnet, a mesh wireless system that is for Sonos systems only. There is no access point - as long as one Zone Player can wirelessly see another, which in turn sees another, which eventually sees the hardwired unit, then they can all access the music. So let's add a new Zone Player to the system. We currently have 3 enabled, the Lounge, the Kitchen, and the Gym. We are going to add the Dining Room. First, we power up the new Zone Player. We ask to add a Zone Player The controller now asks to tell the Zone Player to broadcast its availability We wait whilst the system links the new Zone Player into the existing setup with the other 3 Zone Players The new Zone Player has successfully linked Now let's give it a name Bingo ! Now the Controller shows our new Zone Done