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(Credit: Sonos)

We've long been fans of the Sonos Digital Music System, which lets you stream all manner of digital audio throughout your home. The latest BU250 bundle is an enthusiastic CNET Editors' Choice, in part because it can be controlled either via the included touch-screen controller or with any iPhone or iPod Touch (running a free Sonos Controller app). Unfortunately, it costs $1,000--not bad for a two-room system, but still out of reach for many consumers--and it needs to be connected to external speakers or audio components to hear the music.

The new Sonos ZonePlayer S5 aims to address both of those issues. It boasts an all-in-one design with built-in stereo speakers, so it's plug and play. And it costs $400--not cheap, but well within the price range of refined iPod speaker systems we've seen from Bose, B&W, and other luxury brands.

Indeed, the latest Sonos combines the features of a ZonePlayer ZP90 with the sort of integrated speaker you'd find on a Bose SoundDock. ... Read more

(Credit: Sonos)

Add the Sonos Digital Music System to the list of Twitter-friendly hardware platforms. The network music streamer (which recently garnered a CNET Editors' Choice Award) will be integrating the microblogging service into its CR200 touch-screen controller, its iPhone app, and its Windows and Mac Desktop Controller software later this fall. In the meantime, it's in beta testing.

According to Sonos, the Twitter function will allow users to post (or "tweet," in the parlance of our times) track and artist info with one click. More interesting for users of the free iPhone/iPod Touch Sonos app is that the built-in Twitter support should mean that frequent tweeters won't need to jump to and from their respective music and messaging apps (for sending outgoing messages, anyway). Let's just hope there's no option to automatically tweet every song in your playlist--there's already far too much Twitter spam as it is.

Sonos is just the latest gadget to add Twitter support. In addition to being available on a wide range of phones, Twitter apps can also be found on Fios DVRs and a variety of TVs using the Yahoo Widgets engine. Twitter will also be launching on the Xbox 360 later this fall.

What do you think: Is this cool, gimmicky, or somewhere in between? Share your thoughts below.

Multiroom in a box: The Bundle 250 retails for $999.

(Credit: CNET)

Sonos is back for 2009 with a new version of its signature Digital Audio System. Like earlier iterations of the Sonos product, the new Bundle 250 lets you wirelessly access your computer's digital music collection as well as a wide range of Internet radio and streaming-audio services (Pandora, Last.fm, and--with paid subscriptions--Napster and Rhapsody) in two rooms of the house, with the option to expand that up to a whopping 32 rooms. But the latest Sonos system adds a major upgrade: the CR200 touch-screen remote.

If that wasn't good enough--and the remote is excellent--it can also be controlled by any iPhone or iPod Touch running a free application that's available via the iTunes App Store. The result is a whole-house music system that's easier to control than ever before.

Sonos BU250 Digital Music System

What's the catch? The system costs a somewhat pricey $1,000. While that may seem like a lot, custom-installed systems can cost as much as $5,000 per room and they aren't as easy to use nor do they offer the level functionality found in this system. We were always impressed by Sonos' capability to access your home music collection and a variety of online music options, but the addition of the slick new touch-screen remote--and the iPhone/iPod Touch integration--gives the luxury digital audio system a compelling leg up on the competition.

Read the full review of the Sonos Bundle 250.

Disclosure: Last.fm is a part of CBS Interactive, which also publishes CNET Reviews.

A low-resolution shot of the upcoming CR200 remote.

(Credit: Sonos)

The folks at Sonos told us they had some new stuff coming out soon, but we weren't expecting to get any details on it until they briefed us in a few weeks. However, word of a new remote started to trickle out recently, and on Tuesday Sonos itself leaked info on the new CR200 controller on its own Web site (the page has now been taken down).

Unlike its predecessor (the CR100), the new controller has a touch screen, and the 3.5-inch VGA LCD is capacitive, which means it's more responsive. The other thing to note is that it's smaller, measuring 2.9 inches by 4.5 inches by 0.7 inches, and weighs only 6 ounces.

If you buy it alone it'll cost you $350, but you save $60 when you buy it as part of the upcoming Bundle 250. According to Automated Home, that new bundle features the same Zone Players you get with the Bundle 150, but with a slight color change to match the new controller.

We really like the Sonos system and it's nice that the company is offering a new, improved controller, because it's high time they upgraded the CR100. But the sad fact is you're probably going to be better off buying an 8GB iPod Touch, which only costs $215 on Amazon and can also serve as a Sonos controller. Of course, when we finally see the CR200 in person, I'm sure the folks at Sonos will tell us why it has a better interface and more functionality than an iPod Touch (or iPhone) equipped with the free Sonos iPhone app.

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(Credit: Sonos)

(Source: Engadget)

The kind folks at Eos Wireless sent me one of their wireless multiroom audio systems to test out a couple weeks ago, and after setting it up tonight, all I can say is that it made me long for the power and solidity of the Sonos system that I got to try out last December.

Insufficient cord length fail.

CNET's Jeff Bakalar already hit all the high and low points in last month's review, and my experience was much the same. I started by plugging my iPhone into the base station. Some of the promotional material for the system says the Eos system loves the outdoors, and I suppose the sound that came out of the base station might have been fine if I were drinking beer at a barbecue--flabby bass, tinny treble, and what sounded like occasional lapses in one or the other stereo channel. I think they added some reverb to make it sound "bigger"--perhaps this is part of the "SRS WOW!" technology mentioned in the FAQ--but the overall sound was so weird and different from the sound that usually comes out of the iPhone that I couldn't really tell. It didn't make me want to sit and listen.

It was easy to plug the other three speakers into outlets around the house and outside, and the base station started beaming music to them almost immediately. The standalone speakers actually sounded better than the base station--still thin, but not as odd--but when I turned them up past about two-thirds, they got severely distorted. There was lag between the base station and the speakers, which created disorienting delays when I was walking between rooms. Like Jeff the CNET reviewer, I got a lot of drop outs at first, but unlike his case, they disappeared when I switched the "Range Ex" button on the back of the base station. (Which begs the question: why not just have whatever that switch does enabled by default?)

The power supplies on the extra speakers are big and clunky, and the cable's only 32 inches long. This created logistical problems--when I set a speaker up outdoors, I had trouble getting it around the plug guard, and then the cable wasn't long enough to set the speaker atop the three-foot fence running around my deck. Who wants to listen to speakers on the floor?

To make sure the audio problem wasn't in the source, I swapped my iPhone out for my fourth-gen iPod, and then connected my Zune via the auxiliary input using the included one-eighth-inch stereo cable. None of the sources sounded any better. To give you an idea of my reference points, I usually plug my Zune into the auxiliary input on a Bose Wave, my iPod into an iHome iH55SR (which may be best $99 audio gadget I've ever bought), and my iPhone into an auxiliary input that goes into the FM radio (not CD player) in the totally stock sound system in my 2006 Subaru. Those set-ups all sound better than the Eos Wireless. So did the Sonos system.

To its credit, Eos was exceptionally easy to use--there's no computer required (and no way to tap into a music library on a home computer), and I didn't need to read the instruction manual. In fact, it's so simple, you don't even need to turn the base station on. Which is why there's no on/off switch (which is weird). It's also a lot cheaper than competing multiroom audio systems, starting at $250 for the base station and one speaker--that's about one-fourth the starting price of the Sonos system. It might be acceptable for casual background music or a raging party. But if you're serious about music, I'd save up for something better.

Networking is a dark art, and putting the word "home" in front of it makes it no simpler. Debugging a home network is not for the faint of heart--the intelligence of the on-screen wizards peters out after the first few obvious fixes, and soon you're checking help forums, running ipconfig commands, and tweaking DHCP settings.

Their industrial design has gotten a lot better. But would you trust Linksys to build an easy wireless home audio system?

(Credit: Linksys)

So today's news from The New York Times--that networking giant Cisco Systems is getting into the consumer electronics business--filled me with dread.

The idea of piping audio files from your computer to your home stereo or other audio devices is valid: I'm a big fan of the Sonos Multiroom Audio system, and Logitech and Apple have also made a go at it. But all three of these companies specialize in consumer products. They understand--nay, live and breathe--the process of hiding complexity under a clear user interface.

Playing music from multiple sources in a single playlist on a Sonos system is simple. Connecting a Mac or iPhone to an existing home network is almost invisibly simple.

Cisco's purchase of Linksys got the company into the consumer home-networking space. While setting up my Linksys wireless router for the first time was relatively painless, thanks to a downloadable applet, I had to use their free phone support line several times over the next few years to debug mysterious problems that cropped up.

The support itself was great--a real person always picked up immediately, and they were always able to resolve my problem eventually--but the complexity of the underyling technology just couldn't be hidden. Any support call that asks you to log into your router to check your DHCP settings is not simple, even if you are walked through the steps.

Cisco's a solid engineering company. If it manages to hire some great UI designers and brands these products appropriately--coming up with names that are more interesting than these would be a start--it has a fighting chance. If it thinks that enabling multiroom audio is just a few simple tweaks to its existing home networking products, forget about it.

No Photoshop involved: This is a custom-painted Sonos ZonePlayer ZP100.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

For a while now I've been ribbing the folks over at Sonos, the leader in affordable multiroom audio, that I wished their products came in black rather than light gray/off-white. The fact is, if you have a lot of black components, you ideally want everything to match. That's why you see the XBox 360 in black--I mean, people want the choice, right?

Well, my dreams of black Sonos were realized when an anonymous donor (who wishes to remain that way) let us take some shots of a customized ZonePlayer ZP100. It's a fairly expensive proposition--companies like Colorware charge upwards of a $100 to refinish various products, including game consoles and PCs. But the end result is pretty slick and I think Sonos would do well with a black model, particularly for the larger ZP100's replacement, the ZP120, which usually ends up in a rack. You can tuck the smaller ZP90 or discontinued ZP80 behind a TV or wherever, so most people can live with--and maybe even like--the off-white. And I know it's a pain for companies to manage multiple SKUs, but I still vote for a black option.

Anybody else have an opinion?

Before the new paint job.

(Credit: Sonos)