with its Factory tuning and data center DNA an Intel 730 series SSD is an
amazing choice for gamers and performance enthusiasts welcome to part two of my
coverage of Sonos Play series of network speakers in part one which you can view
here I covered wired setup ease of use the basics of their app and the sound
quality of the play 1 and the Play 3 this time we're going to start with the
wireless experience now last time because apparently I'm an idiot I hooked up every single speaker
separately via Ethernet thinking that you needed their bridge in order to run
wirelessly or you were stuck with wired I realize now that you actually only
need to plug any one component in via Ethernet and it will act as the
controller while the rest will simply join a mesh style wireless network
automatically so you only need to run power to them so the bridge is meant to
be a controller for folks who can't get an Ethernet cable to any of their ideal
speaker locations to get the mesh going or for folks who want to extend its
reach without installing random intermediate speakers between two more
distance ones live and learn right
anyway while generally I'm not a big fan of Wireless networking's slow
interference ridden headache inducing terribleness music streaming isn't
terribly demanding and Sonos is solution which runs on the same 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz
frequencies as Wi-Fi but using as a proprietary communication protocol
actually works just fine it is slower
adding new speakers to the mesh adjusting settings changing volume these
are all a little bit less responsive but it's still very tolerable and reasonably
configurable so like if you're having interference issues you can manually
select a channel if you want but I didn't experience any stutters hiccups
or dropouts in my house with it on auto and I think part of the reason for that
is they have a huge buffer on the music
that you're playing if you're streaming off a device you can test this by playing something off your phone turning
off your Wi-Fi and seeing how long the speaker keeps playing for so there you
go this little white box with its two Port switch is something that I'd
consider handy but very very optional because in most cases the wireless
speaker experience is just as good without it so let's move on to the other
stuff that they sent us oh yeah the
playar speaker bar is designed to let you use Sonos gear as a replacement for
your TV's built-in speakers or more traditional aftermarket setup but just
like the room speakers the key here is going to be ease of setup and once again
I was impressed the software made things basically effortless I mean compared to
my Eno receiver and CF speakers let's get this out of the way right now sonus
the solution doesn't sound as good and actually costs about the same as I paid
for that but the Simplicity is very compelling and it's not just simple to
set up but also to use the play bar can be added to your mesh to play music in
that room like any other Sonos speaker then unlike my multi- remote setup that
my wife constantly complains about it can be configured to automatically
override wireless speaker functionality when it receives an optical signal from
your TV media PC game console or whatever else so you don't have to think
about it the setup guide walks you through all these steps including how to
use your TV as a pass through for audio from all the connected devices without
using its own poopy speakers and it also gives you some helpful tips on
positioning the Soundbar and this is the point at which I know that their logo is
the same right side up and upside down
that blew my freaking mind anyway uh once it was set up I was pretty happy
with it volume control is handled seamlessly through your existing remote
and it sounds way better than your TV stock speakers ever will and the base it
delivers is surprisingly tight and loud on top of that the play bar has a magic
give me back some of the mid-range vocal boost button when it's running on
optical that I wish all of their speakers had all the time because it
really makes Sonos sound signature much more appealing to me so there's my
feature request in this video so far so good with the play bar though but it
gets cooler than that in the same way that you can link speakers in multiple
rooms together to synchronize playback and create stereo pairs of matching
speakers within one room you can add a sub to your play bar and use software to
control Its Behavior so almost recommend standing the sub upright or laying it
down under a couch and I'm beginning to sound like a broken record here but the
setup is as easy as is pressing a couple of buttons and yeah it was easy with
that said I didn't really feel like the sub contributed much to the experience
for me if you really want to crank things then you'll appreciate it but and
this isn't a criticism of the sub but rather an endorsement of the play bar at
normal TV and movie listening volumes for me I found that the play bar
delivered ample base on its own the sub isn't the only thing you might want to
expend though you can add a couple of play ones too with some solid
configuration options so you can have them just join in full blast or act as
ambient music enhancers when you're playing music in that room or you can
use them as surround speakers for movies it works as well as any of their stuff
uh one viewer did specifically ask me to see if the play bar would work with a
DTS 5.1 stream in XBMC and it handled it
just fine and suround so no complaints overall but even if it works exactly as
advertised well you can expand the play bar this way I didn't find this config
that compelling I'm not the right customer in the the first place I don't
have enough room behind my couch to place speakers there at all but that's
not even my main problem even if I had space I don't have a power outlet there
so once again I'm a bit disappointed by the limitation that Sonos has imposed on
their gear by not giving the play ones standard speaker inputs and maybe
putting a a beefier amp with a couple of speaker wire outputs on the play bar or
something this would make the unit slightly less Sleek perhaps but speaker
wire is a lot easier to to hide next to a baseboard than power extension cords I
mean maybe to make things easier a play one enhanced skew in the future could
have like a power pass through so you could daisy chain them with only one of
them plugged into the wall or or something but as it is I doubt I'm the
only one who will find a Sonos surround setup impractical however easy it might
be to configure from a software side and I guess that's it for wireless and the
home theater setup stuff so I'm going to conclude part two with some more General
thoughts on having my house Sonos up it's not cheap but for me this really is
NextGen it works the way they say it does you can stream to individual
speakers full rooms combinations of rooms you can adjust volume as groups or
to each individual speaker within a group expansion is easy and it all feels
so made to go together even something
like that veiled midrange I might not
prefer that sound but I have to acknowledge that from the top of their
speaker line up to the bottom they're delivering that sound signature
consistently so at least when I order something from Sonos I know what to
expect and a big benefit here is that as I walk from room to room it's not
jarring to hear something the same music but playing very differently as I move
around my house I think really at this point the only thing missing for me is
to add more options to the lineup I'd love to see some better sounding
speakers some more uh purpose-built ones
like maybe a weather resistant outdoor speaker for example but that's all I
really have to say other than that I wholeheartedly recommend sons's
ecosystem it's not perfect like anything easy it's not the best sounding it's not
the cheapest but it just works and I even got wife approval on it and at the
end of the day that's the bottom line for new tech gadgets isn't
it all right guys thanks for watching like this video if you liked it dislike
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