Sonos

"This article is about the music device manufacturer. For the computer memory system, see SONOS."

Infobox_Company
company_name = Sonos
company_
company_type = Private
foundation = 2002
location_city = Santa Barbara, California
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Hilversum, Netherlands
key_people = John MacFarlane, CEO
industry = Audio equipment
products = Sonos Multi-Room Music System
revenue =
net_income =
num_employees = 150 (2008 approx.)
homepage = [http://www.sonos.com www.sonos.com] Sonos is a consumer electronics company founded by John MacFarlane, who previously founded Software.com, that makes the Sonos Multi-Room Music System.

Multi-Room Music System

The Sonos Multi-Room Music System is a modular set of digital appliances that works with end-user supplied speakers to form a zoned audio system in which different zones may play the same or different audio.

The main appliance is a "ZonePlayer", a small computer and wireless network hub with analog audio outputs. Each ZonePlayer can send audio to speakers, or to a separate amplifier and speakers. The audio is distributed to other Zoneplayers mainly via wireless network, and can be controlled from a separate controller module or from an application on a home computer. The "ZP120" player includes a power amplifier and can be connected directly to loudspeakers. The "ZP90" player, in addition to analog line-in and line-out connections, has digital toslink and digital coax outputs that must be connected to a conventional amplifier.

Multiple ZonePlayers in a single household will auto-detect one another and form a synchronous mesh network. Music can be played simultaneously in separate zones. The line-in port on each player may be played simultaneously in all the zones. The system is intended to play music from a digital repository such as a Microsoft Windows or Macintosh file share, or any Samba compatible server. It can also stream audio via MP3 and WMA or FLAC streams, internet radio stations such as Shoutcast and subscription music services such as Rhapsody (online music service), Pandora, Sirius, and Napster. While the user can specify streaming from an arbitrary URL, the system is shipped with several hundreds of stations in a preset list.

The Pandora, Sirius and Rhapsody services are restricted primarily to customers based in the United States. Napster is also available in Canada, Germany and the United Kingdom.

The ZonePlayers include ethernet jacks, and can be used as a network switch for normal network traffic: network traffic is bridged silently between all the ZonePlayers in a single system. Note, however, that this bridging can reduce bandwidth available for music streaming.

ee also

*Roku SoundBridge
*Slim Devices Squeezebox
*Soundcast (wireless audio manufacturer)

External links

* [http://www.sonos.com/ Sonos Official website]
* [http://groups.google.com/group/Sonos/ Independent Sonos Developer Forum]