Sonos alternatives

[Adam.]

I am renovating a large house and want to future proof the AV.

All rooms have cat 6e points and connections to hard wire TVs and speakers or Sky

All cat 6e cabling routes to a cupboard under stairs which will have an AV rack, patch panels, amps, router etc

For the 3 main TV areas I will likely have separate Sonos setups (sound bar, subs and play 1 surrounds) as I have most of this kit already for 2 TVs.

But in addition 7 rooms will also have ceiling speakers so ideally I would like a Sonos type system with 7 zones that can play same or different music, whether via Spotify etc or via my collection stored on a NAS.

Trouble is I think a Sonos solution means 7 amps at £600 each which is a lot!

Are there cheaper / better alternatives?

 

[RandomGrinch]

Hi,
Just a thought, if you are after a very cheap but flexible DIY approach, RaspberryPi's can do amazing things e.g.
https://magpi.raspberrypi.org/articles/build-a-multi-room-audio-system-with-raspberry-pi
You would still need some dumb amps and programming skills!

 

[sxturbo]

Bose do similar but it's expensive.

There are high end Amps that can also do similar, but your kind of still paying the same amount.

 

[Lucid]

I am renovating a large house and want to future proof the AV.

All rooms have cat 6e points and connections to hard wire TVs and speakers or Sky

All cat 6e cabling routes to a cupboard under stairs which will have an AV rack, patch panels, amps, router etc

For the 3 main TV areas I will likely have separate Sonos setups (sound bar, subs and play 1 surrounds) as I have most of this kit already for 2 TVs.

But in addition 7 rooms will also have ceiling speakers so ideally I would like a Sonos type system with 7 zones that can play same or different music, whether via Spotify etc or via my collection stored on a NAS.

Trouble is I think a Sonos solution means 7 amps at £600 each which is a lot!

Are there cheaper / better alternatives?

As you've probably discovered for yourself, most of the companies who tried to out-Sonos Sonos came unstuck somewhere along the line. The biggest stumbling blocks have been price/performance and the control app. Running closely behind them is the other Achilles heel; the range of equipment.

The one company I think actually comes closest is Yamaha. The brand was doing multiroom music before Sonos launched back in 2007. What it lacked though was a wireless solution and support for streaming services. These things gave Sonos a critical advantage.

Yamaha went back to the drawing board with Musiccast, but when they returned they had answers for nearly every Sonos product category; soundbars, smart speakers, streamers and streaming amps. Their app works well and there's integration for voice control.

The WXA-50 amp has plenty of power, and it comes with multiple inputs and even an IR remote control. The report is £449 but it can be had for less than £400. That means for every two Sonos amps you might buy you could have three Yamahas.

 

[SpecialK]

Chromecast audio and a small amp?
You would need to stream to it, maybe via plexamp from your NAS?

Volumio?

 

[winston1]

I am renovating a large house and want to future proof the AV.

Do you know the future, because no one else does?

 

[ericmark]

I use Nest Mini's not perfect, in fact there are many problems, but cheap, and we find good enough for what we want. The problem is how much money do you throw at some thing, which at the drop of a hat stops working. We had a lovely Bluray player and it also connected to BBC iplayer thing, then BBC changed their iplayer and so did a load of others, so I am loathed to pay a lot of money for some thing which may stop working.

@winston1 is correct we don't know the future.

 

[Lucid]

We had a lovely Bluray player and it also connected to BBC iplayer thing, then BBC changed their iplayer and so did a load of others, so I am loathed to pay a lot of money for some thing which may stop working.

To be fair though, that Blu-ray player still worked as a Blu-ray player. All that stopped was a software feature, and it stopped because of some change in the BBC service. Whilst certainly annoying that the BBC iPlayer streaming stopped working, you could still put a BD / DVD / CD in the player and have it spin, and so its primary function still worked.

The parallel would be something along the lines of the air-con packing up on a car. There was a time when very few cars had air-con. It didn't stop us driving. Then air-con gradually became a more standard feature. Losing it due to a fault is an inconvenience, but the car still works as a car. We wouldn't throw away an otherwise fully-functional motor car simply because the air-con went belly up.

TBH, I think the whole buying-a-device-for-its-smart-features is akin to choosing a car for its in-car stereo system. It missed the point of the main function of the product. For TVs as an example, we've reached the point where a surprisingly-large number of people have no clue about whether the picture is any good. All they're bothered about is the streaming services. These are the same services that can be added with a Fire TV stick at 1080pHD for £30 or in UHK 4K for £50.

 

[Lower]

TBH, I think the whole buying-a-device-for-its-smart-features is akin to choosing a car for its in-car stereo system. It missed the point of the main function of the product. For TVs as an example, we've reached the point where a surprisingly-large number of people have no clue about whether the picture is any good. All they're bothered about is the streaming services. These are the same services that can be added with a Fire TV stick at 1080pHD for £30 or in UHK 4K for £50.

A lot of people use the smart streaming features of a TV as the main way of accessing whatever programmes they want to watch. Its pointless having an amazing picture or sound quality when you can't watch what you want to watch because Netflix or the Iplayer don't work on your TV.

We've ended up having to use a firestick to enable us to continue using a reasonably modern tv because the streaming function is obsolete. Without it, the TV would be useless as its not connected to an aerial.

 

[winston1]

Without it, the TV would be useless as its not connected to an aerial.

Why don’t you connect it to one then?

 

[Lower]

Why don’t you connect it to one then?

No easy cable route to where the TV is and my son only watches You tube and Netflix, neither of which can be accessed via an aerial.

 

[winston1]

I'm sure there is a cable route or move the TV. Is your son the only one who watches TV.

 

[Lower]

I'm sure there is a cable route or move the TV. Is your son the only one who watches TV.

Funnily enough, i'm familiar with the layout of my house, what the cable run would be and where we want the TV to be.

My son is the only person that watches that particular TV. We have both cable TV and freesat elsewhere in the house that my wife and i use.

 

[RandomGrinch]

Without trying to further derail this thread...
As confirmed telly addicts, with 100's of channels of Freeview and TalkTalk Tv, we still find times when there is nothing on!
YouTube is our default goto.