Sonos or hard wired

The Sonos Connect:Amp is a decent-sized amp all by itself. If you attach it to an impedance-matching speaker selector, you can probably run those three rooms off of it. At least, for in-ceiling background music...

For your bedroom, take a look a the new Sonos Soundbar product. Looks very slick assuming you have a TV in there that could take advantage of it.

Jeff

The Sonos Connect products have an analog audio input, but the Apple TV has only an optical digital output. To connect them you'd need an outboard DAC like this:

http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=104&cp_id=10423&cs_id=1042302&p_id=6884&seq=1&format=2

But what would you be using it for? The Sonos can access your music library, and has more online music services...

Are you just wanting to install one set of speakers for that whole kitchen/dining/living room?

If so, you'd want an A/V receiver and speakers for that space. You can connect a digital audio output from a Sonos device to any AVR, but that may not make sense if the Sonos unit is powering other zones.

Where are your patio speakers wired to now?

Yes.

Install stereo speaker pairs in most rooms. If the room is so small that there's not 3-4' of separation possible, use a dual-voice-coil (DVC) single speaker.

A 3-zone A/V Receiver would get you close, so would one one or more Sonos Connect:Amps plus some speaker selectors. How much flexibility (different sources playing in areas, individual zone volume controls, etc.) you want will greatly affect the cost. Simplest is an AVR for your 5-channel surround system, Sonos Connect:Amp and speaker selector for the other three zones.

If you mean the Sonos Play systems, then yes, they're good. But you probably don't want to carry that around from room to room. Look at the Sonos Connect:Amp. All Sonos gear is controlled from a mobile device app.

Sonos Connect:Amp has an amp built-in if you want to go that route (separate from your 5.1 setup). And yes, run wires for speakers if possible. A lot more flexibility - unless you're planning on moving soon...

You can control volume from any of the apps/systems, but how useful that is will depend on how you're distributing the signal. If you split the output from a single amp/Sonos unit, controlling the volume from the app will affect all of the rooms. So in that case, in-room volume controls may be helpful to adjust volume relative to the other rooms.

I just left Russound after about 7 years with a CAA66 system - wired in-wall/in-ceiling speakers. The unit was great for a time but now that I have just recently acquired a Sonos system (5 of 8 or 9 eventual zones installed) (all zones use Connect Amps and my original in-wall/in-ceiling speakers and wiring), I realize Russound was way behind in terms of user friendliness, ease of setup and upgrades, and expandability. On the other hand, Russound may be slighter better in terms of overall sound quality. I had the choice to go with either Russound's newer MCA-C5 model or the Nuvo Grand Concerto and I chose Sonos.

In terms of your question, yes you can control each zone with your ios device. For example, you can turn the zones on and off, select the music source you want to listen to in either or all of your zones, group your zones together, control volume levels in each zone, all from your iphone app.

When you hear people say "it just works," they really mean it - no lying/no exaggeration!! Give it a shot with one zone first and see if it works for you. That's what I did and within two weeks I had 4 more zones connected....

Good luck!!!

Hi all,
I am currently looking at revamping a system we installed several years back. The home consists of 20 zones all hard wired back to the utility closet in the basement. Touch screens are in place now throughout the home(about 10 of them) connected via cat5. I was considering using a NuVo grand concerto, grand expander, several color touch screens, ipod dock and music port elite server. I started to look at the Sonos stuff and seems I can add 20 Connect:amps in the distribution closet in the basement where all the speaker lines come to. I have never used Sonos and was trying to get an understanding of how it works. i know it creates its own mesh network. One amp could connect to the router and the rest of the amps would then wirelessly communicate with one another? Being these would all sit in the same rack in the basement(since all the lines homerun from there), would that cause some sort of interference with on another? Would I need to add something to the first floor, second floor and maybe outside to extend the Sonos wireless range that I could connect to an ethernet jack wherever the signal seems weak in the home? Basically, to get 20 zones to work in a home that is about 8-10k sq. ft. in size reliably, would Sonos be the product to go with over the NuVo system? I like the fact that I can send audio from the iPhone directly to the Sonos system as well as control the existing library rather than have iTunes sync to a server as done with the NuVo system. I spoke with Sonos support to get an idea with a few questions, but didnt get to detailed. Any input would be great! thanks!

If they're all centralized, you'd be much better off just using wired Ethernet in that location with a switch. I don't know what Sonos' limits are as to how many units the app supports for zone selection and so forth - same for Pandora/Spotify connections. While that would give you a whole lot of flexibility, I assume you don't really need 20 different sources.

If the speakers are all wired to one location, I don't see any reason to change that - put all the gear at that location, regardless of what system you use.

You could accomplish the same iOS connectivity by putting an Apple Airport Express (an AirPlay device) attached as a source to the NuVo system (or any system for that matter).

Also, the MPS4/Elite will use NAS storage, so you could point it to an iTunes library on your network and not sync to the internal hard drive.

Note that the NuVo GC with the expander gets you 16 zones total. Getting to 20 would require some thought... With that many zones, you might consider a set of NuVo P3100 systems as well, it would be a cleaner install at the rack level...

Jeff

Their system is comprised of wireless speakers, an amp and a connect (sends music to your other amps). You can mix and match these in any combination and get the same results. If you're going with in-ceiling speakers, then you get the Sonos Connect Amp. If you have a bedroom and just want to add a table speaker, you get one of their zone players. As my home will consist of several zones of in-ceiling speakers and 5.1 in my living room, I'll get a few Sonos Connect Amps and one Sonos Connect (which will pipe music to the 5.1). Essentially, this creates one large music distribution system that can be seperated into its individual parts.

Sonos creates its own wireless mesh network. There is a benefit to placing them throughout your house, IF you're going wireless. But as Jeff suggested (and as I'm doing), if all the Sonos devices will be in a central location, you're better off connecting them via Cat5e/6.

And any smart device can control them. They have great apps for both iOS and Android.