Bento Box

My brother and I bought a Sonos bundle and an extra controller and split it – since we only each need 1 zone for now. For a full review look here; here’s my quick breakdown: If you are a music fanatic who doesn’t want to be tied to the computer, Sonos is a must-have. If you’re open to a music-subscription service, Sonos is 10000x better. Spend the cost of a cd a month and you have access to over 3 million songs at your fingertips.

The Sonos controller really kicks the llama’s ass; it even has a light sensor and motion sensor in it – turns on when you pick it up and adjusts the LCD back light to the ambient lighting. Album art, genre-browsing, playlists – it’s all there; I was amazed at how well the interface was designed and how easy it is to navigate. I inherited some B&W DM3000s from my brothers – I grew up with these speakers and they still sound awesome. I did some research and found that in 1985 they cost $1900 a pair; in today’s dollars that’s $3600! I think my brothers pooled their money together in the early 90s and bought these speakers for our family home theater. I have the screens taken off the speakers since I love that aggressive look with the distinctive B&W yellow cones. My brother also gave me a Yamaha RX-V992 receiver to power these bad boys.

Here’s the set up so far:

Got the Xbox360, router (Linksys WRT54GL), Sonos ZP-80, and PS2 set up. Right now the speakers are straddling the television but I think I’m going to move them to each side of the fireplace since I plan to listen to more music than use the TV – plus I read that the prime listening spot should be equidistant to the distance between the speakers – forming an equilateral triangle. Here’s some close ups of the controller and the depth of the music library

My only complaint is that the Rhapsody library currently can’t be ’searched’ – but instead artists have to be browsed for by genre, but navigating the huge lists of artists is easy with the power-scroll feature. Hopefully this will be alleviated by a future software upgrade. Another neat feature is that the Rhapsody account is linked to my profile which I can modify anywhere – all my saved playlists, favorite artists/songs are available when I’m on my work, home, or any computer and of course the Sonos. This type is convergence is truly the future.