Sonos
What HiFi became in the digital era
What HiFi became in the digital era
Once upon a time, in the analogue world of the late 20th Century we all had massive HiFi systems.
They dominated our Sitting rooms, required tweaking and feeding with radio, cassettes and records. Later, CD players arrived and ousted the record players.
But the world turned, digital downloads arrived and suddenly our computers and iPods were our music sources. That was not an ideal solution for general listening, so gadgets like the Roku player and Monitor Audio's iPod dock appeared and then finally the integrated solution: Sonos.
Sonos is probably the best all-round streaming solution as it can access your .mp3 music library from your PC or, as in our case, from our NAS box, plus music from multiple on-line sources such as Spotify, the BBC and Tidal, plus Sonos radio that gives you access to virtually any radio station around the globe.
Sonos do a bridge unit you simply plug in to your amp and speakers, then you disassemble your HiFi system: the record player, the cassette player, the tuner and the CD player all go.
And finally when we downsized, the amp and speakers went - in our new house we have ceiling speakers and Sonos amplifiers in the loft. Now it's all driven off the app on our phones.