Gadgetory

with its factory tuning in data center DNA and Intel 730 series SSD is an amazing choice for gamers and performance enthusiasts welcome to part 2 of my coverage of solises play series of network speakers in part one which you can view here I covered wired setup ease of use the basics of their app and the sound quality of the play one and the play three this time we're going to start with the wireless experience now last time because apparently I'm an idiot I hooked up every single speaker separately via ethernet thinking that you needed their bridge in order to run wirelessly or you were stuck with Wired I realize now that you actually only need to plug any one component in via ethernet and it will act as the controller while the rest will simply join a mesh style wireless network automatically so you only need to run power to them so the bridge is meant to be a controller for folks who can't get an Ethernet cable to any of their ideal speaker locations to get the mesh going or for folks who want to extend its reach without installing random intermediate speakers between two more distance ones live and learn right haha anyway well generally I'm not a big fan of wireless networking slow interference ridden headache-inducing terribleness music streaming isn't terribly demanding and samosas solution which runs on the same 2.4 gigahertz and 5 gigahertz frequencies as Wi-Fi but uses a proprietary communication protocol actually works just fine it is slower adding new speakers to the mesh adjusting settings changing volume these are all a little bit less responsive but it's still very tolerable and reasonably configurable so like if you're having interference issues you can manually select a channel if you want but I didn't experience any stutters hiccups or dropouts in my house with it on auto and I think part of the reason for that is they have a huge buffer on the music that you're playing if you're streaming off a device you can test this by playing something off your phone turning off your Wi-Fi and seeing how long the speaker keeps playing for so there you go this little white box with its two ports which is something that I can handy but very very optional because in most cases the wireless speaker experience is just as good without it so let's move on to the other stuff that they sent us oh yeah the play bar speaker bar is designed to let you use Sonos gears and replacement for your TV's built-in speakers or a more traditional aftermarket setup but just like the room speakers the key here is going to be ease of setup and once again I was impressed the software made things basically effortless I mean compared to my Onkyo receiver and calf speakers let's get this out of the way right now soon as the solution doesn't sound as good and actually cost about the same as I paid for that but the simplicity is very compelling and it's not just simple to set up but also to use the play bar can be added to your mesh to play music in that room like any other sono speaker then unlike my multi remote setup that my wife constantly complains about it can be configured to automatically override wireless speaker functionality when it receives an optical signal from your TV Media PC game console or whatever else so you don't have to think about it the set-up guide walks you through all these steps including how to use your TV as a pass-through for audio from all the connected devices without using its own poopy speakers and it also gives you some helpful tips on positioning the sound bar and this is the point at which I notice that their logo is the same right side up and upside down that blew my frickin mind anyway once it was set up I was pretty happy with it volume control is handled seamlessly through your existing remote and it sounds way better than your TV stock speakers ever will and the base it delivers is surprisingly tight and loud on top of that the play bar has a magic give me back some of the mid-range vocal boost button when it's running on optical that I wish all of their speakers had all the time because it really makes so Knossos sound signature much more appealing to me so there's my feature request in this video so far so good with the play bar though but it gets cooler than that in the same way that you can link speakers in multiple rooms together to synchronize playback and create stereo pairs of matching speakers within one room you can add a sub to your play bar and use software to control its behaviors almost recommend standing the sub upright or laying it down under a couch and I'm beginning to sound like a broken record here but the setup is as easy as pressing a couple of buttons and yeah it was easy what that said I didn't really feel like the sub contributed much to the experience for me if you really want to crank things then you'll appreciate it but and this isn't a criticism of the sub but rather an endorsement of the play bar at normal TV and movie listening volumes for me I found that the play bar delivered Apple based on its own the sub isn't the only thing you might want to expand though you can add a couple of play ones too with some solid configuration options so you can have them just join in full blast or act as ambient music enhancers when you're playing music in that room or you can use them as surround speakers for movies it works as well as any of their stuff one viewer did specifically asked me to see if the play bar would work with a DTS 5.1 stream in XBMC and it handled it just fine and surround so no complaints overall but even if it works exactly as advertised while you can expand the play bar this way I didn't find this config that compelling I'm not the right customer in the first place I don't have enough room behind my couch to play speakers there at all but that's not even my main problem even if I had space I don't have a power outlet there so once again I'm a bit disappointed by the limitation that Sonos has imposed on their gear by not giving the play ones standard speaker inputs and maybe putting a beefier amp with a couple of speaker wire outputs on the play bar or something this would make the unit slightly less sleep perhaps but speaker wire is a lot easier to hide next to a bass board than power extension cords I mean maybe to make things easier a play one enhanced skew in the future could have like a power pass-through so you could daisy chain them with only one of them plugged into the wall or something but as it is I doubt I'm the only one who will find a Sonos surround setup impractical however easy it might be to configure from a software side and I guess that's it for Wireless and the home theater setup stuff so I'm going to conclude part two with some more general thoughts on having my house so nosed up it's not cheap but for me this really is next-gen it works the way they say it does you can stream tuned dual speakers full rooms combinations of rooms you can adjust volume as groups or to each individual speaker within a group expansion is easy and it all feels so made to go together even something like that failed mid-range I might not prefer that sound but I have to acknowledge that from the top other speaker line up to the bottom there delivering that sound signature consistently so at least when I order something from Sonos I know what to expect and a big benefit here is that as I walk from room to room it's not jarring to hear something the same music but playing very differently as I move around my house I think really at this point the only thing missing for me is to add more options to the lineup I'd love to see some better sounding speakers some more purpose-built ones like maybe a weather-resistant outdoor speaker for example but that's all I really have to say other than that I wholeheartedly recommend so Knossos ecosystem it's not perfect like anything easy it's not the best sounding it's not the cheapest but it just works and I even got wife approval on it and at the end of the day that's the bottom line for new tech gadgets isn't it alright guys thanks for watching like this video if you liked it dislike it if you disliked it leave a comment let me know your thoughts on Sonos have you ever tried it do you have positive comments on you have negative comments on it leave leave those comments in the video description you'll find our support link where you can give us some of the contribution you can buy a sweet t-shirt like the one that I'm wearing right now we actually have some other really cool designs right now to go check those out and you can change your amazon bookmark to one that has our affiliate code in it so whenever you just navigate there and buy stuff we get a small kickback that kind of stuff helps us out a lot thanks again for watching guys as always don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already