Sonos speaker system sets up in a snap

As a tech journalist, I field lots of questions from friends and family who are wondering what products they should be considering, what new services they should check out, and how they can solve the problems they may be having. 

Often, all of these things are wrapped up together. 

Recently, my friend Brian asked about the Sonos wireless speaker that has a prominent position in our home’s kitchen. I had talked up the Sonos functionality before:

• connects to your Wi-Fi network
• streams music from your computer
• gives you access to audio services like Spotify
• can be independently controlled

But Brian wanted to know if Sonos could help him get music throughout his home. The answer is, simply, yes.

We live in a modest, single-storey, 1,800 square foot home. It’s easy to get music in my house. Brian lives in a large, heritage house with three floors. I figured getting him set up would be much more complicated. 

It wasn’t. Thanks to Sonos. 

Before I got started, I got Robert Sergiel on the phone. He oversees the retail experience for Sonos in Canada, and I wanted to ask him what components I might need.

Was he ever a good person to talk to. Not only does he work for Sonos, but he’s got dozens of speakers configured in 17 different listening zones in his in the metro Toronto area. 

The first question he asked was whether there was any existing stereo equipment that I was integrating with. With the Sonos Connect, you can hook up existing amps and speakers to play music through.

In Brian’s case, though, we’re starting with a clean slate. The simplest set up is to just get a Sonos speaker and have it connect through a Wi-Fi network. But the objective is to get music throughout Brian’s house, so Robert suggested getting a Sonos Boost, which plugs directly into a router and creates a mesh network for Sonos components.

And every Sonos speaker that is then added to the system also acts as a repeater to extend that mesh network.

The next step was trying to figure out in which rooms Brian and his family wanted to have speakers.

One of the cool things about the way Sonos speakers work is that they can be operated independently or in the aforementioned listening zones. 

Not everyone needs 17 zones like Robert from Sonos. But I figured that it would be nice if Brian could have one thing playing in the kitchen while he worked on supper, while his wife listened to something else in the office, while their son listened to something else upstairs.

And there are different sizes of Sonos speakers depending on the size of the room.

• Play:1 is for small- to medium-sized spaces like bedrooms and bathrooms; these can be paired for stereo sound
• Play:3 is for larger spaces like kitchens; when placed horizontally it projects stereo sound, and when placed vertically it can operate as a stereo pair with another Play:3
• Play:5 is for large living and family rooms; it’s the loudest and carries the most bass
• For home theatre use, Sonos also has a soundbar (which can be complemented with pairs of Play:1 speakers for surround) and a subwoofer

For Brian’s home we ended up ordering a Boost, and one each of the three speakers. 

When it came time to set them up, I was prepared for the usual hiccups and frustrations when hooking up technical equipment. But I was done in about 20 minutes. 

It was the easiest setup I’ve ever done. I plugged the Boost into the router, then set up the speakers in the respective rooms:

• Play:1 in the upstairs office
• Play:3 in the family room
• Play:5 in the kitchen/dining room

After doing that, the components kind of set themselves up. The only other thing I had to do was push buttons on each speaker while the Boost detected and connected to them. 

It took longer for the Sonos Controller app on the family’s iMac to index iTunes than it took me to get the speakers set up.

If Brian wants to move the Play:1 from the office to the master bedroom, he can just move it. The entire family can have control over what the various speakers are playing either using the main computer or using one of their mobile devices. 

The Play:5 that they’ve got in the dining area, which provides sound for the kitchen, dining room, and living room area, fully half of one floor of the large house, is one of the brand new models. You can turn the volume of the speaker up or down by simply tapping it. Swiping the top skips to the next track. 

All three speakers are equipped with Sonos’ Trueplay tuning, which uses your iPad or iPhone to measure the acoustics of your room, and adjusts the output settings of the Sonos speaker accordingly. 

And if they want to add another speaker for the living room, it’s dead easy to add it. 

Like Robert said: “Sonos is like Lego. You start with one and build it out as you want, with different shapes and sizes.”

Sometimes it’s fun being the resident tech guy.