Sonos has been such a welcome addition to the Techcraver household. It’s amazing to be able to stream music to anywhere in the house, whether it’s from my music library of streaming off a music service such as Pandora, Last.Fm or iheartradio. My wife and I constantly use our Sonos Home System.
There’s a new Sonos product that is caught my eye recently, the Sonos Wireless Dock. At first glance, the wireless dock looks simply like an iPhone or iPod docking station. It is just that, however, with some amazing smarts to it. The Sonos Wireless Dock can take any music from any iPod Touch or iPhone and instantly make the music from the device available on the Sonos system in a home or business.
What use problem does this new device solve? Have you ever had a person come over and talk about a sweet tune or album they just bought. Then you say – “hey let me borrow the CD” and they reply with the unfortunate answer that it’s on their iPod or iPhone? Well – now with the Wireless Dock, they can simply plop their device on the stand and you can instantly play the music. Pretty. Dang. Sweet.
All this magic happens with no drivers or configuration when you mount an iPod or iPhone. What’s sweet is that the device is also charging the whole time as well.
Set Up and Use
When you take the Wireless Dock out of the box – you simply plug it in. Then, using any Sonos controller (I used the iPhone app already on my own iPhone) you go to setup, then Add a Sonos Component, then simply click the link button on the back of the Sonos Wireless Dock. The Dock will then sync with the existing Sonos set up and be ready to use. The whole process took less than a minute.
Then, within the Sonos controller, there’s an option to choose Docked iPods. Do so, and you’ll be shown all the music on the attached iPhone or iPod. This is an amazing bit of technology that makes sharing music easy and fluid.
Sound and Quality
One word: wow. The sound is amazing. Because there’s no digital to analog conversion, music off a docked iPhone or iPod sounds incredible. This is a very worthwhile addition to any Sonos setup.
The Sonos Wireless Dock costs $120.
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At first, I thought this was great, but in practice, it’s dysfunctional. Why do I have to dock a wifi device in order to get on a wireless network? I keep my phone with me while in the house because I need to make/receive calls/text/email/etc wherever I happen to be. That’s the point of a wireless device, after all!
Instead of this dock, why not make an app that allows you to stream the iDevice audio over wifi to the Sonos system? Same for Laptops… I’d love to wirelessly stream the audio from my laptop to my sonos so while I’m doing anything with audio (youtube/skype/dvd/websites, etc.) it can be played to my Sonos zones.
regarding the dock, I think you’re missing the point. The point of this dock is not for your own iPhone or iPod – it’s for visitors’ devices in the case where they wan to share a song with you to listen too. Of course, your music is already synced with iTunes on your computer and you most likely have Sonos Controller running on your home mac, so of course you already have access to your own media.
As for your second paragraph, I love that idea and want the same thing.