Sonos burns its Bridges: Our home-grown Wi-Fi mesh will do Until now, wireless speaker bod Sonos has required a Bridge device connected to a home wireless router to set up a mesh wireless network delivering timed audio signals to the speakers in a zone. But no longer – Sonos is going bridge-free. What it's doing is layering features of its own Sonos Net onto standard Wi-Fi as a base …
Until now, wireless speaker bod Sonos has required one Sonos device (either a player or a bridge) connected to a home wireless router to set up a mesh wireless network delivering . . .
There, fixed that for you.
Sonos does not require a separate Bridge device as every player has that functionality. The Bridge is used where it is not possible or is inconvenient to connect one of your players to your LAN. Or where you have a player not connected to your LAN and which is too far away from another connected device for a reliable signal i.e. the Bridge can be used as an extender by placing it part way between devices, though until this latest update it would need a physical connection be able to do that.
Every time I see something written about Sonos it always seems to contain basic misunderstandings about the need for a bridge and/or the "mesh"..
>There are two exceptions. When the Playbar, which connects to a TV source, is grouped with a sub –
>3:1 sound– and then a pair of Sonos players for surround sound – 5:1 – a Bridge will still be
>needed to co-ordinate the various players and ensure they are synchronised properly
You don't /need/ a bridge - you need /something/ wired. A speaker, or a bridge.
I don't have my bridge plugged in, yet my 5.1 works perfectly.
A lot of companies having developed a proprietary system requiring extra bits of hardware would have stuck by their system indefinitely (if only to get the added sales involved in buying the proprietary bits of hardware).
So fair call to them, if they are dicthing the bridge because they dont need it anymore that's to be applauded. Have to say I'm quite happy with my Sonos system, but I might try switching over to the bridgeless system in the coming days. If nothing else, it saves me an extra bit of kit slurping the electrical juice!
It is very laudable.
I'm trying to work out whether to wait for HiBerry to get there Digi+ to work with PiMusicBox (much cheaper option!) or to go for a Connect (looks pretty, has the same functionality) to play our FLAC collection and Spotify in the living room though our normal HiFi. If we can do this then the CDs taking up lots of space can finally be moved to storage!
One has geek value and is cheap, the other is likely to be easier (as I get older I see this as a benefit more and more) and will look better in the living room... As both have a COAX digital out I am assuming the sound will be the same...
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