Sonos rattles begging bowl, hopes for $130m cash stream Sonos, the Wi-Fi speaker streaming firm, is looking to raise $130m from investors, according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The filing doc doesn't say what the cash is for and Sonos isn't saying either. It's facing increased competition as Bose and other mainstream speaker suppliers jump on the Wi- …
Having looked for a cheap adapter there just isn't anything there that is consumer friendly, except for Sonos (which isn't cheap...). Whilst not a fan of their speakers I do like their Connect boxes for streaming to existing Hi-Fi systems.
Sound is great (via the digital out and playing FLAC over a wired connection) and acceptable (via the line out over a WiFi connection) to my two systems and control is very easy. Setting up each connect took about 5 minutes from plugging in the box to playing music.
I could have done it cheaper, but could I have done it as hassle free?
Yes, the Connect box might well be excellent - but £279? Two hundred and seventy nine quid?
Which is why I still soldier on with my Squeezeboxen. Yes, they are looking a little old-fashioned now, and yes, they are not quite hassle-free to set up - but once they are working, they just keep working.
I totally agree. But as they were discontinued they were not an option. And any of the others that I have tried in the past (two Philips Streamium products) sucked (needing servers to deliver the music, having very limited codec functionality - I wanted to replace the CD player in the living room so FLAC was a must) and as I have a rather good DAC in my sound processor I needed digital out to take advantage of it.
And all workable from an app on the phone (I would have accepted a smart remote as well).
There simply wasn't anything else available that fitted the bill (I looked into a PI with a HiBerry DIGI+, but to be honest I wanted a done and dusted system and not a play with it for a week to get it working system and then start playing with Apps to find which actually works).
For the time being I have limited mobility and this was a solution to getting all of music into the bedroom for during the time. Expensive, but for the purpose worth it.
ive had a couple of £50 apple airports since about 2009 - just upgraded one - setup - 90 seconds from opening the box - wireless range extenders, print servers & wireless audio, quality so good i cant tell that its not an optical wired connection...
As with all apple stuff its seamless, flawless quality for spotify /youtube from my phone or ipad... theres also a program that steams audio from my PC (still refuse to get a mac) wirelessly using airport...
At the time, it was a helluva lot cheaper than the other options out there... There are blutooth/airplay combined equivalents for cheaper...
PS. apple auto-updates apps in background... i started spotify on my phone today and noticed i could choose to play on i) Bedroom ii) Kitchen (new one) iPad! So spotify on ipad/phone can control each other / stream audio to each other by default out of the box... so you can plug in a 3.5mm & use as a wireless audio server...
They released their numbers last year and their revenue doubled to $535 million from the year before. Then in an interview with Gigaom this year their CEO said that they expect to double again to over a billion this year. Doubling revenue year over year doesn't sound like struggling to me. Logically most startups won't have the money to advertise on TV in the beginning but start doing so once they have the money to spend, which seems to be the case here.
It's most probably a cashflow issue, a too big gap (in time) between expenses and income.
With that type of growth, they have to spend so much money on building the stuff, and using a distribution channel, it can be up to six months between the time they built the product, shipped it to the distributor in the UK, who then shipped it to the reseller, who then handed over to the customer, who then paid the reseller, who then paid the distributor, who then paid Sonos (phew).
Please. Sonos? No DTS support is a deal breaker for anybody even slightly serious about HT audio.
Sonos is for casual TV viewing in the bedroom or family room, and for easily managing whole house audio (music).
Sonos has no business being in any HT setup. Overpriced and over-hyped and feature poor.
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