Rethinking Whole-House Audio: Sonos (Premium)

Back in January, I started rethinking our approach to whole-house audio, and while Sonos immediately emerged as an obvious top choice, especially given the low cost of some recent entries, I immediately ran into a serious issue that threatened to scuttle this migration.

I guess I should have seen this one coming. But as a corollary to “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” approach, I also subscribe to the school of “I already figured something out, so I stopped thinking about how it works.” Put simply, something that solved a problem for me previously was suddenly causing problems for something new.

Sorry, let me try that in English.

When we moved to Pennsylvania almost three years ago, we installed a Google WiFi mesh networking system as an affordable way to get Internet connectivity everywhere in this new and much larger house. And it’s worked so well, and so consistently well, that I rarely even think about it. I never need to reset it, tinker with it, or worry about it in any way. It is, in short, everything that most personal tech is not: Reliable and predictable. Boring, even.

Until, of course, it’s not.

We’ve had various Sonos speakers for years. When we still lived in Dedham, I used a stereo pair of Sonos Play:1 speakers in our living room and a single Play:1 in our upstairs bathroom. When we moved to Dedham, those speakers all went with my daughter into her bedroom and bathroom, and we moved on to Chromecast Audio for the rest of the house, with those Edifier bookshelf speakers I always rave about in the sunroom. This worked pretty well for a while, but I experienced massive reliability problems throughout 2019, and by the time this year rolled around and Sonos made its legal complaints against Google, I was ready for a change.

As noted, Sonos was an obvious choice. But Sonos speakers and peripherals are expensive. In December, thanks to a great Black Friday sale, I briefly tested a pair of Sonos:One speakers in the sunroom to see if they would be an acceptable replacement for the Edifiers and Chromecast Audio, but it wasn’t even close, so I immediately returned those speakers to Sonos.

I also considered purchasing a Sonos Port, which would let me add my Edifier speakers to the Sonos ecosystem. At $450---four and a half times the cost of those speakers---Sonos Port seemed like a silly investment. Until, that is, you do the math: The closest equivalent Sonos speakers to those Edifiers is the Sonos Play:5, and that costs $500. Each. So a pair of Sonos Play:5 speakers would cost an incredible $1000. That’s a lot of money to pay to replace a $35 Chromecast Audio dongle and a $100 pair of speakers.

Given the cost, I figured I’d hold off on the Sonos Port and test other solutions in the meantime. I’ve written up only one of those solutions---Bluetooth---so far, but I’ve also tested the Amazon Echo Input (which is, sort of but not quite, a weird middle ground between a Bluetooth adapter and...