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The out-of-box experience for a Sonos is something to be marveled at. I’ve been building consumer software for over 12 years. With products such as Outlook Express, MSN Mobile and Network Magic under my belt, I know how hard it is to take complex technologies and simplify them for a mass audience. It’s usually an iterative process that takes a few releases to get right. The Sonos guys nailed it in their first release.

First you take out the Zone Player, plug it into your loudspeakers or amplifier, then plug in your home network cable. The first Zone Player must be connected to your router with cat5, after that all other Zone Players can be wirelessly connected. Power it up and your ready to setup the Controller. The first thing the Controller tells me is to find a Zone Player to work with. You simply push a button on the front of the Zone Player and the controller can now speak to it. Immediately I can play Internet Radio, and with a few more simple steps, I will have access to my music library and be streaming from Rhapsody’s 1 million song Jukebox.

One minor ding is that I had to install the desktop controller to tell the Zone Player where to find my music. Once I did this, I could uninstall the desktop controller and still play music directly from my file server. It would be super cool if my Sonos had communicated with Network Magic and asked it where my music lives. Network Magic maintains knowledge of all of the interesting media content on my Network and could make configuration a breeze. Adding UPnP Media Server support to Network Magic is on our roadmap.

My first impression of the controller is that it was somewhat on the large side. I affectionately named mine “The Fat Controller." After doling out four hundred greenbacks, I was expecting something light and PDA-sized. It was bigger and heavier than I had expected. But after using it for a week, I have more empathy for the ergonomics and some of the intent behind the design.

The base has a nice tactile rubbery feel and the buttons are perfect. Not too many, but enough to be functional. There are 3 soft-buttons which can be more adaptive than the basics of volume and navigation. The UI is simple, clean and elegant. One slight ding, is that that wheel feels a little awkward sometimes and seems to have dead-spots that make it inaccurate - not as smooth as the iPod wheel.

Let me be clear here – the Sonos Controller is what sold me on the whole system. My old Audiotron was cool due to it’s big knob on the front. It felt like a rack-component in my stereo. Many music players have tried and failed in my line up. The Squeezebox, the Roku have all been considered, but ejected due to their cheesey TV-style IR-remotes and limited displays.

Pretty much what you would expect. At the top-level menu you can choose from “Music Collection”, “Internet Radio” or “Rhapsody” or “Playlists”. Music Collection allows you to access the files from your home network, Internet Radio has plenty of great stations, and Rhapsody is present if you have subscribed to the Rhapsody service and are running the Rhapsody client on a PC somewhere.

You can browse your music collection by Artist, Album, Composer, Genre or Track. At any point in the menu, you can “Add to Queue”. It doesn’t have to be a track, you can add a whole album, all albums by an artist or even your whole collection. Management is pretty simple.

As Anne Robinson might say – “Rhapsody – You are the weakest link!”. Don’t get me wrong – Rhapsody as a concept is awesome. But as an implementation, it falls short of expectations. It’s a service and as a consumer, I like services. But, I want to give Real Networks my monthly fee in exchange for some value. I’m getting too lazy to Rip my own CD’s and so the value I get is a pipe to their massive Jukebox. However, I want to get what I came for and not be bugged all the time.

I’m anal about my desktop. I don’t want yet-another-tray-icon cluttering up my pristine windows clock. I want it to give me silent value. Rhapsody implements a UPnP media server which directs streaming audio to the Sonos. The media server only runs if Rhapsody is open on my desktop and I am logged into my Rhapsody account. I would expect a mode of Rhapsody where I could supply my credentials and have it run as an NT service. Silent in the background, consuming minimal resources. So even if no one is logged into my desktop PC, my Sonos can still stream content. I hate having the UI open. I’m happy to look at the UI when I want to search the library and add new music to my mix, but not all the time. I hope Real fixes this in the next release.

I give the Sonos guys 6 out of 5 stars. It's an expensive device, but I feel good about passing my hard earned cash onto a smaller player that is dedicated to doing something above and beyond. Building an outstanding product that pushes the boundaries. The big mega-giants don't do this as well. I would feel bad if Sony or Bose were sucking down my cash. Go Sonos! Keep up the good work. I wish them all the success in the world.

I barely touched on the power of the Sonos. With multiple ZonePlayers, a zone-zone mesh network and a router in the back of each ZonePlayer, the Sonos can be a powerful networking system beyond just a world-class media player. I’ll save some of these advanced features for another blog.