Sonos turns your house into an ipod

I can't understand why anyone would knock hard drive based systems. If you can get sound quality equality why deal with hundreds/thousands of cds/lps when you can easily navigate disc stored media. I'm thinking those who knock can't do it.

Just bought a Buff Tech Terastation Pro II and a bunch of Sonos zoneplayers. I agree with Jamesw20 above-- this is so user friendly and easy to set up, that I am going totally hard drive with my music library. I rip Apple Lossless to the hard drive and run the coaxial out of the Sonos to my Sim Audio CD player's digital in -- for my nice two channel system. For the rest of the house (six zones so far) I use the Sonos ZP100s to run the in wall speakers (or a ZP80 to feed the home theater processor and amps). It's so slick that my wife is using it-- a major accomplishment. The sound quality in my two channel rig is IDENTICAL to playing a CD in the Sim Audio SuperNova Evolution CD player. Sweet.

well, I just set up a simaudio/sonos system, and i beg to point out some pos/negs.
Negs: It took me 4 hours of pro help to get my computer set up so that the ext. hard drive/router/sonos/various (pc)software worked well together.
I have the sonos 80 running into a proceed dac, which sounds much better than the analog outputs of the sonos. I have a supernova - sorry, not the same.
I am deeply afraid of the fragility of trusting a computer. They're great-WHEN they work!
It would be really cool if the sonos would link into itunes, and could access all of it's functions, in the itunes interface. I'm thinking about itunes radio, which has many great stations. Better than sonos. I called sonos tech support, and was told " yeah, they make it hard to get the urls. And they're making it harder." Drats!!!
Pos: When everything works (when the moon is aligned with Venus..) it is very cool!
Although my ears think the supernova kicks it's butt, the sonos with (an older, bought here on the 'gon) dac sounds awesome!
For my particular situation, this was a great solution.
I still don't put much stock in computers though.....

I replaced my five year old router with a new one ($70 Netgear) and hooked up the Buffalo Technologies Terastation to it and was up and running in about 15 mintues. The Sonos setup took less than that. So far I've had no computer reliability issues. I agree though, that if the router and/or cable modem can be troublesome to intially set up (depending on your network complexity), but once that's done, it should be good to go.
I agree that running the digital output of the ZP80 to and external DAC sounds better than the analog outputs. I have used the Sim Audio SuperNova as the DAC and it runs into a BAT 51SE preamp, which when I compare a CD in the SuperNova, sounds the same. Amazing!

I bought the Sonos ZP80 bundle, purchased it directly, and hooked it up without a hitch.

A few months later I bought the exact same setup used from a member here. Adding those stations and the 2nd controller was also a breeze.

A few weeks later the controller died. I called Sonos, and was patched through to a real person almost immediatly. I made no secret that I had purchased it used. They decided to honor the original warranty based on the registration date of the serial #.

I was emailed a Fed Ex prepaid shipping label, and had a brand new unit in my hands a week later.

Their customer service is excellent if you ever need to call them.

John C.