peterb123

Wow, just looked at your pictures, very nice gear. My wife had me to choose between the speakers and the grand piano. So I chose the real thing.

The 5.1 functionality existed before Boost was released. The special thing of the 5.1 setup is that it uses a 5GHz instead of 2.4GHz. This is only supported by the Playbar, the Subwoofer, the Play:3 and Play:1 (so they are dual band, all others single). In that scenario, the Playbar is the controlling device and right/left/mid speaker, Play:3 or Play:1 pairs are rear, Sub is sub (the latter being optional). ...but don't under estimate the latency created by Sonos (and Airplay as well). For listening to music, that's not an issue (but then, hey, you have Sonos, so let it play itself). Anything synchronous to video on screen does not work well. I use Airplay (Airport Express connected to Play:5) very rarely. Peter

From my view, first, Boost has better wireless than any other Sonos device. I would assume Connect and Bridge have the same wireless tech inside. Sonos is an appliance only solution, so no software connect, and I think this will be so forever. The user's advantage is the simplicity and the stability of the solution (if you stick with pure Sonos WLAN, see above). It is definitely no full alternative to a directly connected PC/Mac speaker (delay, see above). Peter

1. The Boost is much better in WLAN coverage than the bridge. I have to cover a 5 floor house with 6 different Sonos rooms. With the bridge, I had frequent connection issues, gone with the Boost. 2. Not sure whether Boost uses WDS (I doubt it, Sonos says they are using some "proprietary" technology), but in any case, there is nothing to configure on that device, you can just add it to your Sonos setup. With Android devices, you can use the Sonos net as a WLAN, but I wouldn't, as it is a 802.11g network with limited bandwidth. Same reason why I would not connect Sonos to the normal WIFI, but use a Boost. 3. Yes, there is - through Airplay. You have to connect a Airport Express to the line-in of a Play:5 or Connect. But, it is not a good solution as a PC/Mac speaker as there is significant delay in the sound output. So watching movies is no fun. Peter