Time to hear the music,
Posted by Carlton Bale on May 7th, 2005
Let the music player testing begin. I've decided it's time to get the music off of my PC and into the rest of the house where it can be enjoyed. I'm having a tough time deciding which player to buy; I'd narrowed it down to the Roku SoundBridge M2000 and the Sonos ZonePlayer but couldn't decide based on features alone, so I ordered both. The winner will stay and the looser will be returned. I also considered the SlimDevices SqueezeBox2 but it is basically the same as the Roku without any support for WMA DRM-protected files that I purchased, so I marked it off my list. The testing will begin later this week.
May 23rd, 2005 at 1:13 pm
Any update? How did the head to head go?
Thanks!
December 7th, 2005 at 3:22 pm
The Roku was trounced by the Sonos. There were several Roku features that, while not all iPod-pretty, were more desirable than the Sonos. The menu scrolling and auto-categorization were more intuitive. The display, while one-color, could be easily read from any room location.
Why the Roku lost: the Sonos had multi-room capability that Roku couldn’t deliver. In addtion, the Sonos remote displayed cover art. As a quasi-artist, I am saddened that the audio arts are losing their connection to the visual arts. Not only is cover art smaller, it’s totally ignored when songs are purchased directly as downloads.
The Sonos had a couple of irritating flaws, but they were quickly corrected after Carlton posted the feedback for Sonos. The player has changed the way I listen to music.