Music Throughout the House

This past Thursday Brad came home with some new toys for our home sound system. We have always wanted a way to have music play outside and also have music inside for parties and background noise. Ideally, this system would tie into all the music that we have on our computers upstairs (even bigger plus if it can go off of the external USB drive off our router so that the computers don't have to be on).

The SONOS system is perfect for what we want.  The system works together to create a wireless music network throughout the house and can be controlled by an app on our ipad and smartphones. It connects to all of the music on our network and also internet radio such as Pandora and Spotify. The speakers can be set as a group or controlled individually; therefore the outside music can be completely different than what is inside.

SONOS Play 3 Speaker

Currently we have two items; the Play 3 and the Connect Amp. The way that the system works is that one item must be hardwired into the network and the other speakers wirelessly connect to the hardwired item. The Connect Amp has connections for attaching speakers whereas the Play 3 (and larger Play 5) have the speakers built in. If you would like to only connect the play devices you can use the Bridge to create the connection between the network and the wireless speakers. We went with the Connect solution so that we could purchase our own outdoor speakers for playing music down by the hot tub (Brad even got a waterproof ipad case so we can control the music from the hot tub.

Instead of running network wires to the Connect Amp, we are using a Ethernet over Power (EOP) device.  These things are amazing! If you want a network connection from one room to another you can plug in these two devices to the electrical outlet and the network signal will travel through the power wires of your house.

Eventually we will be adding the soundbar for our living room so that it can connect to both the TV and also the music network.

Below is a simplified map of how our network is setup. If you opt for the Bridge instead of the Connect option then that block is replaced and all speakers are wirelessly connected such as the Play 3 in our setup.

If you are looking for a way to listen to music throughout your house I highly recommend this product. It is so flexible and has lots of other ways to listen to music.

Disclaimer: I was not compensated for this post, I bought this system myself and just really like it. Links in this post do contain affiliate links; buying through them helps support this site.