SONOS BOOST
Sonos creates a mesh network for stability and signal quality, but if it isn’t quite reaching the furthest parts of your home then the Boost does what the name suggests: it boosts the signal to help it reach far- flung corners or pass through thick stone walls. £84, richersounds.com at once: the living room, the kitchen, the bedroom, even the garden if you have a portable speaker. And two, they often enable you to play different things in different rooms, so you might be listening to hi-res audio from TIDAL or Qobuz while the kids stream Spotify somewhere else.
Previous multi-room systems were based on sharing local music either to speakers or over a network – so you might play your cherished vinyl on your high-end turntable and listen to it in another room, or you might have a networked music server that audio devices in other rooms could connect to and stream music from. Many multi-room systems still do that, but many of them also add another musical source: the internet.
Most multi-room systems work with multiple online streaming providers. For example, if you plump for a Sonos system you can stream from Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon music, Audible, Deezer, YouTube Music and many others.
As often happens with technology, there are multiple competing ecosystems to choose from. It’s crucial to choose your ecosystem before you spend any money, or you might find that when you want to add more devices you’re locked to a specific manufacturer.
There are two kinds of ecosystem. There are manufacturer-specific ones, where manufacturers create a range of products designed to work with one another, and there are platforms such as Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s AirPlay 2. If you choose a technology firm’s platform rather than a specific hi-fi manufacturer, you can mix and match different firms’ compatible hardware and control it via the Amazon Alexa or Apple Home app. The Alexa app isn’t as nice as, say, Sonos’s one, but it works.
There’s another platform, which is the DTS Play-Fi app. It enables you to stream and control music using products from the likes of Pioneer, Onkyo, Arcam, Audiolab, Klipsch, Polk Audio and others; Wharfedale, Mission and Sharp are joining soon.
HOW TO CHOOSE A MULTI-ROOM SYSTEM
First of all, you need to decide what you want to do. If you want to add multi-room and streaming audio to your existing hi-fi setup, you’ll need to choose a system or platform that enables you to use a connecting device such as the Sonos Port, which can stream your existing music around a Sonos multi-room setup as well as add streaming services to your existing amp and speakers.
If you have an existing music library you want to play throughout your home then you’ll need a system that either connects to your existing library storage – for example, a networked storage drive you’ve connected to your router – or that works with one of the online music services that you can upload your collection to, such as Apple Music, YouTube Music or Spotify.
Do you want to stream from online music services? The choice varies from manufacturer to manufacturer. Apple’s HomePod only natively supports Apple Music, although you can stream others via
It’s crucial to choose your ecosystem before you spend any money