Internet Radio finds

I love my Sonos. ahem, I mean Dean really loves the Sonos I got him for Christmas.

One of the unexpected benefits of the Sonos, besides having music playing allover the house 24/7, is the internet radio stations that come with the Sonos system pre-loaded. When our computer is not connected, The Sonos can still play from the Internet radio list. The list has some hits, some misses, but amongst all that I found a pretty cool little internet radio station: Martha's Vineyard Radio.

They play an eclectic mix of 80s and 90s that ranges from REM, U2, Elvis Costello to Blues Traveller, Wallflowers, and Belle and Sebastian, then randomly they throw in stuff like a evening blues show and some other random but good genres. It makes a nice alternative to the iTunes library.

Dean is busy engineering a way to hook in our Sattalite radio (XM) stream, so prety soon we will be able to play any genre of music, any time, all over the house. Heaven. I'm willing to go on a starvation diet to buy more Sonos parts, because there are still parts of my house that I don't yet have covered in music.

Which reminds me of a post that Gordon blogged about - some products invoke emotional attachment. iPod was one, but I've found a new love - Sonos. If only all products were that huggable.

Sonos!

Dean got to open his Christmas present early this year - a Sonos whole-house audio system, and a new set of Focal/JMLab speakers to play music in the living room.

Having made Dean spend all our hard earned savings on boring furniture over the years, I decided that instead of more uphostery Dean could buy a sweet stereo system for Christmas. I did some research and discovered that audiophile geek was a specific sub-genre of ubergeek - and I was a total n00b. Lucky for me, Anthony was an audio zenmaster in a former life. Sonos, litle grasshopper. Sonos.

Dean and I visited our local stereo geek store (Tweeter) on Sunday and picked out our Sonos bundle. Next we needed speakers, so we could play our music in the living room. Enter the speaker room. Two comfy chairs, an array of CD/DVD players and amplifiers, and a wall of speakers. The sales person gave us a demo - the Polk sounded nice, the Infinity solid but a little crisp.. and the Focals sounded like a glass of expensive french wine. C'est épatant! The speakers were a bit more than we wanted to spend... but as luck would have it, last year's model of speaker was on sale for 40% off - making them the same price as the Polk speakers. Sold! (2006 was a good vintage).

Like all good Chrismas gifts, the best ones are as fun to unwrap as to use. First, we set up the speakers. Did I mention these babies are très magnifique? They weigh a ton. Dean says this is a sign of a good speaker. I say, this is a sign that Dean will be carrying them in from the car.

Having set up our speakers, it was time to unwrap the Sonos. As I mentioned before, I am a total stereo n00b. The Sonos was blindingly simple to set up. The entire set comes in a cute little box and setting it up is as easy as plugging cord A into Tab B and pressing the on button. Setting up zones was easy, and the software we installed on our computer was even savvy enough to find our music library automagically. Brilliant.

The Sonos is so well designed, its worthy of its own blog entry where I can rave about it. That will have to wait until another day, I have audio heaven to visit now.