Sonos home music systems offer wireless control with iPhone

Boom boxes with iPod docks are all the rage these days in home electronics. But Sonos, a company that sells home music products that connect to each other wirelessly on a mesh network, is going one better. The company will let you control your music system in your house with an iPhone, iPod Touch, or any Sonos Controller. And you can do it all wirelessly, without putting your device into a dock.
It’s a great step forward for couch potatoes, who can now sit on the and browse through music collections and play music from their home network or the web without getting up. You don’t have to put the device in a dock to access music; you can do it right from your pocket. The Sonos ZonePlayer S5 will sell for $399 starting in mid-October.
You can download the free Sonos Controller app for the iPhone/iPod Touch and use it to access your collection of music on your home network, including your iTunes songs. You can also go out on the web to sites such as Last.fm and play songs on your Sonos-connected music system. You select the song to play it, then the iPhone/iPod Touch will issue the command to the S5 via a Wi-Fi connection. Then the S5 will look up the song, whether it is on your home network or elsewhere.
The S5 has a five-driver speaker system that can fill an entire room with all-digital, high-quality music. With the S5, you can access 25,000 Internet radio stations, shows and podcasts — all free of charge and pre-loaded on Sonos. You can also bypass the PC and access millions of songs and stations directly from the likes of Last.fm, Napster, Rhapsody, Pandora, SIRIUS Internet Radio, and Deezer.
Using the iPhone/iPod Touch, you can search for songs and stations, choose the music and control the volume in as many rooms as you like. If a call comes in, you can answer it and the music won’t stop. That’s because it isn’t playing music that is stored on the iPhone. Setup is easy, and you can use the S5 other Sonos products, which are now available at 4,000 retailers in 60 countries.
The Santa Barbara, Calif.-based company has 165 employees and was founded in 2002. The company has raised $40 million to date, and its revenues are up 25 percent this year compared to a year ago. Rivals include Apple, Bose and Logitech.[EMBED1]