We are staying busy finishing up the addition to the house, finally got the plumbing squared away and will have that inspected shortly along with the electrical so I can get insulation back in the walls and get the sheetrock up. It’s turning out nicely, can’t wait to use the bubblemassage tub!

Audrey turns 1 next month, can’t believe she was born almost a year ago already. Seems like just yesterday we were taking her home from the hospital. A lot has changed and she has grown a lot, despite being a lazy baby! She’s taken a few steps but is too lazy to pull herself up and walk on her own. She also does the dead-man crawl, only using her arms. It’s amazing to see how she figures out remotes for the TV and stuff.

Maybe my next update won’t take so long, only time will tell…

I’m finding that the S5 works great for bathrooms and bedrooms where you don’t want to have to have a ZP120 and speakers setup due to space constraints. In our main bathroom we currently have a ZP120 with two Polk Audio bookshelf speakers. While this setup works it isn’t the most visually appealing setup. When this setup is replaced by a Sonos S5 you can see the difference made by using an all in one solution.

But the real benefit of the Sonos S5 is how portable it is and how you could easily bring it from one location to another. The Sonos S5 features a built-in carry handle to make this process easier, however, I would much rather see a nice fitted and padded bag to carry the S5 along with the power cable and a CR-200 for easier movement between locations. I could see us using the Sonos S5 up at our parents cabin where we tend to try to string extension cords and boomboxes all over during our annual cabin party weekend. Next year we’ll be able to simply bring a S5 and a BR-100 to the cabin and provide music around the yard while we sit at the campfire or play bags.

There are a few features on the S5 that I would like to see, one of them being a cradle for the CR-200 (even though we don’t own any, I would find it useful if we did!), another being more integrated controls for at least starting / stopping music that you have selected from one of the controllers. Often we leave our Sonos sytems on regular channels, our bedroom is typically on Sirius 61 Highway, the garage and my office are typically on Sirius 36 BPM or Energy98. If there are items in the queue a quick play button would be great for a “headless” setup.

One feature I’m glad is not on the S5 is an iPhone/iPod dock. I’ll be the first to stand up for Apple products and how well they are built, but the Sonos S5 to me is not an iPod speaker dock system. I don’t want the Sonos S5 to be tied to a dock connector for input or have the beautiful aesthetics impaired by a dock that only a small fraction of users are going to use. The Sonos concept for music playing requires the use of one of their controllers to really control the playback, not a third-party device. I also find that any music I could access on my iPhone I can access via the Sonos (Pandora, Sirius, Internet Radio, local music).

Overall though I am very pleased with the build and sound quality of the S5. I don’t expect it to compete with my ZP90 hooked up to a Denon A/V receiver with Bose speakers, I expect it to compete with my Klipsch dock speakers for my iPod. When the two are pitted against each other the S5 sounds much better and I have a much larger selection of music to choose from.

Audrey Grace Krone

Born at 8:59am on Friday March 13th weighing in at 6lbs 13oz and 19″ long. Amie got her girl that she was so worried about not getting!