The music died

[Dave Zellers]

For many years now we have played music in the house with our iPods on a Bose Sound Dock. It was great. But then last Christmas the Bose stopped working. The iPods work fine but are very old and use Apple's old 30 pin connector. So as sad as it is, I'm ready to put them both out to pasture as the batteries obviously have very little life left in them.

So what is the preferred method for music in the house in the 21st century?
We both have iPhones. A friend says he streams music from his phone or tablet via Bluetooth.

Looking for advice in getting music back into the home. I so miss music while we are fixing dinner!
is Bluetooth realible? I don't want streaming gaps or skips.

[Prashun Patel]

Sonos is my favorite.

[Dave Zellers]

Well that certainly looks interesting. Just spent a few minutes on their web site. Which one do you have?

[Roger Nair]

I subscribe to Tidal and cable the laptop to the stereo. Very good sound quality and not tied to specific hardware, so if it goes down I'll just hook up another device.

[Art Mann]

Bluetooth isn't the answer, at least as it currently stands. The bandwidth is too low to transfer true high fidelity music. A new standard, 4.0, is coming out and that may change things - but not for current hardware.

[Dave Zellers]

Bluetooth isn't the answer, at least as it currently stands. The bandwidth is too low to transfer true high fidelity music. A new standard, 4.0, is coming out and that may change things - but not for current hardware.
When? Ten character requirement.

[Jim Koepke]

I also have one of the old iPods. We had to have the disk drive replaced a year or so back. Had the battery changed at the same time. There have been various iHome designs to work with iPods as a dock/player/charger. We got ours at Lowes.

For the shop I have an FM transmitter that plugs into the iPod and then plays out of an FM radio. It is handy when there is a power failure to have some music. There are only a few enjoyable radio stations we can pick up where we live.

jtk

[Prashun Patel]

Bluetooth may not be the answer for true high fidelity, but I bluetooth from my iphone to my car and it's good enough for my ears.

Dave, Sonos operates on WIFI - not bluetooth. I have a couple Play 3's, and Play 1's. I love the 1's because they are so mobile. I have one Play 5 which is nice because it has a line-in, so you can stream Youtube or a cd from a laptop if you wish. More and more Amazon Prime and streaming services are just fine for me, though.

What's great about SONOS is that you can play different things on each speaker, or you can group them. You can also control them each from your phone or ipad.

I suppose what REALLY makes it good, though is that the service is relatively reliable. Besides having to update the controller every few months, it doesn't seem to drop signals or lose itself, like a lot of other stuff on my wifi network.

[Dan Hulbert]

We too had our Pods and Bose docks die. Sad days. For background music we now use an Amazon Echo. Surprising sound quality in a small package. Voice controls work great and any questions are easily answered without touching a pad or keyboard.

[Bruce Wrenn]

I see the Ihome docks in thrift stores all the time for less than $5. Bought one to put on small TV in kitchen which sounded like a Japanese six transistor radio. Used connector cord from ebay ($0.99 shipped when I bought it). I have a Scosche FM transmitter that I bought at Walmart for about $14 (automotive section) that I use with laptop, Walkman, and receiver that is connected to outside antenna to rebroadcast throughout the property. Receiver on outside antenna gets a station that others can't. Car doesn't have a CD player, so I use Walkman and transmitter to listen to CD's. The NMH batteries from HF are great in these devices.

[Patrick Lesher]

I second the Sonos. They are expensive but just work. And when you have multiple ones around the house you can do some interesting things. I have ours setup with the home automation stuff ( SmartThings ) and have alerts come through the Sonos. I'm still waiting on the Echo and Sonos integration.

In the shop I have an Echo Dot connected to a cheap sound bar.

[Prashun Patel]

Yeah, when SONOS integrates with Echo or Google Home, you'd be able to voice control it and get it to play youtube!

[Edwin Santos]

Just like many a woodworking thread, the answer may be dependent on how serious you are about music. For me my audio system is the second most important system in my shop behind dust control. I integrate Sonos with a home automation system called Control4 and stream Rhapsody/Napster, TuneIn internet radio and my own inventory of music on a network drive. I have four ceiling mounted speakers in the shop. All control is through the iPhone app, individual volume control by room. All wi-fi driven.
If this is too fanatical for you, you could start with the basic Sonos with some Bose speakers and know that you can grow with it should you ever catch my illness.

[Dave Zellers]

Sounds like I need to investigate the Sonos. Would the middle one at 300 bucks deliver sound equal to the Bose Sound Dock? Would the iPhone app display my music library from my Mac so I can choose songs from the app?

I'll have to dig into this deeper this weekend.

[Doug Garson]

How about Chromecast audio? I have the video version of it to stream Youtube and Netflix to my TV from my tablet and it works well. No first hand experience with the audio only version. It's only $35 at Bestbuy plus your stereo receiver or powered speaker.

[Jim Becker]

We use an older iPhone 4 in the kitchen to stream music via an iHome clock/radio/sound system. It replaced an even older iPod Touch. :) The iPhone 4 without a SIM is essentially the equivalent of an iPod relative to music and runs just fine on WiFi for the purpose.

[Shawn Pixley]

Like Edwin, I care a lot about audio quality. For my ears, streaming quality sucks (and Pandora cannot figure out my tastes), iPods/MP4's are only marginally suitable, CD's are okay, and vinyl is best. Music in our house runs through our audio system (reasonably good from an Audiophile standpoint, but no 20K$ turntables here).

If you are looking for easy, an iHome with an old iPod/iPhone is pretty acceptable. I like music when I am cooking / cleaning. In the shop, I listen to Podcasts (audio quality only marginally important).

[Dave Zellers]

I sure like the $35 part but this is specifically for the kitchen while we make dinner at the end of two long days. It's driving me crazy being without it. Sometimes the best part of a homemade pizza is the music that went into making it. :cool:

[Dave Zellers]

Like Edwin, I care a lot about audio quality. For my ears, streaming quality sucks (and Pandora cannot figure out my tastes), iPods/MP4's are only marginally suitable, CD's are okay, and vinyl is best. Music in our house runs through our audio system (reasonably good from an Audiophile standpoint, but no 20K$ turntables here).

If you are looking for easy, an iHome with an old iPod/iPhone is pretty acceptable. I like music when I am cooking / cleaning. In the shop, I listen to Podcasts (audio quality only marginally important).

dang. Just when I thought I had this figured out, you walk in with this. Sounds like you're saying streaming (does that include wi-fi?) is a notch below mp4 quality wise? Because that's exactly what I'm wondering about. With the old Bose Sound Dock, I was playing mp4's directly off my iPod. If streaming or wi-fi is a step down from that especially if there is any skipping or delays, that could be a problem.
Oy! So many things to consider!

[Matt Meiser]

Everyone in our house has a small Bose Bluetooth speaker. Me in my office but I often take it out to the garage, my daughter one she uses whereever, and my wife had one at work when she had an office but now that she's at a new job in a cubicle its in our master bath. They sound decent and are super simple to use. We gave one to my mom as a gift as well for in her kitchen. Best deal is a refurb at an outlet mall if you have one nearby.

[Edwin Santos]

Dave, my experience with streaming quality has been excellent. For example, based on Shawn's comments just for myself, I listened to Beatles Love streamed from Rhapsody, and compared it to Beatles Love sourced from my network drive (mp3 files ripped from my CD), and I could not tell the difference. I never encounter skipping or buffering delays. Some of this might depend on internet connection speed, wireless access point. I guess the chain is only as strong as the weakest link, but my experience thus far has been very good.

For some reason, my hand cut dovetails always turn out better when I'm listening to Crosby, Stills & Nash.

[Dave Zellers]

Well I can certainly relate to that. I took my future wife to see them in Cleveland right after Neil Young joined tne band. The first third of the show was just CS&N and then they brought out Neil.

I think every seat was six bucks. We were there early, maybe 4-6 people behind the doors, then when they opened the doors, the CRUSH began. We had great seats. I'll never forget it.

[Dave Zellers]

Had to Duck Duck Go it. I was wrong. Four bucks. :cool:

http://rawsugarstudio.com/product/csny-1969-concert-poster/

ahh.... memories. I can close my eyes and see/hear them play Wooden Ships just a short distance away.

[Edwin Santos]

That's some story! Stephen Stills is truly amazing. Crosby and Nash are undeniably talented, but the story goes Stills played nearly every instrument on their debut album, and when it came time to tour to support it, they needed at least one other musician who could play instruments so Stills recruited Neil Young whom he knew from playing in Buffalo Springfield together.
You got to see them right at the time they took the world by storm, a few months after Woodstock.

[Jim Becker]

While it's certainly technically true that (in general) streaming isn't as good quality as other sources, for background purposes, most folks will be perfectly happy with it. And where else can you get and instant mix of Country, Bollywood and Classical with a couple of quick touches on a screen. :D

[roger wiegand]

I have Sonos connect units that I run into a mid-range amp in both the house and workshop, allowing me to use better speakers (that I already owned) in both places. You could even feed the Bose sound dock from a sonos connect. If you are happy with the way Bose stuff sounds you will be happy with any of the other choices as well. I love the access that Sonos gives me both to many thousands of "radio" stations on the web as well as seamless access to the couple thousand CDs stored on my computer.

[Brian Elfert]

Why not get a 30 pin to lightning adapter and use one of the iPhones with the existing dock? Another option is to get a used/refurbished iPod touch that still has the 30 pin connector.

[Chris Wdowiak]

We run these LG wifi speakers in the house and backyard. They work great and are cheaper than sonos.

http://www.lg.com/us/wireless-speakers

[Dave Zellers]

Why not get a 30 pin to lightning adapter and use one of the iPhones with the existing dock? Another option is to get a used/refurbished iPod touch that still has the 30 pin connector.
You have it backwards. The iPods still work, the Bose Sound Dock died.

It's starting to look very Sonosy.

[Dave Zellers]

We run these LG wifi speakers in the house and backyard. They work great and are cheaper than sonos.

http://www.lg.com/us/wireless-speakers
Interesting! Looking less Sonosy....

[Dave Zellers]

This is harder than it should be!