Just moved from an open plan house where my traditional amp and speakers filled the house with sound pretty well. New place has more separated living areas and I'm considering one of these systems. Would you bother?
Mate of mine who is very clever with IT (professional of 25+ yrs) has just built a new house and has gone with Sonos. I don't know anything about MusicCast, but on my mates 'advice' if I was looking I would def look closely at Sonos...
we've had sonos for about 2 years. it's fine, can't comment about sound quality as I'm no audio buff, certainly more than good enough for my ears 
Keep in mind that with Sonos, you may need other subscriptions, such as Spotify Premium. Of course if you have mp3 collection you can place it on a drive connected to your home network and Sonos will play that too. To be honest I just pay the spotify premium monthly as it has pretty much everything song or album I could ever wanted to listen.
The other option, if you already have a good sound system and want to make it wireless, is to get google chromecast audio for about $55
Select to expand quotegs12 said..
we've had sonos for about 2 years. it's fine, can't comment about sound quality as I'm no audio buff, certainly more than good enough for my ears
Keep in mind that with Sonos, you may need other subscriptions, such as Spotify Premium. Of course if you have mp3 collection you can place it on a drive connected to your home network and Sonos will play that too. To be honest I just pay the spotify premium monthly as it has pretty much everything song or album I could ever wanted to listen.
The other option, if you already have a good sound system and want to make it wireless, is to get google chromecast audio for about $55
Thanks gs12, seems the ChromeCast does multi room, and I already have plenty of audio hardware, so a couple of these should give me the best of both worlds. So cheap it's worth trying, I'll give it a shot. 
I have Yamaha Musiccast and I am very happy with it. I have not ever used the Sonos system but it looks nice.
The primary difference I can see is that the Yamaha system seems to me more focused around adding to a dedicated Home Theatre or higher end stereo audio system. So you can get a large component home theatre receiver or Stereo amplifier and then connect it to other smaller powered speakers in other rooms and sync the sound of devices together. So more suitable if you want to choose your own speakers and drive them with high quality amps that can then be synced to other devices.
The Sonos system seems to be more about buying self contained devices with speakers and amplifiers built in.
I believe the Sonos system is more user friendly to use and probably a more reliable solid connection. May also support more music server sources.
In my case, I have a fairly high end receiver (with my preferred speakers) in with my TV room for watching movies with surround, and a fairly high end stereo amplifier (with some nice speakers) in my lounge. I then have some smaller self contained speakers in other parts of the house. I also have some additional zones wired to speakers in other areas from the main receiver and those zones "act" like separate Musiccast entities. It all works quite nicely and I can share music from one device to the others in audio sync. The best thing is the main receiver has many inputs like DAB radio and CD, TV etc. and I can share the audio from this to any other speaker, so can listen to sports on TV throughout the house while doing chores if desired.
Oh.... on the Chromecast. My son has one and it is such a cheap device for what it does...... but it does not seem to play well with locally sourced audio sources.... so it is great at playing music from internet sources... streams, cloud stored music etc, but it does not seem so good at playing music from a local media server. I have a NAS drive with DLNA server with all my music ripped to it, and it does not seem to be great at playing music from that. I guess it depends on where you play music from as to whether it is a good choice.
^
yeah that is a good point to keep in mind with Sonos that you can only connect some music services. That is little annoying as sometimes I like to play music from youtube (see below) and that does not work.
But all the big music services listed in the article above are OK so you are probably going to be ok unless you really want something weird.... which you probably already have anyway
(luckily I already have garage punk rock I used to listen at uni as mp3 and can think of only 2 fairly obscure bands I can't find on spotify)
support.sonos.com/s/article/3459?language=en
my biggest concern with all these systems is the inevitable lag between devices.I have two apple tv's that are within earshot of each other and if you play music to both of them at the same time, there is a definate lag between them which creates a disturbing echo effect.
I believe the Sonos may be different as it uses its own independent mesh networking, cant speak for the others.
Select to expand quotegrumplestiltskin said..
Sonos may be different as it uses its own independent mesh networking,
yep, that seems to be the case - my router shows only one of the sonos speakers communicating with the internet but not the other one.
Yet both speakers play the same audio, no lag or echo at all. so they must somehow talk to each other through other means (Nerd alert: I can see only one way traffic over wifi so I'm curious how it's done)
Select to expand quoteWineman said..
So did you take your push lawn mower with ya?
Absolutely!!
Yes, I think Sonos is more a plug in an play system, which suits me perfectly. If you want amps and receivers and super dupa speakers, I don't think it's for you.
In saying that, the sound is really good and definitely no lag or echo. I run 2 x play 3's and 1 play 5 in my living room and you wouldn't even consider top volume. Great to pick up and plug in outside too for parties - can have music all over the back yard and in the house with little effort. I really like the system and even though pricey I would buy it again.
Yamaha Musicast has similar technology to the Sonos with no delays. Actually there is delay added to the source and then all slave devices are synced to the delayed source so there is no echo (all have the same delay).
The Yamaha system is probably more suitable for those who still play old school audio sources. For instance, you can have a record player connected to your amp and then link (over the wifi anywhere in wifi range) a small powered speaker to that so that you can listen to a record around your house. I have done this with about 5 slave devices. This can be done for any analogue or digital source (I still play CDs). The master source buffers the audio signal by about half a second (I guess it determines the delay based on network performance), and the slave devices then play in sync. This works great for almost everything.... but you can also use it for TV as an audio source. This is great for listening to sports or something in other rooms of the house. Unfortunately the delay does cause lip sync issues and I guess there is no way around that.
My thoughts are that the Sonos system is a more polished system with more standalone speaker options for a modern user with most of their music played from streaming services and someone who wants minimalist unseen speakers/devices. The Yamaha system is more for people who like a big home theatre system or a high end sound system with nice amps and speakers and traditional music sources but wants to get similar synchronised multi room music to Sonos. Yamaha does the streaming services, but I think not as user friendly as Sonos.
Sonos and Yamaha small plug and play speakers sound good for what they are.... but are really not comparable to a good system with high quality floor standing speakers and a high end sub-woofer. My setup would blow a Sonos or Yamaha small speaker away for sound quality at both low and high volumes..... but most people are satisfied with the sound of the smaller speakers.
If you're concerned about your data... www.theregister.co.uk/2017/10/11/sonos_privacy_speakers/
Comments section has some interesting points regarding upgrading etc..
I had a similar issue when GoPro upgraded their phone app, the old version worked fine on my phone. After a reset of the phone I had to download the new version - that was no longer compatible with my phone - the old version was pulled from the store. GoPros response to my request to get the old version was (and I quote) "buy a new phone". Guess which company isn't getting any more money from me.
PS I bought a Logitech Bluetooth Audio Adapter for my old sound system.
www.jbhifi.com.au/products/logitech-bluetooth-audio-adapter
Hi
we have the old musiccast system (2400 system) I guess 6 years plus now and were happy with it but have heard Yamaha have gone to china for there system now so not sure if i would go that way again.
sonos was just coming out when we got into owes.
I have always prefered wired and have tried both and found wireless isnt always 100% reliable.
i went sonos. Had 100gig of music but not really accessible - used to play the same 3 albums that was on my phone. Now with sonos - have all that music on a NAS box and can play it all. Really nice to go back and play old or forgotten albums that are now so close to hand
i went sonos. Had 100gig of music but not really accessible - used to play the same 3 albums that was on my phone. Now with sonos - have all that music on a NAS box and can play it all. Really nice to go back and play old or forgotten albums that are now so close to hand
Ha ha, made me think of this thread when my internet went dead on Saturday before I had 20 people coming over for a party. My wife had these cool playlists cued up on Sonos for different times in the night, she was really excited. No internet meant no music!
Unfortunately with the Sonos you can't even hotspot from your phone as the Sono's has an internet plug at the back. (you probably can, I'm just not techie enough).
Really stuns you how much you rely on the internet in a home. Our bedroom TV has no aerial and is run with Apple TV - whole thing is just a paperweight without internet access.
Turns out some genius cut our wire in the box out the front. Big ups to iinet, I called and said everything is stuffed (connected but ultra slow) on Saturday morning. By 10am Sunday they had a tech at my door who spent a good 2 hours at my place isolating and sorting the problem.
Great guy who let me watch and gave me heaps of info - apparently i've already got fibre to the kerb (that's good) and its right next to my connection (that's also good). They will wait for a while before they switch it on though (that's bad).
