Gosh, why is this forum so dead ? Thought I'd post in an existing thread, but seeing as how it's so dead around here, changed my mind favor of a new one... Anyhow,

I've been up to my neck in bills, debt and school tuition, but I've recently picked up another shift at work, which means another bill in my pocket each week. The first thing I did was make sure my wife knew that I'd have extra cash and asked if she knew what I'd do with it in the short term...

Sure enough, she immediately said: " I know... receiver, riiiight ?" Clever woman that one !

So hopefully I'll be back in business in a few weeks. We also have that Outlaw credit card, so I'm thinking sooner than later. For anyone whom has the card, can you answer this for me:

The card is interest free the first year, but is that from the time in which you receive the card, or does that time frame begin as soon as you make your first purchase ?

Doug

The interest free period starts from the date your product ships.

Here's how the promotion works: If your purchase is under $1000, it's interest free for 90 days; Over $1000 interst free for 12 months.

PROVIDED you make all your minimum payments on time and have the full promotional balance paid off before the 'Promotional Purchase Due Date'.

If you do not pay the entire balance off by the 90 day or 12 month due date, you must pay ALL the interest accrued. This amount is listed on your bill as 'Deferred Finance Cahrge'.

Example: I purchased an LFM-1+/SMS-1 Combo on my Outlaw Card on January 26th. The Promotional Due Date is Feb. 11 2008. That's the date I have to get it paid off by. Last month $31.85 of interest accrued. If I pay the full balance off by next February, the interest goes away.

Hope this helps,
Tony.

PS - Best of luck and I hope you thoroughly enjoy your gear.

hi palmer, thanks for posting this insight. I'm curious: how does the SONOS integrate with your two systems? is one connected to the 2150? and have you (if we swerve away from the 2150 focus for a moment) compared it to similar solutions (Squeezebox, etc)? the reason I ask is that I got my 2150 in part because of its built-in USB DAC so I could use one of the computers on (same with my other system, which also has a USB in). so, hurdle one: getting a SONOS or SB would mean I don't need the USB on both amps (at most I'd use it on one). hurdle two: the SONOS seems a bit like a distributed boombox, the Squeezebox wants a better DAC... what's the audio quality like in your view?

First, Apologies to Doug for Hijacking his thread but he did complain that the forum was dead, so here's a little life...

The Sonos integrates very well with both my 970 and my 2150. Audio quality is awesome. I am using analog output to my 2150 and digital out to the 970. I am hard pressed to find fault with the internal DACs on the ZP80 vs. the DACs in the 970. Since the digital out is bit perfect, use of a high end external DAC may give some improvement to more critical listeners than.

For a professional opinion on sound quality, here's link to a review by John Atkinson in Streophile:

http://www.sonos.com/documents/reviews/stereophile06.pdf

My comparisons were feature based rather than a listening evaluation. Some off the features that sold me on Sonos were the option for an amplified player, support for wired ethernet as well as 802.11g wireless and the ability to run analog stereo into any player and stream to anywhere in the system. I use this feature for distributing Sirius radio throughout the house. Oh yeah, It's dead easy to set up and operate.

True, you won't need the USB inputs on your receivers, but you get a lot more flexibility distribution-wise. The Sonos components are more expensive but in my experience it has been more than worth it.

We were doing a massive remodel of our home and wanted to put speakers in the kitchen ceiling and outside in the backyard. I had three extra channels in my Outlaw 750 so I figured I would use two of them to power the outside speakers and get two amplified units to power the two pairs in the kitchen. I started with a three player, one controller system and one thing led to another...

...now I have seven players, two controllers, and the Sonos software installed on two PC's. The system scales to 32 players so I am nowhere near maxing it out. I tested running seven different streams to all seven different players and had no detectable issues.

All streams played perfectly as far as I and my three listening helpers could tell. As of right now, four players are on wired 100 Mb/sec Ethernet and three players are wireless.

I'm in the process of ripping all my CD's to flac format and storing them on a dedicated NAS server with 800GB of storage (I'm about 1/4 through my CD's and have accumulated about 100GB of digital music files).

The forums on sonos.com have a lot of great content, including some interesting discussions of users experiences with Squeezebox vs. Sonos (with some good balance, not just fanboys there)...

Thanks for listening, and let me know if you have any specific questions about setup or operation (that goes for everyone else who reads this as well).

Cheers,
Tony.

With apologies to Sweet Spot for further hijacking the thread, but I also have a Sonos system (3 ZP80s), hooked up to a 990/755 with Def Tech BP 7002 surround sound system and to a Yamaha HTR 5960 with an Axiom M2.2 surround sound set-up (the third ZP80 ultimately will get hooked to another, older Yammie in another room). Both ZP80s are hooked up using a digital out -- coax to the 990 and Toslink to the Yammie. Audio quality using Apple lossless is first-rate; set-up is dead simple, and flexibility is very high. The downside is that Sonos is more expensive that Squeezebox, but I find the hand-held controller alone well worth it.

How DARE you people HIJACK my thread and bring LIFE ...to this forum !!!!!


OH, GO ON ! GO ON !!!!!

And thanks for the info Tony, good to know that there are two plans. I thought there was only a one year plan. Now please, continue on with the tech speak !

Regards,

Doug

Just wanted to say, that I've accepted Sunday double shifts at the hospital, in order to have extra $ for the 2150. As it is, the job is incredibly physically and mentally stressful, but I think that the final payoff will have been worth the suffering.

Right now, I'm halfway there. Actually did two doubles back to back last weekend (Sat and Sun which KILLED ME) and started my Sunday double thing, this past weekend. I doubt very much that I'll work the doubles after I've gotten the receiver and new speaker cables and interconnects. The things we do eh ?

So much for double shifts contributing to my 2150 ... Seems that for each extra shift I did, an added expense/bill also came up and I'm just too f'ing responsible for my own good !

There IS however, a bright light ahead, as my wife PROMISED that no matter what, I'd have the receiver before the years end. She actually said that we should just buy it yesterday, but knowing that I have several thousands of dollars to pay off, I said I'd wait still.

Funny though, if she and I weren't staying in this swanky resort on Vieques (Puerto Rico) next week, there goes my receiver, interconnects, and speaker cables ! Ah well, at least I know that there's a silver lining to this dark cloud !