Review: Sonos Port

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Video Transcript

"Hi, everyone. It's Adam, with World Wide Stereo. Today, going to give you a rundown on the Sonos Port. ♪ [music] ♪The Sonos Port replaces the Sonos Connect. This piece is your preamp.

Now, that means that you send the sound, or you select what you want to play from here, and you send that to an amplify device, whether that's an amplifier to run your house audio system, your surround sound receiver, a soundbar, powered speakers, anything with amplification, because there is no amplification in here. The old Sonos Connect piece was a little different. It was white, a little bit taller.

So the new design here, it's a little bit thinner, a little bit sleeker, kind of looks like also the Sonos Amp where you have that circle on the bottom here, and you have the new Sonos Amp with that circle on top. So they're trying to have a consistent look with all their stuff. On top, you still get the status indicator. On the back, you have an analog output, you have an analog input, which is kind of nice if you want to connect something like maybe sound from a TV or if you have a turntable that has a built-in preamp, or you have an external phono preamp, you can connect it there, and share the music that way.

And then it has a digital coax output. The old Connect piece that this replaced has a fiber optic output and digital coax output. This new model, only digital coax. Also, the other thing you want to consider, say you had a Sonos Connect piece, and it failed for whatever reason, you're not going to be able to just directly swap this out with the old power plug, okay.

The new one has a DC transformer input, so it's that little circular connection that you plug in. So you plug into the wall, goes into, like, little looking battery pack kind of looking thing, and then plugs into the back of this unit. The big new feature for the Port is AirPlay 2. So now, from an Apple device, you're able to use your Wi-Fi network to send either your personal music library from Apple or iTunes directly to this unit.

Or you could be watching this YouTube video maybe and sending the sound to here to come output through your system, or maybe a video from Netflix or any of your favorite TV or movie streaming apps. You can send it to here, and then have it come out of your system. Real quick side note about the AirPlay 2, a lot of people are concerned with the old legacy product. You were actually able to send your library of music through the Sonos software.

It would say play, you know, from this iPhone, and go directly to that unit. Well, they've taken that feature set away and added the AirPlay 2. So people are concerned that "Well, now, I can't play it on all my older stuff.You're going to make me replace everything." Not the case. If you buy one new product from Sonos, just one that has the AirPlay 2 chipset in it, you're able to send your music to that device, and then share to an older one.

So a little bit of a workaround, but you don't necessarily have to buy all new Sonos equipment. Let's talk about getting this thing connected. So on the back, you do have Ethernet jacks on the back, and there is Wi-Fi built-in. So I would recommend if you have a network jack to plug it in, that's always the best thing to do. But if that's not possible, you can use Wi-Fi to get this thing online, and connect it into your system.

So very flexible ways of getting this thing installed. If you're an Android user, you can use Google Cast to this from your Google Music library to send the music right to here. You cannot do things like do the YouTube sound or the Netflix sound using Google Cast, but you can get your music library to play to this. This unit is a preamp, so you can change the output to be either variable or fixed.

Some scenarios where you'd want it to be variable is if you want to have the volume control, if you have the speakers in your ceiling, and you have this connected to your amplifier, and you want to be able to control the volume through the app, that's when you would want to have this in variable. Fixed mode would be if you were connecting this to a device that has its own volume. So the big idea there is, like, an integrated amplifier or a surround sound receiver.

Those have their own volume. So in that installation, you'd really want to set this to have a fixed output, because you only want the volume to be set at the receiver. Two other nice little installation features that are on the new Port is, first of all, the size was chosen because it's one rack unit high now. So fits into installation racks really, really nicely. Also, on the back, you also now have a 12-volt trigger.

A 12-volt trigger is there, so you can make that connection, and the connection looks to be about the size of a standard headphone jack. You can run that cable to an amplifier that has a trigger in, so now when I start playing music here, it can trigger that amplifier to turn on. And then after it's not being used a little bit, it'll shut it off. So that's a nice installation feature, again, the size and also the 12-volt trigger.

This is the Sonos Port. It'll be available online at worldwidestereo.com, or if you happen to be in the area, you can stop by our Ardmore or Montgomeryville, Pennsylvania, showrooms. We have a 60-day return policy, free shipping, and we also are authorized dealers for everything that we sell here. If you have any questions, you can leave those in the comment section below, or please call or email us at any time. Please subscribe to our YouTube channel.

This is Adam, with World Wide Stereo, reminding you to listen to music every day. So long. ♪ [music] ♪"