World Crisis Online

Clockwise from top left: Pioneer Music Tap, Sonos Play:3, Soundfreaq Sound Stack

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Pioneer also offers a free iOS app, Air Jam, that lets up to four people collaborate on one playlist for the Music Tap. It’s an interesting idea, but it could use clearer instructions. And I wish there were a smart-phone app to control the system’s many features. Instead, you do that using a color LCD screen, buttons on the device and a garden-variety infrared remote control.

Then there’s the Play:3, the smallest, cheapest member of Sonos’s ever expanding family of wireless hi-fi products. Whereas the Sound Stack uses Bluetooth and the Music Tap uses wi-fi, Sonos calls on its proprietary wireless technology — the goal being to deliver high-quality audio without dropouts and other glitches. If your home’s networking router happens to be close to where you’d like the Play to live, you can hook up the two devices with an Ethernet cable; if not, you need to plunk down another $49 for a Sonos Bridge, a little box that plugs into the router and lets you put the Play wherever you want. (Read about another home theater solution.)

The Play:3 is more diminutive than Soundfreaq’s and Sound Stack’s systems — roughly the size of a shoebox and completely unobtrusive. Its only adornments are volume controls and a Mute button, and there’s no dock connector. It packs two midrange drivers and a tweeter, and while the audio had less stereo separation than the other, larger units, it was rich and warm.

Unlike the other products I looked at, the Play:3 doesn’t come with an infrared remote to access its functions. Sonos does sell a nicely designed touchscreen remote, but you probably don’t want it: it’s $349, or the same price as a Play:3 and a Bridge.

More likely, you’ll use an iPhone, an iPod Touch, an iPad or an Android device to control the Play:3, courtesy of one of Sonos’ apps. Unless you’ve bought Sonos’ $119 iPod/iPhone dock, the apps can’t stream music that’s stored locally on any of these mobile devices. Instead they find music stored on PCs or hard drives on your network. (Read about Sonos and Android.)

But the coolest thing about the Play:3 isn’t that it can play your music collection. It’s that it excels at playing the far larger collection that lives in the cloud — the one offered by free and not-free services such as Mog, Napster, Pandora, Rdio, Rhapsody Spotify, thousands of radio stations and more. You can use all of them within Sonos’ apps, and since they stream directly from the Internet to the Play:3, high-quality playback isn’t dependent on a perfect connection between your Apple or Android device and the Play:3.

The Play:3 is a blast all by itself, but it’s most meaningful as a building block of Sonos’ whole-home music system, which lets you stream one audio source to every room or different music to different areas. You can configure two Play:3 units as a single speaker setup, allowing you to create as much stereo separation as you please. Or you can start with one Play:3, then build out your Sonos system with additional speakers in other rooms, controlling the whole shebang from your smart phone.

So which of these three contenders is the champ? That’s a tough call. As I said, they’re a study in contrasts. I liked them all, for different reasons.

Check out the Sound Stack if its simplicity sounds appealing and you aren’t alarmed by Bluetooth’s limitations. Take a look at the Music Tap if you want the setup with the most features. Investigate the Play:3 if you are a fan of Internet music services, don’t mind that it can’t stream music stored on mobile devices and are intrigued by Sonos’ vision of multiple-room music — or if you just like its pint-size profile.

If you end up choosing any of them, you’ll get more out of your favorite music than if you piped it directly into your earlobes via headphones. Even if you’re the only one listening, you’ll feel as if you’re unleashing the songs that are normally trapped inside your skull. And if one of these systems helps you enjoy music in the company of friends and family, you’ll be doing your part to prove that this alleged age of musical selfishness isn’t so selfish after all.

McCracken blogs about personal technology at Technologizer, which he founded in 2008 after nearly two decades as a tech journalist; on Twitter, he’s @harrymccracken. His column, also called Technologizer, appears every Thursday on TIME.com.

See the tech buyer’s guide in 2010.

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Clockwise from top left: Pioneer Music Tap, Sonos Play:3, Soundfreaq Sound Stack

Comment Print Email Reprints share LinkedIn StumbleUpon Reddit Digg Del.i.cious Tweet The iPod has always had a reputation for ushering in an era of musical selfishness. Apple seems to be O.K. with that perception. Remember the iPod ads that showed silhouetted figures wearing those iconic white earbuds, rocking out while blocking out the world?

Me, I still think it’s a bum rap. The wealth of music that the iPod — and the iPhone and the iPad and Android handsets and similar gadgets — puts in your pocket isn’t just for solitary listening. If you have a means of pumping it through a decent set of speakers, it’s at least as much fun to share as it is to hog it for yourself.(Read about a Sonos music solution.)

Hardware makers have always understood this and have long manufactured a dizzying array of audio systems for the iPod and its offspring and rivals. You can buy one for $20 or for $550,000. (Yes, $550,000.) Or you could find a middle ground, such as Soundfreaq’s Sound Stack, Pioneer’s Music Tap and Sonos’ Play:3. The Play:3 doesn’t actually play music directly from smart phones and other mobile gadgets, although it works with both Apple and Android devices and the result is similar — more about that in a bit.

All these products are in the same price range. The Sonos is $299, and the Sound Stack and Music Tap are $399. They’re all petite enough to be at home in nearly any room and can stream music wirelessly rather than requiring you to futz with cables or connectors. And to my nonaudiophile eardrums, they all sound nice. Yet each takes its own approach. They’re less direct competitors than alternate takes on how wireless music should work.

First, the Sound Stack. It’s a handsome, low-slung unit that’s a bit less than a foot and a half wide, with a facade of black cloth and just a few touch-sensitive controls, plus an optical input for connecting to boxes like game consoles and a USB port for charging phones and other devices. Inside there are two full-range drivers and two subwoofers, in a configuration Soundfreaq calls DubSub. In my tests, the combination produced audio that sounded as if it were emanating from a larger, fancier rig.(Read more about high-end audio.)

The system has an FM tuner but no display to show you what station you’re on; you control the radio with an app available in iOS and Android versions. There’s also a dock connector that lets you plug in an iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad — even one ensconced in a case — for charging and listening. But docking any of these devices isn’t as nifty as streaming music wirelessly to the Sound Stack, a feat you can also perform with an Android phone.

The Sound Stack accomplishes this using Bluetooth, a technique that has several virtues. When everything goes right, setup is a snap: I was listening to music from an iPhone 4S less than five minutes after tugging the speaker out of its Styrofoam — a speed record that neither the Pioneer nor the Sonos competed with. Bluetooth also lets you stream virtually any audio source from almost any Bluetooth-enabled gizmo.

Bluetooth’s reality doesn’t always live up to its theoretical goodness, though. I had trouble getting a Verizon Fascinate phone to interface with the Sound Stack and am currently checking in with Soundfreaq for troubleshooting assistance. Bluetooth has one other catch: it was designed primarily to transmit data for wee hops, like the distance from the smart phone in your pocket to the headset in your ear. Soundfreaq says it works for distances “up to” 33 feet, but your experience will vary, depending on your home’s layout and other factors. As long as I stayed in the same room as the Sound Stack, the music streamed flawlessly; if I absentmindedly wandered into the one across the hallway, it sputtered, then conked out altogether.

There is a simple way for a wireless speaker maker to avoid Bluetooth’s limited range: it can use more powerful wi-fi networking instead. That’s the approach that Pioneer emphasizes in its Music Tap systems, which are available in a $399 version and the one I tested, a slightly more upscale $479 Elite variant. Both are a skosh bigger than the Soundfreaq but still tabletop-friendly. They contain two active drivers and generally sounded pleasing, if occasionally a bit more shrill than the Soundfreaq and Sonos.

The Elite has Bluetooth built in, and it’s available on the cheaper Music Tap using an adapter. Both versions also have a dock connector that works with iPhones and iPods but not iPads. It cleverly pops out like a CD tray when you need it and stays out of the way otherwise. Those are secondary connectivity options, though. The Music Tap’s signature feature is its support for Apple’s AirPlay technology, which lets it use Wi-Fi to stream audio from many iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad apps. With Android devices, the Music Tap can use DLNA, a similar but clunkier technology that’s bundled with many (but not all) devices and can provide access to music stored on computers and drives on your network.

I liked AirPlay, except for one minor irritant: when I pressed the Pause button on the iPhone, there was a noticeable lag before the music did, in fact, pause. (I’d jab at it needlessly, unsure whether my input had registered.)

Even if your Apple or Android gadget’s battery dies, you won’t be left unentertained by the Music Tap. Using a service called Vtuner, it provides direct access to 16,000 free Internet radio stations, including an embarrassment of music in every genre and news from around the planet. You can put music files on a thumb drive, then stick it into the Music Tap’s USB port for listening. There’s FM. And AM.

See the top 10 gadgets of 2010.

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Related StoriesBuilding a Better Home Theater, Internet StyleSonos: My Favorite Music Solution Newsfeed 12 Oddly Artsy Posters for the London 2012 Olympic Games In Case You Missed It: SNL Rips on Kim's Divorce and Perry's Antics No Sour Grapes: Wines From ‘Bad Years’ Are Best Values More on TIME.com Which G Would You Be? A Top 10, from the G20 to Kenny G Kim Kardashian and the Top 10 Short-Lived Celebrity Marriages 7 Billion People: How the Next Population Milestone Will Affect Our Crowded World Techland Do Windows 8 Tablets Stand a Chance? Andy Rooney: 'I Don't Really Like Gadgets' (and Other Tech Quips) 'Nest' Thermostats Already Sold Out Through Early 2012 Moneyland The NBA Lockout and the Economy: An Overstated Impact What the Greek Debt Crisis Means for You Could the Fed Spark the Housing Market? Top Stories on TIME.com Default and Deterioration? What the Greek Debt Crisis Means for You The 22-Year Old Who Led the Charge Against Bank of America What Ricki Lake Doesn’t Tell You About Homebirth Quotes of the Day » “If this is true we were all fooled, along with scores of professionals trained in such things, and we grieve for the victims and their families.” JOE PATERNO, Penn State football coach, on the arrest of his former assistant, Jerry Sandusky, for charges of child sex-abuse. Two of the university’s top officials are now facing charges of perjury after failure to report the crimes More Quotes » For use in rail of Articles page or Section Fronts pages. Duplicate and change name as necesssary to distinguish. Stay Connected with TIME.com Subscribe to RSS Feeds Sign Up for Newsletters Get the TIME Magazine iPad Edition Read TIME Mobile on your Phone Become a Fan of TIME Get TIME Twitter Updates NewsFeed U.S. Politics World Business Money Health Science Entertainment Photos Videos Specials Magazine © 2011 Time Inc. All rights reserved Privacy Policy RSS Newsletter Mobile TIME For Kids LIFE.com Subscribe Contact Us Terms of Use Media Kit Reprints & Permissions Help Site Map Ad Choices TIME Our partners CNN CNN MONEY LIFE