Secondly, the dock with an iPod or iPhone jacked into it becomes just another music source. You can plant the device in the dock, leave it, and then browse and play its contents from any Sonos controller. The AirPlay solution pushes content from the device rather than pull it—you must choose the audio you want to play from your iOS device. So, with the dock, you needn’t keep your music player close at hand. Without it, you have to move to your iOS device to select the audio you want to hear.

Finally, the AirPlay solution does you no good whatsoever if you want to move music from an iPod classic or nano through your Sonos system. If you want remote control of these iPods, the dock is the only avenue.

Ideal though it would be to have Sonos units with AirPlay-compatible hardware built in, we’ll have to wait until Apple allows such a thing and AirPlay matures to the point where you can send multiple sources to multiple destinations (particularly from iOS devices). Until that time, this is the way to bring AirPlay to your Sonos gear.