I'm a fan of Sonos and have had a multi room set up for 10 years.
I like good quality sound and the Sonos is plenty good enough for my ears. Athough there is ALWAYS better quality out there you have to ask yourself "can i tell the difference?".
The biggest plus that Sonos have is the multi-room connectivity and streaming options. Having the ability to play the same music in different parts of your house with it all being in sync, while someone else is listening to completely different music in a third location is brilliant.
You have a lot of options with Sonos - which will make a difference to the sound quality in any event:
The soundbar: expensive but a simple solution for improved TV sound. A sub makes a huge difference, but the Sonos sub (although very pretty) is also v expensive. Personally the option I have gone for in terms of the TV room is to buy a good quality AV amplifier (Arcam AVR range are very good at BOTH music and AV reproduction), then attach a Sonos "Connect". This isn't an amp, it works with your AV amp and lets you connect up with all your other Sonos equipment. This way you can use your quality AV amp, your Sub (not the Sonos one) and your choice of speakers to do your TV surround sound and your music in the room. If you do what I did and splash out on a pair of good Front R and Front L speakers as part of your set up then the stereo music (which uses those speakers) is terrific. Always bear in mind that the quality of the sound you hear withh vary dependent on 1. the quality of the recording, 2. the quality of the amp and 3, the quality of the speakers. The best "2" and "3" will not help if your recording is poor!
Using Sonos "Connect Amp" plus speakers of your choice in other zones allows you to get the best sound out of the amps, and i do that in 4 other "zones", however I also have a Sonos "Play 5" in another zone and have to say the sound quality (to my ears) is superb for use in a medium sized room. Finally, I have a couple of "Play1"s in the kids bedrooms and they are suprisingly good also.
We have an extensive music collection (all stored on a hard drive) but these days just use the Sonos streaming capabilities - Napster or Spotify are both available. You can also play directly from your iphone or ipad wirelessly if you desire.
Finally, in answer to that question that all readers of this are probably thinking: No, I don't work for Sonos
Oh and re the "bridge" question, it used to be that one of your Sonos pieces of equipment had to be hard wired to your router to get access to the internet services, and then they brought out the "bridge", which had to be joined to your router but alleviated the need for one of your Sonos amps / one of your other Sonos devices to be connected by wire to the router. Even more recently they updated the software that Sonos runs on to allow you to connect up to your devices straight to your router wirelessly. However, that will not work for your Soundbar and anyway it isn't the best set up, as when joined together using the bridge option each Sonos component acts as a repeater meaning that the far flung reaches of your house just need to be in range of the nearest Sonos box to link together whereas setting up without the "bridge" means that each box needs to be in range of your router. The bridge is only £40 anyway
