Commercial Pandora only works on the DBX because the DBX collects song info and reports it for correct royalty payments. Sonos can't do this. Not sure about with XM.

Fins, you are thinking of DMX and Pandora. Dbx is a commercial mixer/controller. Sonos has multiple commercial services available that take care of BMI/ASCAP licensing. Commercial Sirius/xm, custom channels, mood music. All are totally legal sources for commercial environments available through Sonos players. Afaik, commercial Pandora accounts are only available on the DMX box as a source.

The clear reason to use 70 volts:

Because of the nature of the impedances of a speaker at different frequencies, a resistor in series with speakers will depress the bass a bit but depress the mids and highs much more. So that's not a good idea.


True.

And what happens if you decide you need another speaker? Or three? 70 volt makes this possible without doing much of anything. Low impedance makes it a major hassle or impossible.

Easy there Ernie... I never eluded or stated I couldnt handle it. Perhaps you reread the entire thread. I have succesfully designed and installed a good sized commercial system with commercial equipment previously in my other much much larger restaurant that includes a mix of low impedance and 70 volt throughout the 8500sq ft space. Completely functional for about 6 1/2 years now. Very good quality sound overall in all zones

I really didnt state very clearly my conundrum I was trying to work out.

I have been assembling an entire restaurant and performing the role of general contractor at the same time as working out my audio situation. We got finalled on everything and have our ocupancy permit as of Friday afternoon!!!

I was able to focus my attention to the audio system and actually read the manual for the Onkyo TX-8160. Hahaha! It turns zone 2 can be toggled to variable rca out. The manual is in need of updating in that it says to use the app " Onkyo Remote" when in fact it is the app "Onkyo Remote 3" that works really really well across all our ipads and iphones controlling content and the 2 zones independantly. The interface with Pandora One and Spotify Premium so far works really well within the Onkyo app.

I am surely still a little concerned about BMI issues but, being a bit of a gambler, i will use what I have for now. We may however go with Rockbot again, which is an spproved commercial streaming audio service that deals with BMI issues. Rockbot has an app so that would work out fine as well. We had switched from Comcast Commercial Music Choice channels for our feed about 2 1/2 years ago to Rockbot and have the ability to control almost all content is nice.