"How do you connect to a Sonos speaker?" We've gotten this question and many like it from friends and family, when they're visiting and want to share their music on our Sonos system or setting up their own first Sonos speaker at home. It's not immediately obvious how you actually connect to these Sonos speakers so you can get them to play your favorite music.

The first thing you need to know: with a couple of exceptions, Sonos ain't Bluetooth*. Most wireless speakers use the Bluetooth RF standard to connect from a phone or tablet to the speaker. And while this is handy when you're out and about or just want to play music from a single phone through a single speaker, it doesn't scale well. If you want to play music in multiple rooms in your home - and operate that system from more than one device - then you're going to need something more robust and scaleable than Bluetooth.

In addition to playing music from your phone, Sonos speakers like the Ray (pictured) can beef up the sound of TV shows and movies.

Sonos is built to handle playback of multiple music sources on multiple speakers. To do this, Sonos speakers connect to your home network using WiFi or a hard-coded ethernet cable. Once you've got your Sonos speakers connected to your home network, you can use the Sonos app on your phone or tablet to play music anywhere throughout your home.

So, to connect to a Sonos speaker:

That's it. Once you're connected and playing music, you can control volume and playback in the Sonos app or on the speaker itself. Most Sonos speakers have a basic set of controls for volume up/down and play/pause on the top or side of the speaker. A double click of the pause button skips to the next song.

If you've gone through all this and are still having trouble, check out the Sonos support site. They've got a series of tutorials and videos to help get you started.

*Some Sonos speakers, including the Sonos Roam and Sonos Move, also support Bluetooth connectivity, and these can be paired with a phone or mobile device in the usual way. They can also be integrated into a whole home Sonos music system via Wifi.