So it's Boxing day, and I've just received a lovely big SONOS Play:1 speaker for Christmas. I set the speakers up and try to find them on my system. Nothing.
I do some research, trying to figure out why I can only play through SONOS app and verified programmes approved through the SONOS app.
Why something which clearly cost more than a few pretty pennies is essentially useless for anything other than playing music.
No live sound, no video sync, nothing but music through SONOS.
So the decrepit old speakers I have had since 2000 are essentially doing a better job than the basic model of SONOS. Not only this but my cheap shower bluetooth speaker I bought for my boyfriend (£5.99) can do what this supposedly amazing modern and high quality technology cannot. Which is play ANY sound off of my computer or phone that I want it to.
How is this a complicated concept and why, after literally years and years of community comments and wailings and clearly strong customer dissatisfaction haven't you developed a simple software fix for this? What, you can play my music at the highest sound level ever but can't handle a simple YouTube video? What kind of operation are you running? Please for the love of all things good and pure and sound related, just fix this issue. I don't think I've ever had more issue with such a supposedly 'amazing' product before. If Bluetooth is such a low quality sound how come they can do what you can't?
Why can't I just use you like any other speakers?
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With about as much touch with reality.
You can do that wih LMS also .... and moreover you get coherent access to BBC listen again material, if that floats your boat.
Hey Castalla. Thanks for the posts. Is there LMS friendly hardware that you would recommend, and if not what kind of hoops do I have to jump to make Sonos friendly with an LMS set up? Any LMS controller applications for Android, Windows and/or Linux would you recommend? I can run the server on a dedicated box or on a NAS.
You need to install LMS on a PC (Windows, Linux or Mac), or on certain NAS models. This gives you a basic system. It will run on win7 to win10, various linux, MacOS. You can use a Raspi as a cheap server, or upwards.
You extend this by use of plugins (eg. Tunein, Deezer, etc.). Now for the Sonos integration - this is via special UPnP plugin - once it's set up (easy as there's a off-the-shelf config for Sonos), the Sonos device is seen as a squeezebox player by LMS.
Control is via a browser based GUI, or smartphone remotes such as iPeng, Squeeze Control, etc. Logitech Controller is free but only works on android 4 and below.
You can pair Sonos devices as one player - you can't synchronise.
The steepest learning curve is setting up LMS as you want it - you use the browser-based GUI both as the setup screen (on a PC) and as the initial controller.
You can switch back to Sonos control and services simply by changing the controller (Sonos vs. LMS).
A quick trial route is to install LMS on a Windows PC - explore .... The 'Sonos' plugin is called UPNPBridge - it's one of the standard LMS plugins.
Contact me by PM if you want further advice.
I guess I just don't get why people feel it's necessary to DEMAND that Sonos change to meet their, usually very narrow, requirement. Isn't it obvious to them that Sonos has considered their requirement, found that it won't help sales, or is simpy not a good fit for whatever reason? I sure don't go over to the Bose or whatever forums to demand that they improve their product to match Sonos, since I don't own any Bose products (and never will). Whatever.
You can do that wih LMS also .... and moreover you get coherent access to BBC listen again material, if that floats your boat.
Hey Castalla. Thanks for the posts. Is there LMS friendly hardware that you would recommend, and if not what kind of hoops do I have to jump to make Sonos friendly with an LMS set up? Any LMS controller applications for Android, Windows and/or Linux would you recommend? I can run the server on a dedicated box or on a NAS.
You need to install LMS on a PC (Windows, Linux or Mac), or on certain NAS models. This gives you a basic system. It will run on win7 to win10, various linux, MacOS. You can use a Raspi as a cheap server, or upwards.
You extend this by use of plugins (eg. Tunein, Deezer, etc.). Now for the Sonos integration - this is via special UPnP plugin - once it's set up (easy as there's a off-the-shelf config for Sonos), the Sonos device is seen as a squeezebox player by LMS.
Control is via a browser based GUI, or smartphone remotes such as iPeng, Squeeze Control, etc. Logitech Controller is free but only works on android 4 and below.
You can pair Sonos devices as one player - you can't synchronise.
The steepest learning curve is setting up LMS as you want it - you use the browser-based GUI both as the setup screen (on a PC) and as the initial controller.
You can switch back to Sonos control and services simply by changing the controller (Sonos vs. LMS).
A quick trial route is to install LMS on a Windows PC - explore .... The 'Sonos' plugin is called UPNPBridge - it's one of the standard LMS plugins.
Contact me by PM if you want further advice.
Thanks castalla. I'll be in touch!
Fully agree.
Whether it is on this forum, Reddit, MacRumors, or elsewhere, the vast vast vast majority of complaints against Sonos comes down to what it does NOT offer (secondarily that "Sonos is ridiculously priced", normally by people comparing Sonos to a $30 BT speaker).
People will pass over the virtues of wireless whole-home audio, stable wireless performance, excellent sound, well-made hardware, etc. Yet complain to no end about the fact that Sonos "purposely ignores its customers" by not offering bluetooth, Chromecast, AirPlay, etc.
Sonos does not support bluetooth, Chromecast, AirPlay, etc. because they choose not to. If that does not fit your intended use, then you should look to other solutions that align better. Hey, you can't use iOS apps on an Android phone, and you can't use Android apps on an iPhone. That's how it works.
Now I need to head outside to snow blow my driveway with my lawn mower. Oh wait, I can't do that because my John Deere tractor can't snow blow unless I "add a workaround". I guess I better complain on the John Deere boards!
You can do that wih LMS also .... and moreover you get coherent access to BBC listen again material, if that floats your boat.
Yes, I still have LMS installed on the NAS that hasn't been powered up in months. As I said before, it was a pain in the rear end compared to Sonos. I will never need to rip another CD to the NAS again, ever, thanks to online subscriptions. Yay! I've tried a LOT of appliances; none of them came close to Sonos for ease of use and access to the many services that I use, and with a single UI vs having to deal with dozens of disparate, usually less well-designed, UIs. I'm an IT geek at work, have been for 30 years. I'd prefer not to use a system at home that requires those geek skills, as the Squeezebox/LMS system did.
No one else meets MY NEEDS as well as Sonos.
You can do that wih LMS also .... and moreover you get coherent access to BBC listen again material, if that floats your boat.
Yes, I still have LMS installed on the NAS that hasn't been powered up in months. As I said before, it was a pain in the rear end compared to Sonos. I will never need to rip another CD to the NAS again, ever, thanks to online subscriptions. Yay! I've tried a LOT of appliances; none of them came close to Sonos for ease of use and access to the many services that I use, and with a single UI vs having to deal with dozens of disparate, usually less well-designed, UIs. I'm an IT geek at work, have been for 30 years. I'd prefer not to use a system at home that requires those geek skills, as the Squeezebox/LMS system did.
No one else meets MY NEEDS as well as Sonos.
Good.
It's great hardware but for me the BBC integration is primitive. It tool Sonos almost 9 months to get BBC hls streams working - no listen again until 2016!
LMS had a hls fix in less than 2 weeks - and now handles dash - plus full listen again access.
Different strokes .....
You can do that wih LMS also .... and moreover you get coherent access to BBC listen again material, if that floats your boat.
Yes, I still have LMS installed on the NAS that hasn't been powered up in months. As I said before, it was a pain in the rear end compared to Sonos. I will never need to rip another CD to the NAS again, ever, thanks to online subscriptions. Yay! I've tried a LOT of appliances; none of them came close to Sonos for ease of use and access to the many services that I use, and with a single UI vs having to deal with dozens of disparate, usually less well-designed, UIs. I'm an IT geek at work, have been for 30 years. I'd prefer not to use a system at home that requires those geek skills, as the Squeezebox/LMS system did.
No one else meets MY NEEDS as well as Sonos.
Good.
It's great hardware but for me the BBC integration is primitive. It tool Sonos almost 9 months to get BBC hls streams working - no listen again until 2016!
LMS had a hls fix in less than 2 weeks - and now handles dash - plus full listen again access.
Different strokes .....
For me, and I expect for a very large number of users, the Apple Music integration is of much more significance. It's a service that, unlike Spotify, Qobuz, Tidal, etc, isn't going away any time soon, and the Sonos implementation is, IMO, better than the native one. Probably quite a few Brits who care about BBC Listen Again, but I doubt that it's 1/100th as many as care about Apple Music, which Squeezebox and Bose will never have.
You can do that wih LMS also .... and moreover you get coherent access to BBC listen again material, if that floats your boat.
Yes, I still have LMS installed on the NAS that hasn't been powered up in months. As I said before, it was a pain in the rear end compared to Sonos. I will never need to rip another CD to the NAS again, ever, thanks to online subscriptions. Yay! I've tried a LOT of appliances; none of them came close to Sonos for ease of use and access to the many services that I use, and with a single UI vs having to deal with dozens of disparate, usually less well-designed, UIs. I'm an IT geek at work, have been for 30 years. I'd prefer not to use a system at home that requires those geek skills, as the Squeezebox/LMS system did.
No one else meets MY NEEDS as well as Sonos.
Good.
It's great hardware but for me the BBC integration is primitive. It tool Sonos almost 9 months to get BBC hls streams working - no listen again until 2016!
LMS had a hls fix in less than 2 weeks - and now handles dash - plus full listen again access.
Different strokes .....
For me, and I expect for a very large number of users, the Apple Music integration is of much more significance. It's a service that, unlike Spotify, Qobuz, Tidal, etc, isn't going away any time soon, and the Sonos implementation is, IMO, better than the native one. Probably quite a few Brits who care about BBC Listen Again, but I doubt that it's 1/100th as many as care about Apple Music, which Squeezebox and Bose will never have.
Fair enough. But so much 'modern' music is just 'pap' = can't see Apple making it any better. Just one more cash machine in my book.
Well, if it just had modern pap, I wouldn't care for it much, but it has 30 million+ tracks, a good portion of which are the Jazz and World music that I enjoy, modern and "vintage". Probably a good bit of Classical, to boot, haven't explored it yet.
Well, if it just had modern pap, I wouldn't care for it much, but it has 30 million+ tracks, a good portion of which are the Jazz and World music that I enjoy, modern and "vintage". Probably a good bit of Classical, to boot, haven't explored it yet.
Spotify, Deezer ?
Spotify, Deezer ?
Both losing money hand over fist. Doubt they'll exist in 5 years, or less. Apple, Google, Microsoft will just wait them out, and buy what they want at fire sale prices.
Spotify, Deezer ?
Both losing money hand over fist. Doubt they'll exist in 5 years, or less. Apple, Google, Microsoft will just wait them out, and buy what they want at fire sale prices.
At which point I'll be content with whatever I already have in my music collection. One plus from these streaming services is that I haven't wasted money on buying stuff anymore which I'd never ever ever listen to again! So much choice, so much dross!
You need to install LMS on a PC (Windows, Linux or Mac), or on certain NAS models. This gives you a basic system. It will run on win7 to win10, various linux, MacOS. You can use a Raspi as a cheap server, or upwards.
You extend this by use of plugins (eg. Tunein, Deezer, etc.). Now for the Sonos integration - this is via special UPnP plugin - once it's set up (easy as there's a off-the-shelf config for Sonos), the Sonos device is seen as a squeezebox player by LMS.
Control is via a browser based GUI, or smartphone remotes such as iPeng, Squeeze Control, etc. Logitech Controller is free but only works on android 4 and below.
You can pair Sonos devices as one player - you can't synchronise.
The steepest learning curve is setting up LMS as you want it - you use the browser-based GUI both as the setup screen (on a PC) and as the initial controller.
You can switch back to Sonos control and services simply by changing the controller (Sonos vs. LMS).
A quick trial route is to install LMS on a Windows PC - explore .... The 'Sonos' plugin is called UPNPBridge - it's one of the standard LMS plugins.
Contact me by PM if you want further advice.
While this looks like experienced and sound advice, here's the thing: I chose Sonos because it does all that my legacy hifi kit could do, but extends that to multiple rooms, allows access to internet music, and lets me move all my CDs to a box while allowing more access than before to all of them. At the same time, I do not want to get into what for ME is gobbledygook of the quoted kind that I don't want to mess around with because I know I will mess it up and with that, my music play will suffer. I suspect squeezebox would have done that to me.
I am perfectly happy with what Sonos gives me because I fit the target customer profile. Those that don't, won't be.
Why is that so difficult to understand?
To be honest, my one gripe about Sonos is that it needs me to understand more of networking than I prefer to, but I accept that as a price to pay for the features and live with that. My view, expressed in the past here as well, is that Sonos needs to innovate to address this gripe because I don't think I am unique or even a small minority. Home WiFi/internet tech needs to become as straightforward as turning on mains power to legacy hifi kit is today, and I recognise that Sonos isn't the only one that is going to move the state of the tech to that place.
PS: Ironically, I suspect that OP has more in common with me than with those that can sort out and accomplish the quoted stuff - that's my guess at any rate, I could be wrong.
why is that so difficult to understand
@kumar - it isn't difficult to understand. I am the target customer profile also, but am less happy than you. I like my Sonos boxes. But Like you I wish they would innovate in some areas to make it easier for me and my family to use.
Of course; no arguments with that.
But someone that comes here and throws around rhetorical questions like - "So what is Sonos good at?" - implying that it isn't good at anything anymore, is going to be challenged for making a silly and childish attention seeking statement that add little value to anyone.
What is being said there is that since Sonos doesn't serve MY needs, all should agree with me when I say it sucks.
But someone that comes here and throws around rhetorical questions like - "So what is Sonos good at?" - implying that it isn't good at anything anymore, is going to be challenged for making a silly and childish attention seeking statement that add little value to anyone.
What is being said there is that since Sonos doesn't serve MY needs, all should agree with me when I say it sucks.
The demonstration above of using Sonos as LMS renderers kind of obviates the complaints about Sonos being a "closed system", doesn't it? It's not, of coure, any DLNA app can control Sonos, except to extensions like stereo-paired speakers. Don't like the Sonos spp? Use something else, like C5!
Markets work like this. Companies design products/services and bring them to market, believing that there is sufficient demand for what's on offer to make a profitable business at the list price. The general public looks at what the product has to offer, and if it offers them what they are looking for and they think it's worth the money, then they buy it. There are competing products that may be stronger in some areas and weaker than others, but customers make their choice. They don't have to open their wallet.
Companies that get this mostly wrong go bust. Those that get it mostly right flourish. Sonos appears to be flourishing. No product is going to be right for everyone. I'm not going to a**e around trying to make it do things it wasn't designed to do and it has never claimed to do. If others wish to do so, they are perfectly entitled to.
I don't get angry with Honda because my S2000 won't go off-road, so why would anyone get angry with Sonos because it doesn't do something it's never claimed to do?
Sonos does what it does brilliantly. They are constantly improving what's on offer and are undoubtedly better aware than any of us about which new features are likely to improve its appeal most. If it doesn't do enough of what you want, don't buy it. The market will decide if Sonos knows what it is doing
I'll sign off now and get on with ordering my second pair of gen2 Play:5 speakers. Amazing product.
Companies that get this mostly wrong go bust. Those that get it mostly right flourish. Sonos appears to be flourishing. No product is going to be right for everyone. I'm not going to a**e around trying to make it do things it wasn't designed to do and it has never claimed to do. If others wish to do so, they are perfectly entitled to.
I don't get angry with Honda because my S2000 won't go off-road, so why would anyone get angry with Sonos because it doesn't do something it's never claimed to do?
Sonos does what it does brilliantly. They are constantly improving what's on offer and are undoubtedly better aware than any of us about which new features are likely to improve its appeal most. If it doesn't do enough of what you want, don't buy it. The market will decide if Sonos knows what it is doing
I'll sign off now and get on with ordering my second pair of gen2 Play:5 speakers. Amazing product.
Here's 1 of the problems: People will read the Sonos tagline that includes the phrase "all the music on earth" and get angry over limitations or specifics about how the system operates.
I read a complaint yesterday on a different board that ranted on and on about how the new Sonos Play:1s the poster received as a gift were garbage because they did this, and didn't do that, and required this, and on and on and on. And I laughed to myself because of the multiple complaints he had, all but 1 were user error or lack of knowledge. His speaker didn't simply plug into his computer, so he was confused, and rather than learn he went to a board and complained.
Hi jdag. Wouldn't disagree with you. I wish Sonos would drop the tagline "all the music on earth", but I think there is a lot of fake indignation over that (not from you I hasten to add), when people know it's hyperbole but pretend to take it literally. And arguably the tagline refers to the general availability of music in the streaming age, because the webpage says "Now that you have all the music on earth, all that matters is how you listen to it".
Agree, people should not take it literally. It is marketing "fluff".
@kumar - I don't think that is what is being said at all, in most cases they just want to vent to Sonos and aren't trying to say
Not everyone is as eloquent as Volker when it comes to suggesting/complaining loudly/ wanting their Honda s2000 to 4x4 or whatever.
Frome: http://vowe.net/archives/015357.html
Frome: http://vowe.net/archives/015357.html
His thoughts are from a recent trip to Sonos head offices
http://vowe.net/archives/015354.html
should agree with me when I say it sucks..
Not everyone is as eloquent as Volker when it comes to suggesting/complaining loudly/ wanting their Honda s2000 to 4x4 or whatever.
Frome: http://vowe.net/archives/015357.html
PLAY:Cast: I want to be able to transmit anything to a Sonos player near me. Anything that comes out of an inferior speaker right now. That's a big architecture play, probably best at the operating system level. Think big, start small, then build out.
PLAY:Mobile: I want to take a player out of the house. I am still on my WLAN, but I don't want to run a power cable. Bonus points for making it splash proof.
Single room/single user: Sonos is a multiroom, multiuser experience. There are many use cases where a single user has different needs. PLAY:Cast could work without passing the beer test (get out of the house to fetch beer without the music stopping).
Multiroom/single user: Taking the music with me from room to room is difficult. Easier than many people think it is, but not easy enough.
Playbar:next: S/PDIF is not good enough if the TV wants to route Apple TV audio. HDCP on HDMI is needed. Maybe have multiple HDMI ports to switch and route the video content to a projector.
Windows 10: Using a Win32 controller on modern Windows is not a good experience. Sonos needs a WUA (Windows Universal App) for Continuum so it becomes usable on Surface et. al. A Windows Mobile app would go right with it.
Platform play: You don't need to do it all yourself. Make Sonos a platform and let others contribute. That means giving up some control. 3rd party may make add-ons that don't meet your standards. Certify if needed.
Black & white: make all products available in black and white. PLAYBAR and SUB are only available in black. Look at your PLAY:5 (2nd gen) numbers. What is the mix?
Frome: http://vowe.net/archives/015357.html
His thoughts are from a recent trip to Sonos head offices
http://vowe.net/archives/015354.html
Sonos great for music have no problem, just no concern or knowledge/ they lack in video, countless problems with video and 5.1 solutions for soundbar blame all other components constantly rather than trying to solve customers problems and concerns, and yes I realize some televisions don't output 5.1 dolby but more and more do, they tell you to call sony,samsung, lg toshiba, or direct tv or dish network and make sure you have proper cables also or tell you you need countless adapters or other work arounds all the previously mentioned are claimed to have incorrect 5.1 support. Really everyone is wrong you are right, hardly. But thats fine with me if you didn't totally mislead the way you advertise this sonos soundbar for video and it don't work except for pcm stereo which is not acceptable for the cost. Quit lying to customers and tell them the truth this is for audio and streaming music and listening to radio stations. May be on the wrong forum but don't care. Most customer don't realize it will take an additional 3 to 5 hundred dollars to get this soundbar to work properly with 5.1 dolby digital. Shame on you Sonos.
Lots of people are critical of the sound bar but IMO I don't think you can say they lie about it in any objective way. Can you explain the additional 3-5 hundred dollars comment?
Last I checked, the only protocol the Playbar definitely works with is Dolby Digital 5.1. If one's run-on sentence rant is to be effective, one should probably not call out the one protocol that is 100% supported. 😉
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