Why can't I just use you like any other speakers?

Oh, and easy access to millions and millions of tracks via inexpensive subscriptions. Haven't used the NAS in a long time...

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.

Oh, and easy access to millions and millions of tracks via inexpensive subscriptions. Haven't used the NAS in a long time...

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 .....

Oh, and easy access to millions and millions of tracks via inexpensive subscriptions. Haven't used the NAS in a long time...

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.

Oh, and easy access to millions and millions of tracks via inexpensive subscriptions. Haven't used the NAS in a long time...

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.

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.

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.

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.