Hi Sonos,
Please somebody tell us, if and when airplay support will be added. It is definitely possible to do as some people have already written open source code to do it. But it is a hassle to use as I need to run a program on my mac to be able to stream music directly to my sonos speakers from my music app on my iPhone or iTunes. I can already now stream my AppleMusic from the cloud , I can stream DRM music. With airplay we just don't need to worry about your controller limitations.
Why can't you guys add official support,so I don't need to remember to start the service on my mac?
You are in the business of hardware, let Apple and others be in the business of music software.
I am now Apple Music subscriber and most of my music is in the cloud. and all the speakers I bought over $4000 USD would be worthless to me because none of my new music is accessible via official channels.
Thank god for the open source project that makes is available and simple. So it is doable even by people who do not privy to your internals. It should be very easy for official Sonos developers.
Also I don't like your player interface! It is NOT as good as Apple or Spotify. Please Please can you just add support for AirPlay?
And if NOT, please tell me WHY NOT?
Regards,
-D.
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I thought about it a bit more. Airplay is not the same as native Sonos play, where file is being downloaded to the speaker itself. so if the file is DRM protected or plays from the cloud, I understand the native sonos play architecture can not work. But , still, most users will be satisfied with just streaming music to the speaker (ala: bluetooth fashion ) and not have ability to create queues on the device as an additional service that is supported.
So for DRM music we could wait till sonos has some encryption keys sitting on the speaker (those would have to be provided by Apple and is not easy to get I am sure) , but live streaming should be done and easy to do. Please add it. It is badly needed.
Regards,
-D
So for DRM music we could wait till sonos has some encryption keys sitting on the speaker (those would have to be provided by Apple and is not easy to get I am sure) , but live streaming should be done and easy to do. Please add it. It is badly needed.
Regards,
-D
First of all, that "open source code" is an illegal hack, and has ceased working with the newer Mac OS. If it was any more than one guy in his basement distributing it (say like a billion dollar in sales multi-room streaming company), Apple would have sued them into bankruptcy.
Second, check out the three or four threads about Apple Music on this site. I think you will be pleasantly surprised to hear Sonos/Apple Music support was announced months ago, and will be released in a Beta on Dec. 15.
Second, check out the three or four threads about Apple Music on this site. I think you will be pleasantly surprised to hear Sonos/Apple Music support was announced months ago, and will be released in a Beta on Dec. 15.
JGatie, appreciate your comments. And I agree that Sonos could not have done it in the same way. But as a billion dollar company, Sonos can easily afford whatever license fees apple is asking for airplay integration. I don't even think they ask for licensing fees, just certification process with them may take some time.
A billion dollar company such as Sonos, can do much better than catch up to AirPlay or AppleMusic integration by the end of the year. they have resources and we pay them very well by buying their very expensive products.
Also, supporting AppleMusic does not necessary imply supporting AirPlay. (Airplay would not support queues on the speakers), but I think they should still support AirPlay and some sort of AppleMusic support where DRM files can be put onto music queues and played from the speaker itself. Hope they do.
A billion dollar company such as Sonos, can do much better than catch up to AirPlay or AppleMusic integration by the end of the year. they have resources and we pay them very well by buying their very expensive products.
Also, supporting AppleMusic does not necessary imply supporting AirPlay. (Airplay would not support queues on the speakers), but I think they should still support AirPlay and some sort of AppleMusic support where DRM files can be put onto music queues and played from the speaker itself. Hope they do.
joined the beta program. Hopefully be able to stream in 2 weeks. keeping fingers crossed.
A billion dollar company such as Sonos, can do much better than catch up to AirPlay or AppleMusic integration by the end of the year. they have resources and we pay them very well by buying their very expensive products.
Also, supporting AppleMusic does not necessary imply supporting AirPlay. (Airplay would not support queues on the speakers), but I think they should still support AirPlay and some sort of AppleMusic support where DRM files can be put onto music queues and played from the speaker itself. Hope they do.
Quite frankly, in my experience, Airplay sucks. Their "thru the phone, doubling the bandwidth, one stream only, no multi-room" design is about 5-6 years out of date compared to Sonos and others who bypass the phone and stream directly to the speakers. As for WiFi usage, they are 10 years out of date, because Sonos uses the far superior mesh instead of standard WiFi.
And personally, I'm glad Sonos is not beholden to any licensing such as Spotify Connect or Apple Airplay, and instead remain steadfastly neutral when it comes to music services. That way, no particular service can hold them hostage, insisting on exclusive support or causing Sonos to neglect some providers in favor of another.
You may have a point there. I need to read up on the underlying Sonos technologies.
But at the end, I prefer to only have one music app and play my music from there. Hopefully the approach they are taking is integration with Apple music app which would add Sonos destinations in the app using Sonos APIs .
So that all the streaming from the cloud and DRM decoding would be done by Apple App and then passed to Sonos APIs to stream inside the house.
We'll see how it is done soon enough it seems.
I am happy that my wait for Apple support is nearly over.
But at the end, I prefer to only have one music app and play my music from there. Hopefully the approach they are taking is integration with Apple music app which would add Sonos destinations in the app using Sonos APIs .
So that all the streaming from the cloud and DRM decoding would be done by Apple App and then passed to Sonos APIs to stream inside the house.
We'll see how it is done soon enough it seems.
I am happy that my wait for Apple support is nearly over.
Quite frankly, in my experience, Airplay sucks. Their "thru the phone, doubling the bandwidth, one stream only, no multi-room" design is about 5-6 years out of date compared to Sonos and others who bypass the phone and stream directly to the speakers. As for WiFi usage, they are 10 years out of date, because Sonos uses the far superior mesh instead of standard WiFi.
And personally, I'm glad Sonos is not beholden to any licensing such as Spotify Connect or Apple Airplay, and instead remain steadfastly neutral when it comes to music services. That way, no particular service can hold them hostage, insisting on exclusive support or causing Sonos to neglect some providers in favor of another.
But at the end, I prefer to only have one music app and play my music from there. Hopefully the approach they are taking is integration with Apple music app which would add Sonos destinations in the app using Sonos APIs .
So that all the streaming from the cloud and DRM decoding would be done by Apple App and then passed to Sonos APIs to stream inside the house.
We'll see how it is done soon enough it seems.
I am happy that my wait for Apple support is nearly over.
I personally doubt that is the approach. I imagine it will be an incorporation of Apple Music into the Sonos app itself. There are two schools of thought to this: Yours, in which you are married to a single app for your music and want nothing more than that, and those of us who have multiple sources for music and would rather use a combined app/UI to access them all, instead of shifting from the TuneIn app for radio, to the Apple Music app for music, to the local player app for my personal library, to the Pandora app for Pandora, etc., etc. Either way is a subjective and personal choice, but if you look at Sonos' history, they tend towards the "one app to rule them all" approach (with Google Play Music being the one exception). I guess time will tell.
You can use AirPlay with an Airport Express. It works, but limited range in my experience. With more services being added to Sonos, I rarely use it.
Their engineering efforts would be FAR better spent implementing a Google Cast for Audio receiver than AirPlay. GCA is available for both Android and Apple, and is based on the player doing the streaming (like Sonos already does, as well as Spotify Connect). AirPlay is just an awful protocol that needs to die.
Even the Apple fanboyz at 9to5 Mac know Airplay is outdated, buggy and in need of an overhaul. The article tap dances quite a bit, but the Airplay sufferers mince no words in the comments, many of them moved on to Sonos.
http://9to5mac.com/2015/08/26/opinion-airplay-future/
http://9to5mac.com/2015/08/26/opinion-airplay-future/
nice article on 9to5mac. don't get me wrong, I love Sonos and have it in every room of my house. just want to be able play my music on it. Looks like I'll have it soon. at the end I am not married to AirPlay, I just want a convenience of being able to play music without any limitation of where it is.
Seem like we will have it soon.
I did not realize that Sonos 5 v2 I just bought, plays music directly from a streaming service rather than streaming it from an iPhone or iMac. This is very cool.
so that means, Apple Music may stream directly to a speaker bypassing the devices. I think I will take that over AirPlay.
Meaning , I can start the playback and leave the room or even the house and what I started can continue playing.
Seem like we will have it soon.
I did not realize that Sonos 5 v2 I just bought, plays music directly from a streaming service rather than streaming it from an iPhone or iMac. This is very cool.
so that means, Apple Music may stream directly to a speaker bypassing the devices. I think I will take that over AirPlay.
Meaning , I can start the playback and leave the room or even the house and what I started can continue playing.
I've been wanting AirPlay for 2 years, and adding Apple Music is of no interest to me.
I have my music on a NAS, and linked to an iTunes account. I need to turn on my PC and update iTunes to get that music on the NAS to be able to stream it to Sonos. That's fine for music.
I also listen to podcasts every day. They auto download to my phone/iPad, so I want to be able to play them direct from my phone. I'm not going to update my iTunes twice a day just to listen to a 30 minute podcast once. I'm also not going to buy an apple router just for that one function.
Is it now accepted they will never be adding AirPlay support?
I have my music on a NAS, and linked to an iTunes account. I need to turn on my PC and update iTunes to get that music on the NAS to be able to stream it to Sonos. That's fine for music.
I also listen to podcasts every day. They auto download to my phone/iPad, so I want to be able to play them direct from my phone. I'm not going to update my iTunes twice a day just to listen to a 30 minute podcast once. I'm also not going to buy an apple router just for that one function.
Is it now accepted they will never be adding AirPlay support?
RichyS, Nobody knows if airplay in the future will be supported, but to solve your particular problem of music on NAS, it should just work no? if music on NAS is part of iTunes, you should already be able to play all of it on Sonos as sonos allow you to play your local iTunes library.
Another solution is to sign up for iTunes Match service, which brings ALL your music to iCloud. now they allow up to 100,000 songs to be matched.
So your entire library will be available to you on ALL your devices for about $20/year. Not a bad deal and I consider that a $20/year backup for my library.
Once your music is in the cloud, you can stream it to Sonos as if it was AppleMusic from your iPhone or macbook or iPad.
That leaves podcasts. I think they should work just the same .
Another solution is to sign up for iTunes Match service, which brings ALL your music to iCloud. now they allow up to 100,000 songs to be matched.
So your entire library will be available to you on ALL your devices for about $20/year. Not a bad deal and I consider that a $20/year backup for my library.
Once your music is in the cloud, you can stream it to Sonos as if it was AppleMusic from your iPhone or macbook or iPad.
That leaves podcasts. I think they should work just the same .
It is not practical for SONOS to add Airplay to legacy SONOS gear. This means that SONOS would need to provide some sort of accessory box or one would need to purchase a future SONOS unit that can directly support Airplay. In either case there would be an additional expense for a user to incorporate native Airplay into SONOS. In this context, if one simply adds an Airport Express, the additional cost would be a wash, but one could use Airplay now.
Personally, I have no use for Airplay and I would be annoyed if the cost of SONOS units was increased simply to include native Airplay.
Personally, I have no use for Airplay and I would be annoyed if the cost of SONOS units was increased simply to include native Airplay.
Hi all, hacking this thread about Airplay slightly - please allow me to ask - I need to expand my home setup and looking into Sonos. Right now, I stream to an (old) Hi-fi Amp&speakers and to an Airplay speaker, at the same time and all from iTunes. The advantage for me is I can have the audio output to all 3 in sync (2 systems + computer) - works great (apart from the speaker which has fairly bad wifi and cuts off sometimes).
I could buy more airplay devices, but recently it does seem that support is slowly dropping... So I'm looking into Sonos, but am having a few issues figuring out the potential to use Airplay on it whilst keeping in sync with my current system...
I could of course buy a connect amp to replace my 50 (yes!) year old amp, and drop my other airplay speaker - but is there a solution to use my computer speakers in sync with Sonos somehow? Don't really want to have to buy 2 more play 1's for my office, which has pretty good Bose speakers on the computer...
(I was thinking of either airsonos or the "official" airport express+connect amp trick and using Airplay - but then maybe the Sonos app can output directly on the computer speakers?)
Thanks in advance!
I could buy more airplay devices, but recently it does seem that support is slowly dropping... So I'm looking into Sonos, but am having a few issues figuring out the potential to use Airplay on it whilst keeping in sync with my current system...
I could of course buy a connect amp to replace my 50 (yes!) year old amp, and drop my other airplay speaker - but is there a solution to use my computer speakers in sync with Sonos somehow? Don't really want to have to buy 2 more play 1's for my office, which has pretty good Bose speakers on the computer...
(I was thinking of either airsonos or the "official" airport express+connect amp trick and using Airplay - but then maybe the Sonos app can output directly on the computer speakers?)
Thanks in advance!
Firstly the Sonos app is a controller, not a media player. Over the years there's been heated debate about this issue but suffice to say that (a) there are technical reasons why a general purpose computer wouldn't guarantee sub-millisecond sync with the hardware players, and (b) Sonos would be undermining their own business model by allowing free software to emulate a player. IMHO it just isn't going to happen.
As for combining Airplay speakers with a Sonos system fed by an Airport Express, unless you can delay the sound from the non-Sonos devices it wouldn't all play in sync. There's a ~70ms delay between a Sonos Line-In jack and the players' audio outputs.
As for combining Airplay speakers with a Sonos system fed by an Airport Express, unless you can delay the sound from the non-Sonos devices it wouldn't all play in sync. There's a ~70ms delay between a Sonos Line-In jack and the players' audio outputs.
Thanks for the prompt reply. If it's really only 70ms, it's ok enough (for me) to go from room to room without noticing too much, i.e. possibly even to keep the computer playing music. I understand the rationale behind not supporting computer output, however it does force people to buy yet more speakers (which, ok, might not be such a negative point from Sonos' point of view).
Any thoughts on Airsonos vs Airport into Connect:Amp in terms of delay? (I wanted to get play 1's in stereo pairs to start but using the airport express method means buying a connect:amp - I'm not sure I need play 5's, in pair it gets expensive and I really care for stereo in each room)
Thanks!
Firstly the Sonos app is a controller, not a media player. Over the years there's been heated debate about this issue but suffice to say that (a) there are technical reasons why a general purpose computer wouldn't guarantee sub-millisecond sync with the hardware players, and (b) Sonos would be undermining their own business model by allowing free software to emulate a player. IMHO it just isn't going to happen.
As for combining Airplay speakers with a Sonos system fed by an Airport Express, unless you can delay the sound from the non-Sonos devices it wouldn't all play in sync. There's a ~70ms delay between a Sonos Line-In jack and the players' audio outputs.
Any thoughts on Airsonos vs Airport into Connect:Amp in terms of delay? (I wanted to get play 1's in stereo pairs to start but using the airport express method means buying a connect:amp - I'm not sure I need play 5's, in pair it gets expensive and I really care for stereo in each room)
Thanks!
As for combining Airplay speakers with a Sonos system fed by an Airport Express, unless you can delay the sound from the non-Sonos devices it wouldn't all play in sync. There's a ~70ms delay between a Sonos Line-In jack and the players' audio outputs.
No, can't help. Other posters may be able to.
Hack, sure. Illegal? I dunno (and don't really care...)
But I can say with certainty that SonoAir "experimental" beta5 works just fine on the latest OS X 10.11.3. I know this because I am using it right now, with great success.
http://sonoair.mihosoft.eu/
https://twitter.com/mihosoft/status/662399840614268928
http://sonoair.mihosoft.eu/releases/experimental/SonoAir.zip
Sure, it's a bit clunky, but it works, and that's what's most important to me. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE my Sonos system, and now use Sonos controller more than iTunes. As a diehard iTunes user, I wouldn't have expected that. But Sonos has really impressed me.
Sure, it would be great if Sonos included native AirPlay support in their speakers, as Pioneer and Yamaha do with their wireless speakers. But I suspect there's a good rationale Sonos has chosen to not do this, whether its for cost savings, or competitive reasons. But if I have speakers in a room and can make them AirPlayable too by running a bit of software, I'm all for it. SonoAir beta 5, for the win!
Hack, sure. Illegal? I dunno (and don't really care...)
Illegal? By the letter of the law, yes. Specifically the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the EU Copyright Directive, both of which criminalize the production and dissemination of technology that allows users to circumvent technical copy-restriction methods. AIrplay has DRM embedded in it's stream, SonoAir circumvents this DRM and extracts the raw data. This is illegal, not to mention Apple can sue them for patent infringement and a host of other reasons. But since SonoAir is one guy in his basement, the FBI has better things to do and Apple isn't going waste the money to sue, instead they do things like screw around with their DRM to make life hard on him.
If a billion dollar a year company such as Sonos circumvented their DRM, the lawyers would be on the phone faster than you can say Steve Jobs.
PS - The post you replied to was a couple months old. At the time, SonoAir was incompatible, due to the screwing around I mentioned above.
You didn't address the part of my post that said I "don't really care." By that definition, it's illegal to circumvent DRM, in order to rip purchased DVDs, to be able to backup, archive and organize and stream them from a media server, too. I (and many, many people) are still doing it. We don't care. Personally, I'm willing to take my chances, and I'll deal with the "punishment" if I were to be singled out for this crime. I will continue to use SonoAir because it makes my Sonos players capable of receiving AirPlay streams. Easy, and free.
Call it civil disobedience, if you will. I don't care.
Call it civil disobedience, if you will. I don't care.
PS - The tweet offering SonoAir beta 5 was posted on November 5. A month before your post.
https://twitter.com/mihosoft/status/662399840614268928
Call it civil disobedience, if you will. I don't care.
Why should I address the fact you don't care? You doubted it was illegal, I told you why it was. I even put in the caveat that it is only according to the letter of the law and is basically ignored except in cases involving billion dollar companies. And in no way was I chastising you for using SonoAir (or, if you are the creator, for writing it), nor was I saying you are a criminal. I simply was describing why a billion dollar company would not want to step over the line as easily as a guy in his basement would.
As to your second post, at the time of my posting, I believed it was not working. I don't make it a habit to keep up with the release notes of a piece of software I do not use, so I was going by hearsay. I apologize for any inconvenience, and if you are the creator and feel you have suffered damages, feel free to sue! 😉
For the record, no, I didn't "doubt it was illegal." I repeated a word you put forth, said I didn't know -- and concluded by expressing my lack of care. Saying I didn't know and that I didn't care is not the same as doubting your assertion.
No, I'm not the creator of SonoAir, either. Just a happy user, of a cool piece of software, that nicely fills an annoying gap. And I'm happy to share information about it with others who'd equally appreciate it. 🙂
No, I'm not the creator of SonoAir, either. Just a happy user, of a cool piece of software, that nicely fills an annoying gap. And I'm happy to share information about it with others who'd equally appreciate it. 🙂
"Illegal? I dunno (and don't really care...)"
"I dunno" to me expresses either doubt or lack of knowledge, to either of which my reply was quite apt. If I misinterpreted? Again , , , sue me.
"I dunno" to me expresses either doubt or lack of knowledge, to either of which my reply was quite apt. If I misinterpreted? Again , , , sue me.
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