Roon Labs Music Server/Player now works with SONOS speakers

Forum|Forum|9 years ago
February 1, 2017
17 replies
7774 views

In case anyone is interested in this, Roon now works feeding Sonos speakers as of Ver 1.3, released today. (Not seeing 1.3 there yet at download page, but will likely be there tomorrow). I suspect this is a good option for those with larger than ~65k music libraries. The Roon integrated database of information is quite nice as well. In any case, I have no financial interest in Roon, just letting other SONOS users know about the recent change.

From Announcement:
"With the 1.3 update, Roon now streams to Sonos devices! This means all the users in a home – with one app and one music collection – can play music to Sonos, Airplay, Squeezebox, Sooloos, and any of over 50 Roon Ready devices available today. "

https://roonlabs.com/index.html
https://roonlabs.com/downloads.html

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T

Toolio

Prodigy II

I have had three "Roon lost control of the audio device" errors in about a week, but with both Tidal and files on hard drives (NAS). Is this what you're seeing? In any event, I'd suggest perusing the Roon community, which is large and helpful. Roon has a programmer responsible for their Sonos integration, who no doubt will work to try to resolve your problem.

C

ckishappy

Contributor I

Big fan of Roon so very relieved with version 1.3! I use Roon also to stream across Sonos and the Bluesound / Apple TV devices.. I do have the same, Roon labs keeps dropping out from time to time for one two seconds on Sonos when playing Tidal.

Y

Yiannis74

Long time Sonos user and recent Roon subscriber. To share a personal view as to what Roon offers over the Sonos app / hardware:

- Multiroom (in perfect sync) for other hardware such as Airplay, Bluesound as well as the Sonos hardware. This is beneficial if you have other hardware (e.g. airplay speakers) you want to use. Not important if you only use Sonos speakers.

- Works without the 65000 track limit. Roon can control Sonos and bypasses this limitation (not applicable to me as I don't have that many tracks yet)

-Hi Res support of course but this is less important for me (for now).

- Playcount allowing you to discover your music better. This was a bit issue for me because I have a lot of playlists that I use through Sonos. No way for Sonos to show me my least played tracks so I kept listening to the same thing over and over again. Roon partly fixes that as it allows me to reorganise the queue based on play count.

- Music curation. This is an interesting one. Roon links tracks by genre and allows you to start playing tracks in a sequence that is new. It creates combinations of tracks in my library that are super fun. Almost like having a DJ mixing your music.

- Hope Theatre PC benefits. IF you use a home theatre pc (I do) feeding your dac and you want to use it to watch movies and listen to music from, then Roon can allow you to sync playback from PC to other devices that are RAAT enabled (e.g. Bluesound speakers or other PCs). I have a Sonos connect as well but always disliked I could not have SONOS zone on the PC instead. Roon allows you to use the PC for music in sync with other RAAT ready devices.

HOWEVER (in my opinion), Roon is less attractive if:

- if you use Spotify primarily
- You use Sonos speakers exclusively and you don't wish to also control other hardware (e.g. Airplay speakers) then Roon is less attractive to you
- You don't desire to use a PC as a Zone in perfect sync with other PC zones (or RAAT ready devices)
- You do not care so much about play count and track management / reorganisation

I have been using SONOS for over 10 years and love it. I tried Spotify (premium subscription) but I found I somehow did not like the sound quality. I know I am a minority but I like to buy tracks (iTunes, FLAC etc) and keep them.

I have found that Roon controls Sonos very well provided you take care of the network stability and reach. I had some drop outs initially but found this was due to network issues which I fixed. No drop outs since. The Sonos app is a tiny bit faster (less clicks to reach volume control) compared to Roon.

Hope this personal view adds to the conversation.

Best wishes

M

MSNWatch

Trending Lyricist I

Exploring Roon for moy sonos set up but wanted to make sure that Roon will stream music to the sonos connect units smoothly and not just the speakers. And when using Roon with sonos, is the volume controlled with the roon app?

G

gguillot

Lyricist II

Exploring Roon for moy sonos set up but wanted to make sure that Roon will stream music to the sonos connect units smoothly and not just the speakers. And when using Roon with sonos, is the volume controlled with the roon app?

I have been using Roon with the Sonos Connect boxes (as well as the Playbar) and I can confirm that the volume control in Roon works quite well with the Connects. As a matter of fact, there appears to be a greater level of control over the function of the Connect within Roon than with the current version of the Sonos desktop interface.

T

Toolio

Prodigy II

I can also confirm that Roon controls the volume on the Connect (and Beam, Play 1 and Play 5).