Sonos the way it used to be

I don't see any way this can be done; even if you bought new or rededicated some old hardware for this, it would have to run on current Sonos firmware that would not allow any earlier version of the controller to be used.

Perhaps there are other make streamers that may serve, working in the one room reading music wirelessly from the hard drive, that are not as “advanced” as Sonos, and still allow control via the computer.

Sonos doesn’t support running old versions of software… Even if you have an old copy of the desktop software, as soon as you try and install the Sonos speaker then you’ll have to ‘upgrade’ to the latest version.

If the frequency of updates is the issue then turn off automatic updates in your app store and in the Sonos Settings.  

Why do you want to use an old version of the Desktop controller? It really hasn’t changed much in years, except for the deletion of the Setup features.

Hi Controlav

Thanks for your reply. I suppose that’s a reasonable question. What I wanted to get to was a system for controlling my music library and my music library only, but I take your point. Perhaps a parallel system limited to one room only, to which no other members of the family had access would do the job, especially if I turn off auto-updates as John B suggests.

Regards

Milt

May I ask what the benefit would  be in only you having access to the music library and having it on a separate system? I can only think of disadvantages. 

Well, you can do it - by setting up the new kit as a separate ‘house’, but you’d need to use a controller device (android or iDevice) for the setup, as you can’t set up using the desktop controller any more.

As the others have said, though, I’m not seeing the benefit, unless you have a specific reason for locking it off to other devices.

Similar to Miltomaticc, my main use is to play my CD collection from a hard drive.  Amazing how difficult Sonos has managed to make such a simple use model.  If Sonos isn’t interested in supporting that use model the should make that clear so people can buy other products that support that use model.

Being a longtime Linux engineer, the workaround I found is to put my music collection on a Samba server, which Sonos does support.  Then use the Sonos Mac app to tell the speaker about the music collection.  I will probably switch to one of the open source Sonos controller projects to play music once I have some spare time to play with them.  The Sonos Android app is simply not usable for this purpose.

If not for the fact that I am a computer engineer that understands the underlying technology, can set up a Samba server and is able to work around the poor Sonos app, I would have returned the speaker in frustration.

If Sonos only wants this to be used for streaming services they should include that in their advertising.  That would avoid a lot of frustration.  I have complete sympathy for the frustrated customers.  Sonos management needs to understand how upset/frustrated their customers are.

I bought Sonos for this use, but now use it for streaming services a lot more. But: I still have the NAS accessible for the times I want to use the CDs stored there, so I don't understand the gripe. I can still get Sonos to play that music equally easily from both my Mac and from my Android phone, as easily as at any time in the past. And there is nothing I had to do to retain this ability exactly how it was when I bought Sonos back in 2011.

Apart from the lack of support for SMB2 and above, the limit on the number of tracks (which will only affect a few people) and the withdrawal of functionality from the desktop controller, is it really that much more difficult?

Yes, there have been changes and limitations that I’m not happy with, but the basic kit is playing away as I write….