Raspberri PI & Output to Sonos

Easiest way is to get a Sonos device with a Line in.  That would be a Five, Port or Amp.  Then just hook up the Audio out from the Pi into the Line in.  The line in source can then be played on any speaker of  combination of speakers or all speakers at once.

Also you could use the Pi itself.

See this thread 

thanks very much. Will this make my audio experience a lot better?? I was thinking of using this. I want it to run on wifi

https://thepihut.com/products/allo-boss-raspberry-pi-master-dac-v1-2

I couldnt find any you tube info on it.

Will I be able to add roon and all he usual music streamers also? Deezer Spotify tidal etc?

Hi @mmggffee 

I’m not sure I understand the point to your endeavour - other than getting Roon to play on Sonos. If that’s all you’re trying to do, fair enough.

Any output from the Hat is going to have to be analogue - this gets converted into digital inside a Sonos unit (ADC) so it can be shared on the network and then back to analogue for reproduction (DAC). Although you will be able to do additional signal processing on the Pi, the multiple conversions mean that you’d likely get (technically, but possibly not noticeably) better sound by just sending the original stream straight to Sonos. Certainly having a superior DAC isn’t going to improve fidelity after this double-conversion step (I’m not saying that DAC is superior, I’m not saying it’s not - I’m saying it won’t help if it is) and having an inferior DAC at that stage will degrade the audio quality.

I can’t help as to what you can add to Pi.

No need for analog output from your Pi to Sonos.  Install a distro such as piCorePlayer, enable LMS, and install the DLNA/UPnP plugin.  Your Sonos units will all show up as WiFi endpoints, to which you can steam directly from your NAS, Qobuz, Tidal, Spotify, Youtube, etc, using the associated plugins.

Also, a package like Pulseaudio-dlna will allow sending any audio played on your Pi to your Sonos speakers.

If you want to use the Sonos Music Library you need SMBv1 available. I’m not a fan of having that on my main NAS due to security issues but it is simple to add a NAS to SMBv1 gateway on your Pi or just put the music there instead of the NAS.  

https://stan-miller.livejournal.com/

If I was feeding audio to Sonos I’d look at digital solutions instead of digital-analog-digital ones that add conversion issues. I’m not an expert there but these look interesting.

https://smile.amazon.com/s?k=HiFiBerry&ref=bl_dp_s_web_0

Thx for replies so far. I’m trying to improve the signal so better sound quality also. 

That’s not going to happen. 

As was said above, getting away from the analog audio output of the Pi is the way to go. It isn’t high quality, and it is a bit noisy from all the nearby circuits on the Pi. You can never improve it with add-ons but you can make things worse by stacking multiple conversions, every one hurts fidelity.

I don't know how relevant this is or if it helps - I have a USB stick containing lossless CD rips plugged into a PI that streams these via WiFi to a Echo dot device via the my media for Alexa app. 

With the Echo plugged to Sonos line in, I get the same sound quality as from my regular NAS.

PS: if one splurges a little more for a Echo Show 5, album art also available.

Personally, I have a Pi running Plex Media Server and have both Sonos & Alexa signed into Plex - I can ask Alexa to play FLAC audio from my own library through Sonos.

If I had any 24bit audio, I would be able to play it. Getting a FLAC or ALAC 24bit file directly to a Sonos player in it’s digital form is the best music sound quality you’ll get from Sonos speakers.

From what I hear of Poon, it has more features for audio than Plex, but it can’t be added to Sonos.

I feel the best advice was from @chicks above: