Logitech Media Server - 3rd party addition for Sonos devices

You’re in the groove now!  I didn’t claim it would replace sonos but adds a number of features …

I’ve no idea what an average sonos user is - more money than good sense, given some of the legacy complaints topics?!

I’m guessing they’re very much like your average Apple user, totally petrified by anything even remotely technical; most of my family own Apple phones and laptops because they can get help from the “genius bar” for even the most basic technical issue, like connecting a printer…

There’s a plugin called Group Players - you could try that .   

If sonos devices are already grouped in sonos, then only one sonos device should be seen as a player.  The sonos group should play in sync (using sonos syncing).   That’s the theory ….

Here’s a view of the GROUP player - at the moment it’s grouping Joggler and Black players.

(And LMS is also running on the Joggler - so that’s both a player, server and controller

The above is the webgui

Joggler (touchscreen) as player

 Joggler as conroller - showing available players

OK, given my previous experience with LMS, I was quite sceptical.  I did get a Pi, which required loading several missing libs and modules at the command prompt.  Not something anyone in my family (the typical Sonos target user) would begin to attempt, but at least there’s a ton of good tutorials online, given the Pi’s popularity. 

Yes, you can definitely group using the Sonos app, but of course, after May, the grouping of old with new Sonos devices goes away, so…  For me, grouping has never really been all that important, but for many Sonos users, I’m sure it’s critical.

The ability to play to any UPnP and/or ChromeCast device, Sonos being included in the UPnP device category, is a definite plus.  Missing is Amazon Music and a few others, but that can still be played via Sonos until it can’t (possibly after May), and then via an Echo Input into the Connect, at least to the segmented “old” players.  

At any rate, yes, with the Material skin, LMS is now quite nice and usable, for anyone with a modicum of technical ability.  I do love the integration with Allmusic’s metadata, and the clickable links to further drill into Allmusic.

That’s quite impressive!

Cisco Energy Monitor (Openframe 2) front facing speakers (and line-out, or usb dac output)

Started this thread a while ago.

But, given recent postings in other threads, I’m bumping it as a reminder that it can be used for wider discussion of the LMS integration with Sonos.

To reiterate my first comments, it doesn’t replace the sonos ecosystem but just adds another route for sonos use.

I have been playing with this a bit and have a few more points to note. I did not spend hours setting up a rasberry pi or anything complicated. Instead I have an old laptop with an external SSD attached. The SSD has my music library and the latest downloads for LMS on it (if Logitech goes away tomarrow I can still rebuild a working LMS system). The laptop runs myMedia to provide local library music to my Amazon Echos and LMS to run the squeezeboxes. I run two households of Sonos and all 4 systems (Sonos1, Sonos2, LMS, and MyMedia) all point to the same music library on the SSD so any changes or additions are immediately availble to all systems. Some things I noticed include:

• Both Sonos households are discovered by LMS so even though I can’t group across households within Sonos I can synchronize between players in each from LMS.
• If I set up a queue in LMS to play on a Sonos group and then go look at it within the Sonos app everything is reflected correctly and there is no problem starting somthing from one platform and then switching control to the other.
• Because the LMS controller is browser based there is no concern about controller devices suddenly falling out of support or having featues limited. (Of course Sonos setup features are not reflected in LMS so you still need the Sonos app for some things.)
• The Logitech Duet dedicated controller works perfectly for controlling Sonos speakers through LMS. It has a nice screen and a jog wheel similiar to the CR100 and sits in a nice charging cradle always ready for instant use.
• LMS is an easy way to create m3u play lists which work for both Squeezebox and Sonos. It is nice to be able to back up play lists to physical media and share them across platforms.

You could try the Material skin plugin - allows any browser to get a nice alternative gui.  Works exceptionally well with Android’s Kiwi Browser.

The controller is good but battery life is a bit short.