Sonos Voice Control and NAS Server?

That isn't quite what I said, which why I called it only a partial solution. But one can maximise that by some effort in NAS playlist curation and leaving such playlists in the queue, with the app needed only for moving other NAS playlists/tracks/albums into the queue as a replacement. For instance my Classic Jazz NAS playlist has over 5000 songs in it and stays in the queue for days at a stretch during which I also move back to Spotify for other streams. Presumably there is a SVC command that can allow this back and forth to happen - substituting Apple Music for Spotify of course because SVC does not do it yet. If there isn’t such a command, then this partial solution is very limited, though still of some use.

Local library support in a complete sense will remain missing and will still be missed till whenever...

It not only supported NAS searches but also eight music services (listed here http://myspeaker.org/info/default.html) including Spotify. It could also handle multiple user accounts on the same service, playlists, and artist stations, and remembered all these settings on a per-speaker basis.

Features were not its problem, but scalability and the cost of running it were. It was also dependent on push notifications, which was its major downfall.

Interesting; did it need any of the units involved to be connected to the net for the solution to work?

Sonos has provided the list of commands,   I don’t see anything resembling the functionality you’re suggesting, but perhaps I’m missing it. I was referring to commands like pause and resume, which do appear to work regardless of what’s currently playing/queue.

Someone more interested in SVC than I am will no doubt run through all the SVC commands. What is needed for the functionality I suggest is for a NAS playlist in the queue to stop, Apple Music to be played till it is stopped, and for the paused NAS playlist in the queue to resume. All the preceding via SVC commands. 

I have 26,000+ tracks stored in my own NAS music library and I am able to load every single track into a speaker queue using the details that @ratty posted here in the community and that is to use straightforward UNC paths direct to each of the chosen local music library tracks, as a single ‘one-line’ entry, that seems to work best for each .m3u playlist.

Here are a couple of ‘example’ entries (as seen in a text editor) to hopefully demonstrate what I mean, but clearly your own network path will be different:

\\192.168.0.1\MyNAS\MyLibraryShares\Music\Genesis\Trespass\The Knife.flac

\\192.168.0.1\MyNAS\MyLibraryShares\Music\Genesis\Trespass\Stagnation.flac

I also chose to strip out everything else from the playlist file, including these (common) ‘directive extensions’…

• #EXTM3U - file header
• #EXTINF: - track information/title

Note: Some .m3u playlist files may contain other types of ‘extensions’, which can all be removed. See this link :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M3U

The extensions are not required for Sonos use, so I personally found removing ALL worked best for speed of loading the playlist.

In addition to the format stated above, the netbios name of the host NAS/PC also works well in place of the LAN IP address. Example:

\\MyWindowsPC\MyNAS\MyLibraryShares\Music\Genesis\Trespass\The Knife.flac

I have gone onto convert all my playlists to the above format and have just opted to place them in a separate folder within the local library, but they can be stored anywhere in the library that you’re indexing when using the UNC path for each track.

Using the above method I was able to get a 26,000+ playlist load to a Sonos player queue in a matter of a few seconds, well within the 15 second timeout period.

I reckon the method above will work for most peoples local library playlists and once loaded the user can then use SVC to do things like:

• Play/Stop/Pause/Resume/Skip (forward/backward)
• Shuffle/Repeat/Restart
• Move playing audio between rooms
• Group/Ungroup Sonos Rooms 
• Set/Adjust/Mute (group/room) Volume 
• Ask what’s playing

Most of the syntax is outlined here in this community link:

https://en.community.sonos.com/sonos-voice-control-229127/full-list-of-sonos-voice-commands-6870026

Anyhow, I hope that info. assists for those perhaps wanting to use music from their local libraries with SVC.

I think this part is all agreed and understood.  @Kumar can correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe below is the scenario he was referring to.

1 - load your local library playlist to the queue using the Sonos app.

2 - Using SVC, request playback of music from a music streaming service (Amazon, Pandora, Sonos Radio, etc)

3-  Using SVC, stop playback from the music service.

4 - Using SVC, request playback of the local library playlist.

I don’t think this will work...I think step 4 will cause the music streaming service to restart, not your local library playlist.

To re-enter an existing queue it's always necessary to use a controller. Since the queue pointer is lost when an alternative source is played the user will need to re-enter at a manually selected track come what may. 

Between 1 and 2 there would be the two steps of getting the NAS playlist to start playing - in straight or shuffle mode - via the app. The playlist would then be paused via SVC and then whenever desired, step 2 would occur.

Would step 4 still restart the music service and not the queued playlist? Is there a SVC command that allows either to be selected?

If that not be the case the partial solution becomes more partial, but still not useless. It gets restricted to start/stop/restart the queued NAS playlist with no other use made of Sonos in the interim. 

The link to the available commands has been posted a couple times now.