I’m excited to try the new Sonos Voice Control, but only if it allows me to choose music from the NAS server on my local network. I have not seen this functionality mentioned in information from Sonos, so does this mean music on my NAS won’t be supported?
Page 1 / 2
I use Olisto, which combines the ability to play specific Sonos playlists with the ability to be triggered by Alexa and Google Assistant voice commands.
I assume this requires the skill to be there on Amazon, which it is not on Amazon India. In any case, I don't see how this would give me anything more than what I get from the My media for Alexa solution. There is just the one time effort there to make playlists on that interface, which I did when I started using it.
The one advantage of SVC if it did local NAS play would be the local loop, eliminating the need for internet presence, and also offer lower latency and higher reliability, being local.
Userlevel 7
+23
Technically the work to do this is simple, but I assume it is a lower priority than the other services to support (and clearly lower than Spotify, though that could be a legal issue as well perhaps).
created a few playlists that I can select by voice using Alexa or Google Assistant and choose to random shuffle.
How can you do that selection if the playlist is from tracks on the NAS? The only way to do this - other than via Plex like services - is via the Sonos app.
I use Olisto, which combines the ability to play specific Sonos playlists with the ability to be triggered by Alexa and Google Assistant voice commands.
If you see, I had referred to the Plex solution in my post already! I know this solution since I use the my Media for Alexa one that is similar.
I asked the question of Doug for his last paragraph, because it started with - aside from that…
Trivial question probably.
created a few playlists that I can select by voice using Alexa or Google Assistant and choose to random shuffle.
How can you do that selection if the playlist is from tracks on the NAS? The only way to do this - other than via Plex like services - is via the Sonos app.
Alexa will play the local music library tracks to Sonos speakers.
"Alexa, ask Plex to play the album ‘Trick of the tail”… just as an example.
Plex will get that album from the local Plex Server, usually a local NAS, PC or Nvidia Shield TV Pro in most cases.
created a few playlists that I can select by voice using Alexa or Google Assistant and choose to random shuffle.
How can you do that selection if the playlist is from tracks on the NAS? The only way to do this - other than via Plex like services - is via the Sonos app.
I agree with the original post of the thread - for myself I don’t see any use for SVC without the ability to play specific songs from my music library. Alexa and Google Assistant can already play specific songs and genres from the paid music subscription services. I don’t presume to judge what uses other people may find for SVC, just speaking for myself.
The best way I have found to select specific songs by voice on my Sonos speakers is using Plex (Alexa + Plex skill). This requires my music library to be accessible by an always-on Plex server. I can do that most easily on a Linux platform - but unfortunately Plex on Linux has a bug that crashes the server system after a few days due to an ever-growing list of open connections.
Aside from that, I just do the same as other have mentioned - created a few playlists that I can select by voice using Alexa or Google Assistant and choose to random shuffle.
My now-retired Alexa service for Sonos did support NAS content, as well as many music services. Sonos will likely expand their coverage over time, though as we all know the NAS user base is an ever-decreasing priority for them due to usage.
I don’t really understand why they don’t support Spotify right now, that was one of the easier ones for me to code up.
I was a user and still do occasionally use this and it was easily the best third party addition to voice control. A real shame Sonos did not integrate it as it was flawless, worked with local libraries and napster. I honestly wish it was still available and updated to utilise sonos voice.
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?
It was an Alexa service, so of course.
For such a service, NAS users wanting voice controlled music play can still get it on Echo devices wired to line in jacks of Sonos kit via the My Media for Alexa service. The only hitch is that Sonos kit with line in jacks is needed for this to work. But for those that have such Sonos kit, that is a way to avoid the need to wait for an undefined period for Sonos to offer this via SVC. At the Echo end the cheapest Dot is all that is needed.
And there shouldn’t be an implication that all SVC users, rather than just a fraction of them, are waiting for local library voice control.
And here I was thinking that this thread is about SVC users that want NAS control🤣
Obviously. But as I stated, lets not forget about the volume of users impacted. I just can’t imagine Sonos is going to be able to prioritize control over local libraries over popular music services yet to be supported. Even then, I wouldn’t be surprised to see SVC venture into smart home control and other non-music related features before local library control, due to the volume of users who would be interested in such features.
Userlevel 7
+23
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?
It was an Alexa service, so of course.
SVC on NAS is one of the features that might persuade me to move to S2, which would then require me to purchase some voice enabled devices.
I would be tempted as well, but there is so much expense in changing devices in 5 zones to get just this one useable to me feature, that better sense will prevail, I am quite sure. In any case, I agree that if this involves a major effort needed on the Sonos side to get this to work, it may never see the light of day, given the declared by Sonos small market now of NAS users. The upside to me of this outcome is the absence of temptation!
SVC on NAS is one of the features that might persuade me to move to S2, which would then require me to purchase some voice enabled devices. But I doubt that there are enough people like me to make the business case but you never know, there might be enough other edge cases to justify the investment.
Personally speaking, I will just use SVC mostly with Amazon and Deezer, but was just trying to assist others here who may prefer to use their locally stored tracks.
I won’t use SVC at all since I will stay on S1, so my posts, taking a cue from your words in another thread, are made with the same objective as quoted above. Let’s see if both sets of suggestions make any sense to those posters that are the only ones actually affected in this thread - the ones that want SVC to do NAS control.
And there shouldn’t be an implication that all SVC users, rather than just a fraction of them, are waiting for local library voice control.
And here I was thinking that this thread is about SVC users that want NAS control🤣
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
Digressing here but I am not getting what is the benefit of this effort. I too have some 20000 tracks and maybe ten playlists that each have 500 to 5000 tracks. All load per the normal procedure without doing any of what you have done. Depending on the genre I want, the relevant playlist is loaded.
What would I gain by loading all 20000 as one playlist via your elaborate process? I can only think of playing all my music in shuffled mode. What else? For users with or without the SVC feature?
Or am I missing something?
I was merely trying to simply demonstrate that users can load ‘virtually’ almost any/every size of local library playlist (large or small) and begin to control that playlist with SVC voice commands - nothing more than that
Only some users in other community threads tend to mention they can’t get a local playlist over (approx.) 3,500 to often load, so I was just including those details too, to perhaps assist users who may have encountered that difficulty, but wanted to give things a go with their local library and SVC.
Personally speaking, I will just use SVC mostly with Amazon and Deezer, but was just trying to assist others here who may prefer to use their locally stored tracks.
The link to the available commands has been posted a couple times now.
For SVC users to research in depth while they wait for Sonos to implement SVC on local NAS.
It’s a 5 min read at best, and you’re asking if a specific command exists. It takes very little effort to see that there is no command to do what you’re asking for.
And there shouldn’t be an implication that all SVC users, rather than just a fraction of them, are waiting for local library voice control.
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
Digressing here but I am not getting what is the benefit of this effort. I too have some 20000 tracks and maybe ten playlists that each have 500 to 5000 tracks. All load per the normal procedure without doing any of what you have done. Depending on the genre I want, the relevant playlist is loaded.
What would I gain by loading all 20000 as one playlist via your elaborate process? I can only think of playing all my music in shuffled mode. What else? For users with or without the SVC feature?
Or am I missing something?
The link to the available commands has been posted a couple times now.
For SVC users to research in depth while they wait for Sonos to implement SVC on local NAS.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Page 1 / 2
Reply
Enter your username or e-mail address. We'll send you an e-mail with instructions to reset your password.