Why won't Sonos allow wireless audio streaming for movies from Mac/PC?

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This has been a long requested feature for years. Why limit the listening experience to music only? I love the sound when pairing two Play Ones. I wanted to keep them, but the fact I couldn't also stream the sound of my movies from my MacBook was a deal breaker. Why would I want to invest hundreds or thousands on a system that's limited to music only. I have a MacBook Pro, and I watch plenty of movies. Why should I have to buy additional speakers from another company just to enjoy movies? No one should have to resort to buying a play5 only to plug it into an airport express through the auxport. No one wants any more wires sticking out of their speakers. Using the auxport defeats the purpose of a wireless solution. Why won't Sonos allow software driver based audio output through their PC/Mac controllers that will allow any app to stream audio. For example, I want to run VLC player or Divx movie player and have the audio stream through the Sonos system. Can we get an explanation as to why this hasn't come to fruition despite an overwhelming number of requests from your customer base? It's almost at 2015, and it has been ignored for years. If this was available, I would've kept the two Play Ones and purchased the sub too.

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WiFi Jack

Lyricist III

Hi Sonos Development Tem, I love the SONOS products BUT....you are in danger of moving from an innovator and leader in WiFi music plsyback to second place or worse. My house (and most house and apartments now days) are WiFi covered. I stream movies, music and MTV from a home NAS and also from other external streaming services to phones, tablets and Smart TVs throughout the home. All of these devices have love grade speakers and I want to stream the audio off to SONOS speakers. But alas...it is not possible. When watching a movie via say PLEX i am reduced to needing a TV soundbar for decent audio...yet i have perfectly good Play 1 and other SONOS speakers I could (and would prefer) to use! What's the point of a good (and exspensive) wireless speaker network if you can't stream a wide variety of audio sourses to it easily????? PLEASE IMPROVE THE PRODUCT for "air play" type and also blue tooth connection options. The system as it stands is now behind the times ans is far too limited in what and how it can stream audio from various sourses. A supporter, but the patience is running out. A Sony or Bose WiFi system may replace you. Why not LEAD THE MARKET and OEM your technology to the others for royalties! Please!

A

Andy_33

Contributor I

Does this workaround still work? Have done this as you said, however, keeps coming up Unable to play, unable to connect to 192.168.etc.

Cheers

Andy

Here's a solution I just tried, and found that actually works for sound! (I'm assuming that the video and sound would be out of sync).

I would assume that SONOS might be able to offer a similar solution, unless (of course) licensing issues prevent them from doing it without permission from Apple. (Don't know... just speculating here).

This software solution provides an "airplay" driver on your mac that points to one of your Sonos players. Once it's installed, you use it with three simple steps.

Step 1) Open a terminal prompt (command prompt) and type airsonos. This starts the driver.
Don't close the session. It's OK to minimize the window.

Step 2) You use the Mac's "System Preferences..." , "Sound" to select the sonos as the output for your sound. Now, play some music on your mac, and turn up the volume, and the sound comes out of your Sonos" instead of your Mac. No wires. No hassle.

Step 3) Grin from ear to ear as any and all Mac sound streams wirelessly to your Sonos!

HERE'S HOW TO INSTALL THE DRIVERS,
PLUS LINKS TO WHERE I FOUND THE SOLUTION.

(I can't take credit for creating it, but I'm so happy to have found it... thank you Stephen! ... that I'm willing to share it far and wide!)

airsonos a Node.js application, and it's free!

You need to install the right version of Node.js (it's an older version),

and then you need to use npm (the Node package manager) which will download, compile and i

install airsonos. It's all pretty easy. You don't need more than basic computer skills to get it done.

-----------------------------

I found info here:

https://medium.com/@stephencwan/hacking-airplay-into-sonos-93a41a1fcfbb

and installation instructions here:

https://github.com/stephen/airsonos

IMPORTANT NOTE: It states it requires Node.js version v0.10.33 or greater.

I tried it with the current release of Node.js (v0.12.xx) and it wouldn't compile.

When I downloaded and installed Node.js version v0.10.33, and then tried to install it everything worked!

Here are the brief instructions:

Step 1)

Download Node.js v0.10.33 from here:

http://blog.nodejs.org/2014/10/23/node-v0-10-33-stable/

or use google to find it.

Step 2) Run the install (node-v0.10.33.pkg) to install Node.js

Step 3) Open a terminal prompt, and at the command line type:

sudo npm install airsonos -g

This will cause the npm (the node package manager) to download, compile and install airsonos and the packages it requires. It took about 5 or 10 minutes to complete.

Now it's installed!

To use it, it's two simple steps:

*** First) open a terminal and at the command prompt type:

airsonos

./

You should see output similar to:

MacBook-Pro:~user$ airsonos

Searching for Sonos devices on network...

Setting up AirSonos for Basement {192.168.0.10:1400}

Setting up AirSonos for Office {192.168.0.20:1400}

On my machine these messages were repeated several times.

LEAVE THE TERMINAL WINDOW. Don't close it, or kill the airsonos app.

It *IS* OK to minimize the window.

*** Second)

Go to system preferences... (under the apple menu), select "Sound" and for "Output" create one of the airsonos outputs. For instance, in my situation I selected .

"Office (AirSonos) AirPlay".

Now play some music on your mac, turn up the volume on your mac, and listen the music come out through Sonos!

This is awesome. You can now send steaming services to Sonos, you can output your itunes music to sonos. Want to hear a playlist of songs from youtube... done, amazon music prime... it now works!, etc, etc.

Many, many thanks to Stephen for creating this and sharing the info.

I didn't create any of this, I'm just sharing the information since I've wanted this feature for so long, I'm happy to finally find a quality solution that works!

-Phil

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