A SONOS App (controller) can only play through SONOS products.

If you have a PORT you could use this as an input to the PC or active speakers.

Thanks for the reply. That is really too bad. So they’ve made a choice not to support output from their Windows app to the speakers connected to my PC. To be clear, it’s an active product decision that they do not want to do that. I get it, they want to make money so make people buy more Sonos products. It’s silly though because they would earn more brand value/loyalty (stickiness) to simply create that functionality. Terrible business decision… 

I don’t think that it was a money grabbing issue, it was a deliberate design choice. The controllers don’t play any music, they only operate the players. Players fetch their own music. The pad/phone/computer running the SONOS controller can be shut down and the music will continue. Personally, this was the main reason that I installed SONOS. I don’t want my phone/pad/computer fussing with music. I know that a segment of the world seems to revolve around Bluetooth and AirPlay, but I don’t find either to be very reliable. In the rare occasions when I try them, I find Apps fight for control of the channel and it’s a tedious mess to straighten this out. (I tend to multitask with lots of programs) Through all of this mess, my SONOS system just continues to play.

Love to agree with you but totally don’t… I’ve worked for software companies for 30 years now. Product and Marketing decide what to sell and what to give away. Engineering is definitely in the room on those discussions but the majority of time they’re focused on what sells and what supports their sales strategy.

Engineering wise, what’s the difference between the software running on the Port and the software running on my computer? Not much, really. They could’ve just as easily written the windows app to also act like a controller just like the port. In fact that would be hugely powerful for people that want to run a massive Sonos system.  

I’m curious: how did you get access to Sonos software, to make this claim? Im not disagreeing with you but I don’t have access to the data to be able to make such a statement. Do you/did you work for Sonos or a close partner? 

There was a single Sonos competitor that offered a PC based zone.  They were called  Squeezebox.  They went out of business, dropped by their parent company Logitech.  But lo and behold, from that defunct company there arose a dedicated cadre of users who still keep the brand going.  Turns out you can duplicate Squeezebox hardware using the free Squeezsoft application and a cheap Raspberry Pi, undercutting the branded hardware price by hundreds and, in the case of the Transporter, thousands of dollars.  Amazingly, these configurations were ready to go the day the brand went defunct, with hundreds of folks already running them.

Not a very sustainable business plan, as was duly demonstrated.

You could probably duplicate the Sonos system the same way… BUT you couldn’t sell it and anything you did to make a profit related to it would be iffy due to the Sonos patents. Still be cool for home use but not worth the effort.

Except Sonos is not going to give you the software to do it for free. 

The thought behind your statement “So they’ve made a choice not to support output from their Windows app to the speakers connected to my PC.” leads you on the wrong path.

The Sonos apps do not have any output. They are a remote to the speakers that do the work: fetch streams from the internet or your NAS, or even a specific place on your PC you’ve pointed the system to through the app. The app was meant as a replacement for the rreal remote Sonos used in the early years. See for example:

Since this is how Sonos has worked from the beginning it would take a mayor rework for the system and the app to pick up sounds from your computer and send them to the Sonos system, let alone send them to other speakers - or have the system send sound back to your computer to play on those speakers.

Since the result of this would be Sonos maybe selling less speakers, of course there’s also a commercial point in not doing this - in effect they would not get paid for their work. This could be solved by changing Sonos from a speaker manufacturer that needs software to run it’s products to a software company (that may or may not also sell speakers) and start asking money for the software, but it is Sonos’s choice not to do this.

That’s basically what I said in the beginning… what’s the difference between the port and my windows computer? Not much. They are both computers. What’s the difference between the software built into speakers and my computer. Not much. They could easily expand the windows app or build a new one that allows me to use speakers from computer within the Sonos ecosystem. And of course, they could charge and yes you could say that would mean they’re more of a software company vs hardware, but that’s a thin line given what they’re already doing. A Sono’s kit for my PC that included the requisite software would be fantastic and would likely sell quite well. They choose not to do that.

You aren’t going to get what you want, for good reasons.  It’s been requested for almost two decades, and nothing has come from it.  Time to give up.

We do not know if Sonos “could easily expand the Windows app or build a new one”. The argument that the Port and your PC are both computers, and that this fact would make the new or changed app somehow easier to build is not very compelling. Your washing machine is also a computer, at least partly. Two computers can be very different - Sonos uses a form of Linux in their speakers (as I understand it).

And what would be the end result of this investment? A couple of (a bit) more satisfied customers like you (and probably me) but lost sales because you would not buy a Port.

As a company Sonos needs to make choices towards what to put their money. Sonos has already said the Windows an Mac apps are not going to be expanded, so I do not see Sonos doing this.