Very excited by 1.3’s support of Sonos. By the looks of the screenshots, Sonos zones are treated as high-quality zones, which presumably means lossless streaming up to 48kHz, which is great news.
I’m very curious as to how you accomplish this, if you are able to share. Is it some sort of sanctioned Sonos thing, or more of a “kludge”, like AirSonos? And are you able to keep multiple Sonos zones properly in sync when grouped?
I am stunned by the breadth of this release. Amazing work. Can’t wait to try it!
We don’t have any particular support from Sonos the company. We use the same basic mechanisms that the official Sonos apps use to control Sonos devices, so we have approximately the same capabilities the official apps do. We do support lossless streaming up to the limits of the hardware, which are 48kHz/16bit audio.
We use the same mechanism the Sonos app uses to group multiple Sonos zones/devices, and can play normally to Sonos stereo pairs. Unfortunately it is impossible for us to group Sonos devices with any other devices by other manufacturers.
I’m the developer responsible for most of the Sonos support, and am happy to answer any questions, especially anything that isn’t in that KB article.
Any chance this will ever work in reverse? Sonos has somehow managed to add a boatload of services. It’d be great if Roon could access other services THROUGH Sonos. Not as good as native integration to Roon, but better than nothing.
Hi,
I understand that ‘Sonos’ can not be grouped with ‘non sonos’ devices, probably for technical issues.
However, would it be possible to “imperfectly group” them, in order to play the same music on different type of devices, even with a slight desynchronization ? Like if i play a music on sonos, and then start to play the same music on a ‘non sonos’ device ?
Roon v1.3 is set to drop any day now. When it does, Roon streaming to the Sonos Play:1 becomes a reality. Bye bye Sonos apps. Which brings us full circle…
For Tidal, and your own collection of music, Roon will definitely be the best Sonos controller, but there’s lots of stuff in the Sonos app which is still useful. Several Radio apps (e.g. iheartradio) and other streaming services - which to date, are not Roon compatible.
Hello Ben
Thanks to you and the Roon team for all the great work to incorporate the Sonos infrastructure under Roon control. I’ve been a big fan of Roon for sometime and was hoping this day would arrive as I’ve also got a house full of sonos gear.
Since the 1.3 upgrade, I’ve been using Roon with my Sonos gear and for the most part it has worked as advertised. However during playback (after grouping all my sonos zones) on several occasions, one of the zones will stop playing and will no longer be visible in the Roon Zones list. It appears with a red “X” where the zone used to be. I must then restart my entire network infrastructure (router, wireless access point, sonos Boost, and of course, all the sonos zones) to “clear” the hang. When I check the offending zone in the native Sonos app it show as being connected to “Roon Wav.”. It’s seems that Roon has somehow gotten “hung” in that zone, and only a compete reboot brings things back. After the restart things will all work again for a bit…and then another zone “hangs” and I have to go through the entire reboot process again.
Any ideas as to what might be causing this? I realize 1.3 is brand new ( I do have the most recent build) and there may be some teething issues. I’m just so delighted to be able to have Roon/Sonos together that I would like to be sure that I’m doing everything to insure a stable environment.
I do have a very bullet proof network (lots of speed/capacity) and very good coverage throughout my home. Roon and Sonos (by themselves) are rock solid, so I suspect it’s the number of Sonos zones I have that may be contributing to this issue.
Sonos gear (Boost, 2 Connects (ZP80’s), 2 Play5, 1 ConnectAmp)
Thanks
Brian
I just bought a PLAY:1 to use with Roon. Getting it up and running was just as easy as an Airplay device. Once the :1 was on the network, it showed up in Roon right away with no issues whatsoever.
The thought of using Sonos with Roon has me considering forking over some $$ on Sonos hardware IF I can do the following:
Go back and forth between the native Sonos app and Roon seamlessly. Can I jump from controlling my Sonos hardware from Roon to say, one of the music services supported by Sonos and then back to Roon for local file playback?
Sync the output the Roon PC with the Sonos? I am assuming the answer here is no. If so, that’s a huge bummer. I am currently using Squeeeboxes and figured out that I can sync them with the Roon PC by installing Squeezelite on the PC. Any similar workaround for Sonos?
The goal is to sync my desktop PC with other streamers connected to receivers/speakers throughout the house (could be Squeezeboxes, Sonos, RAAT Pi’s) and be able to access local file playback as well as services not currently supported by Roon (Pandora, Sirius, Napster, etc)
That’s a shame. So, I can’t have my cake and eat it too? I really like having the desktop PC in sync with my Squeezeboxes, so I’ll probably just stick with them. That’s more valuable to me than conveniently having Pandora and Sirius available.
Hi,
Great that Roon now works with Sonos speakers.
We have just subscribed to Roon and are trying to get the system to work with our existing Sonos hardware (4 play 1’s, and Play3 and a Sonos Connect that is connected to our Yamaha receiver and home theatre speakers).
We are having problems playing to multiple Sonos zones or rooms. Roon will stream fine to one end point but not to multiple end points. It is sort of random…sometimes to will play to multiple zones but never to all the zones at once. Also it seems problematic to add the connect to any other zone.
I trouble shooted with Sonos support to see if we could solve the problem but I haven’t been able to get it work.
The Roon core is running from a MacBookAir and our music files are on an external hard drive (Seagate) connected to the Mac. The format of most of the files is AppleLossless.
Any suggestions for us?
Can you give me a little bit more information on exactly what’s going on with your system?
Please describe your network configuration / topology as well as providing insight into any networking hardware you may be implementing in your setup. I want to get an idea of how your devices are communicating and what tools are being used to make those connections possible.
Does grouping everything work with the official Sonos apps?
During our Alpha test I had a user who couldn’t group his Play 5 and Connect because the firmware on the Play 5 needed to be updated, could you confirm for me that all your devices are running the most recent version? (I suspect Sonos support asked this question also, but I have to check)
Can you describe in as much detail as possible what goes wrong when you try to play to multiple Sonos devices? What you see in Roon, where sound actually comes out, what devices are grouped according to the Sonos app, that sort of thing.
Hi Ben,
Thanks for the very quick reply.
1 We have a very simple set-up. The Sonos devices and our MacBook Air that acts as the Roon core are all connected to the same home WIFI system ( a router and a Sonos Boost).
The Sonos Connect is connected via the LINE IN to our home theatre and speakers.
2. Yes, our Sonos set up works fine when we have them all grouped together. On the support cal with Sonos they ran a series of diagnostics to confirm this and we also changed the channel for the Sonos network
3. The Sonos are all running the most recent software (another thing that I confirmed with Sonos on their support call. We have also updated the Sonos controllers on the MacBook Air)
4. We can stream music from the Roon app to a Sonos grouping that includes the Play 1 and Play 3 zones (our kitchen, Dining Room and Den), But if we add our Sonos Connect (which is connected to our Yahama receiver and the living room speakers then the music either stops all together or plays in very short interrupted spurts on the other Sonos zones, but not the Living Room zone with the Connect and the Yahama Receiver. We also sometimes get an error message on the Sonos which reads " Unable to Play, Network Speed is insufficient to maintain Buffer"
Thanks for your assistance and let me know if you have enough detail here or have more questions for me
