Alternatives to Sonos for multiroom WiFi system? Sonos’ wifi connection is terrible – it’s practically unusable

Prices go up for those requirements

https://www.bowerswilkins.com/formation/duo

I have two Sonos systems in two houses for casual listening. Both involve a minimum of four Sonos “locations” and various types of Sonos gear. Both very well using the Sonos mesh system, and both locations are chalk full of routers, repeaters, others mesh systems and wifi gear. I have had the odd interference problem, easily solved by changing the Sonos channel. I’m sure if you tinker using the advice already given (particularly the Sonos signal strength indicator matrix page) you’ll get it working. The Sonos measure network is surprisingly resilient.

Hi @YetAnotherLondoner,

I use HifiBerry and wifi for multi room audio system. I struggled with this for months until I arrived at what seems to be a stable solution. First of all, I had legit wifi signal strength issues so I installed eero wifi mesh units in bridge configuration which provides 2.4 and 5GHz wifi. Secondly, I found that the onboard Raspberry Pi wifi is beyond bad (even with power saving mode disabled, bandwidth and connectivity were intermittent, and it supports 2.4GHz only). It’s all made worse because I live in an apartment building where everyone has high power 2.4GHz wifi devices which create tons of interference.

I bought the cheapest 600Mbps/5GHz external USB wifi dongles I could find on Amazon; they were $15 but may have not been the best choice because I wound up having to find a driver on the internet, make a custom kernel (because the driver was for newer kernel only), compile the driver against that kernel, and then mess with the OS device driver loading order and disable/blacklist the onboard wifi device driver so it won’t load.

Having done all that, the wifi connection at 5GHz is extremely stable even across the eero mesh. I should mention everything is wifi including the Roon core on Windows 10 media PC, Roon remotes, and Roon bridge on the Raspberry Pi’s. 5GHz has much shorter range than 2.4GHz and seems to be free of interference from neighbors. My only remaining network problem is occasionally something goes wrong in my cheap gigabit ethernet switch, causing network issues until I remember to power cycle it, after which everything works perfectly for a few days or weeks.

As the decade is coming to an end I spent a bit of time doing an alternative… This is what works for ‘sonos’ level quality for me.

This is what I have in my setup:
Server running Roon output via rca to a analog to digital streamer. In my case this streamer converts the audio in to an internet radio stream and broadcasts out over the LOCAL area network. Now you can use any device capable of ‘tuning’ an internet radio station as an end point. I have used pi’s, asus tinkerboard, iphones, android phones. and even bluetooth from my macbook to a set of Vanatoo Transparent zeroes. Fun…

Roon is controlled by whatever roon remote you are using. In my case it is usually my macbook and occasionally an iPad.

This should work on ‘your wifi’ as you mentioned that the only wifi troubles are with Sonos’

I cannot fault my Naim Uniti setup. I am running a Nova and Core networked (cable or wifi) to 5 other Uniti products around the house and garden including kitchen (wifi) and greenhouse (wifi) and Gym and workshop.(wired and wifi)
All works fine once we got BT to fix our low line speed.
Plan to extend next year to a solar powered outbuilding
My setup is quite expensive but could be done much cheaper with a Uniti Atom and NAS drive. I have built mine up over 6 years and the pain is not quite so bad that way!

One alternative which meets some, but not all, of your requirements is Apple’s HomePod. Superior sound, but IOS ecosystem.

Roon plays to HomePods. I have two and it works really well. I did not fiddle with stereo output but, not sure it can handle stereo HomePods-- that might be a show stopper for some.

Have you tried SonosNet? I’m guessing you are using Sonos over your normal WiFi. SonosNet is a “private” mesh WiFi only for SonosNet devices. You need at least one Sonos device connected via Ethernet.

Yes, I have tried Sonos’ own mesh. One speaker is connected via cable. No, it did not fix anything. To keep things in context in order to appreciate how lousy Sonos’ connection is, it is useful to remember we are talking about streams of max 320 kbps, and one speaker sitting about 10 feet from the one connected via cable, with nothing between the two.

I appreciate people’s attempt to help, but we are going off topic from the initial question, which was not “help me troubleshoot” but “let’s talk alternatives to Sonos”

Homepods are Apple. I have no Apple gadgets. Like I said, I need something that can be controlled easily from Android, also without Roon.

Ah - by adding the requirement of use of music outside of Roon, the only android app that controls a homepod is Apple Music.

Roon runs on andriod as a remote, so in your original request a HomePod meets all those requirements. Maybe examine your network and seek Ethernet connections?

Have you considered a CD player? They are really cheap now:

If you cannot get Sonos to work on your in-home Wi-Fi nor with SonosNET, I would consider getting some help from a local resource with your home network. Seriously.

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I didn’t add anything, it was the second bullet point in my wishlist (play music independently of Roon).

For * sake, if someone asks: I have driven Mercedes but want to try BMW, can you please talk to me about BMW cars, must you absolutely reply: “no, you’re wrong, you MUST continue to drive Mercedes”???

The original question was: let’s talk alternatives to Sonos, it was never “help me troubleshoot Sonos”, nor “please convince me Sonos doesn’t suck”.

You like Sonos? Great. Sonos works brilliantly for you? Great, I am very happy for you. But that was NOT the question.

How come are you so convinced that the problem lies with my network and cannot possibly lies with Sonos? Isn’t the fact that Sonos is the one and only piece of kit that gives me grief a slight hint???

I think largely it’s people trying to be helpful because really the question is more:

I have a Mercedes already, but for some reason my Mercedes when I turn the key doesn’t start.

I’d like to ditch my Mercedes which cost me money and replace it with something else rather than fixing the problem.

Given the problem could be your house and / or network, throwing money at a new solution may not yield the results you want.

It may just be you’ve got a load of broken sonos kit, at which point replacement would be the only way, but in that market segment there aren’t many well made, nicely thought out devices with a clean control system that will speak to roon.

Airplay is one such option, via HomePods or any Myriad of AirPlay enabled devices, but then you’re counting on Apple not to change the airplay standard on You.

I know Samsung still push multi room kit but none of it works with roon.

Have you considered a vaugely DIY approach. Creating little raspberry PI endpoints for roon and just Plugging into powered speakers?

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And, again, I appreciate the good intentions, but

  1. telling me to try what I have already tried
  2. telling me that Sonos works great for other people
  3. telling me Sonos doesn’t need 5 Ghz because the 2.4Ghz band is more than enough (it’s not about the speed of transmission, it’s about the greater congestion of 2.4)
  4. telling me the issue is with my network when Sonos struggles to stream 320 kpbs of data, while other devices, much farther from the router, stream HD video without the slightest issue, or transfer files from the NAS at 20-30 MB/sec (Megabytes, not bit / sec)

None of this is particularly helpful. It was probably my mistake for not framing the question more clearly, but, still…

It may well be that there aren’t many other devices which tick all those boxes, but, in order to reach that conclusion, I’d need to look into some potential alternatives.

I did consider some rasperry /hiberry solution but it’s not clear to me how that would work.

No use in having two threads about basically the same subject. As the other one appears to have started in a more constructive manner, I’ll close up here.

Please continue there:

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