Connecting to Sonos

Support
1

Hi - I have just subscribed to Roon but am having trouble connecting to my Sonos speakers. In Settings/Audio/Network, Roon can see other devices but not my Sonos speakers. These are on their own mesh network through a Sonos Boost and I wonder if this is the issue. Interestingly, I have a Sonos Roam portable speaker which connects to the normal wifi (not mesh) and Roon can see that. Grateful for any thoughts/solutions. Thanks

2

If Roon can see the Sonos Mesh it should be able to find it. In my set-up it takes a few minutes to find Sonos devices after Roon starts up.

I assume that your Sonos is on the same network as your Roon Core?

3

Hi Michael,

Thanks for the reply.

I have one router which creates the main network. I have a Sonos Boost connected to this which then creates its own mesh network - although the sub net is the same. I can see each Sonos device on the network with its own IP address

I did try turning off the Sonos Boost (and forcing the system to use the “normal” network) but Roon still didn’t see any of the Sonos speakers.

Looking at the Roon settings (audio/network) I see that the only devices that Roon sees are airplay capable (Apple TV and my two SKY Q satellite boxes) - it also sees the Sonos Roam when it is switched on.

This makes me wonder if Roon will only ever work with airplay capable devices - in which case, with the rest of my set up (5 x Play 1, Soundbar and sub) not being airplay capable, I am trying the impossible !

Grateful for any thoughts.

Paul

4

Hi Paul and thanks for the reply.
Is your Core running on Windows? If so disable the firewall and test that.
I have heard people with Windows say this previously.

You can use AirPlay or SonosNet to play and it does not matter which you use (though I prefer Sonos myself). Try turning off the firewall and restart the Roon Service and give it 3 minutes to find the devices and see if that works.

5

Hi again,

Thanks for the rapid reply.

The Roon Core runs on an iMac.

I did try disabling the firewall but didn’t make any difference - Roon doesn’t see the SonosNet or any of the speakers (other than the Roam when its turned on).

Luckily I am on a free trial of Roon but not sure I will get it working within the 14 days !!

Paul

6

Paul Sorry to say, I have not seen an issue like this before, currently I use a NUC running ROCK.
I have used Windows and seen Firewall issues, but have never installed Roon on my MacBook, so I cannot add much to this, lets tap @support to this and see if they can offer any advice.

In my experience of Roon and Sonos they work nicely together, so it might be that you need to change the service to WiFi from SonosNet, but that does not fit with my previous usage.

7

Thanks for all your help Michael - hope others may have some ideas

Best

Paul

8

I’ve used it this way without issue in the past so it’s possible.

The Boost needs to be in the same broadcast domain as the Core. So, while the Boost may be using its own wireless frequencies / SSID the IP network needs to be bridged to the network where the Core lives.

You can check this by pointing a browser at one of your speakers like this:
http://aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd:1400/support/review
Where aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd is the IP of your speaker (don’t forget port 1400)

It will show you all the connected speakers plus a Network Matrix. The network matrix gives you signal strength.

Then click on /sbin/ifconfig
Make sure the br0 interface has the bcast and mask that matches your core.

There are some other tidbits of info here to verify if your actually on the Boost network or some other network but I’ll leave that exercise up to the reader.

This site goes into great detail on how to read the matrix:
https://freetime.mikeconnelly.com/archives/6050

3 Likes