Roon and Sonos compatibility? [in 1.3]

Hi,

First of all, I appreciate all the work you put into the app, which has definitely improved and simplified my music experience. I’m only using it with tidal right now, as haven’t got round to dragging out my hard discs with thousands of songs on.

Anyway, my question is concerns Sonos compatibility with I am currently considering purchasing a number of Sonos devices but understand that this system is incompatible with Roon.

Could you give me some feedback and advice on this issue?

Hi Richard,

Currently Roon doesn’t support SonosNet and Sonos doesn’t support RAAT. So there is no “out of the box” compatibility between Roon and Sonos.

As set out in this post AirSonos is a freeware program that enables AirPlay to Sonos devices. Roon can then play to those Sonos devices using AirPlay. This article has some further detail. I haven’t tried this myself but others appear to have implemented it and used it.

I know the devs would love to be able to bring Roon and Sonos closer together but no public announcements have been made in this regard. Let’s drop a flag for @mike to see if he can tell us anything.

I would suggest holding off from equipment purchases until you have checked out what can be done with inexpensive Roon endpoints (see this thread.)

Thanks a lot for your detailed reply. I followed your link and had a brief read. It seems complicated but probably simply as this level of audio shenanigans is pretty new to me. I had been looking for an out of the box solution but am seeing that maybe that’s a bit hopeful…

I travel a lot and at the moment I just use a couple of Bose Soundlink speakers in tandem using a “Miccus” USB Bluetooth pairing dongle on a Mac. I have been looking at upgrading to a decent home wireless solution for a while and of what I have seem so far , Sonos has ticked the most boxes in terms of sound quality, adaptability and ease of use.

But, and it’s a big but, that was before i discovered Roon, which for someone like myself-who generally combines a 40,000+ tunes stored on a hard disc with the increasing flexibility offered by Tidal (and others)- is definitely a game changer, for reasons similar to those discussed at length both here and on other forums by a wide range of users.

I’ve only been using Tidal with Roon so far, as I am currently running it off an 11" MacBook Air which means I can only use it in full screen mode. I’ll buy a Mac desktop with a sensible sized screen once I finish a couple more contracts and then I’ll get into using Roon to its full capacity.

So, unless you or other users have any more advice for me, I’ll take heed of your first recommendation and hold fire before jumping buying any wireless speaker solutions.

Thanks again!

1 Like

I noted that you said you had 40K+ tracks, please be aware that Sonos does have a hard 65k track limit.

Thanks Daniel. What would your advice be? What would be the best way to enjoy reasonable+ quality sound using Roon and being able to use a number of speakers, in different areas of the house.

I am not necessarily dead set on Sonos. I have second hand knowledge of the system, simply having listened to it and been pretty taken by the sound. It was the first time I had really heard what sounded to me like hi-end quality since the analogue times.

But I am no expert. I am just someone who likes a nice quality sound that fills the room and makes people happy!

A couple of possible solutions:
First of all, make sure your wireless network is flawless where you’d like to play music, particularly highrez files. If not, have your electrician perform a permanent installation of Ethernet cabling and outlets.
Then decide what transducers you want. Are we talking single speakers such as an active studio monitor or Devialet Phantoms or passive speakers? Or perhaps even playback through powered inwall/in-ceiling speakers?

Then buy a raspberry pi for each speaker with a suitable addon card:
For a passive spaker that needs amplification:
Raspberry Pi + Hifiberry Amp+

For an active speaker or system with digital input (optical or RCA):
Raspberry Pi + Hifiberry Digi+

For an active speaker or system with analog input only:
Raspberry Pi + Hifiberry DAC+

For each you will need a PSU, a case and a microSD card.
Then download the image from hifiberry and “flash” it to each MicroSD.
This is the part where most “normal” people get stuck but there are plenty of good instructions out there.
If anyone of the Pi’s need to be configured for wireless access, do that by configuring wpa_supplicant.conf on the visible partition of the microSD card while its still in your computer.
After that insert the SDcards in each Pi, Power up and your Roon installation will identify them.

Id say you are looking at less than $100 per Pi and addon-card.

And if you think Sonos was sounding good, you will be stunned/amazed/shocked !
(Of course depending on your chosen spakers and amplification)

1 Like

You may wanna check out Bluesound - although they don’t support Roon right now, they’ve announced their decision to do so, hopefully implemented by end of year. I currently have their system although not without issues, they sound awesome. I’m currently using a Squeezebox touch connected through optical connection to a Bluesound Powernode 2 and I love it. Since any Bluesound component can “serve” the rest of the system, I can use Roon right now through Bluesound to the rest of my system ( A Pulse Mini and two Flex’s acting as stereo pair). They just announced a soundbar as well for your home theater, and the Flex’s should have battery packs available soon to take them outside or wherever.

You can also hook up an Airport express and use that as your input to BS, or even google cast. But all that will be moot when they become official Roon partners.

Enjoy!
craig

Thanks. I’ll check it out

I’m just getting started with bluesound; should have two nodes and two minis arriving shortly. The forum there is quite active too, which is always an encouragement and should hopefully spur their software development – it was the software front that put me off them back in 2015. Without Roon, I certainly would not have considered them. I’m hoping they will have google cast soon too; forums indicated so.

I’ll post my bluesound experience once I have them all up and running, if that helps you @Richard_Armstrong

1 Like

So, are Bluesound products now Roon-compatible?

Rumored to be soon ™. When I talked to a Bluesound rep, he thought it might be by the end of the year. But, until it is released or officially announced, well, anything can happen.