Sonos support via Airsonos [Roon support added in 1.3]

I sent this as a PM to another member, but I figured I’d say it publicly too:

We noticed airsonos popping up a few months ago, and did an analysis to see if was a viable technique for Roon to use.

It works like this:

  1. Roon sends lossless audio via Airplay to airsonos (unfortunately, if playing high-res or DSD content, this gets downsampled into CD quality because Airplay can’t support anything better). (See Signal Path in Roon)

  2. airsonos encodes that lossless audio to mp3 using lame using lame’s default settings https://github.com/stephen/nicercast/blob/master/index.js#L67

  3. airsonos sends 44.1khz/2ch/16bit mp3 encoded data to Sonos as a radio stream https://github.com/stephen/airsonos/blob/master/lib/tunnel.js

If we were to not use Airsonos but instead implement what they do, step 1 would disappear – but we’d still need to send an mp3 stream to the Sonos.

In theory this works, albeit with serious quality degradation. However, it doesn’t even begin to deal with the other things that make Roon’s audio system a pleasure to use: volume control, zone grouping, signal path, high res & dsd streaming, low latency, etc…

We are hoping to find a better lossless streaming solution via UPnP to the Sonos, and get enough control information to control their grouping and volume control natively.

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3 posts were split to a new topic: UPnP Support (Linn)

It would be fantastic if roon could work with Sonos - I have 7 sonos zones and intend to swap one out for a RAAT network streamer to connect to new decent hifi setup - probably raspberry pi with hifi berry initially, but it would be fantastic to be able to drive my other sonos’ via Roon until I can afford to swap them out too (without having to purchase 6 AirPlay devices to feed the sonos’s. Any updates on this would be great, thanks.

Jeff.

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Nothing concrete yet, but we are trying to get this working. I have no ETA, and I have no more information for you.

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Awesome. +1 here for native sonos integration. I have a play:5 gen2 which is my “background music” speaker.

I am trialling roon+HQplayer+tidal on my serious setup, and would be awesome if I could ditch the sonos software entirely!

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Don’t ask how but VOX has a very nice integration with sonos (no multiroom but volume control). Airsonos seems to be affected by several seconds of lag

Airsonos is transcoding a radio stream with buffering, that’s the lag.

VOX is just doing UPnP support for the basic file types.

I would like to offer my support of this kind of enhancement. The benefit of Roon applied to my SONOS hardware would be great. SONOS is slick in terms of automating music in my home but being able to control from ROON would be a better solution.

Chris

Any updates on this thread. Would still love to get some basic support of SONOS through ROON.

We plan to release support for streaming directly to Sonos hardware in Roon 1.3. I can’t comment on when that will be exactly beyond “when it is done.”

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When you say Sonos hardware, I have a Sonos CONNECT connected to a non-Sonos amp for a dedicated “spouse zone” comprised of several sets of hardwired non-Sonos speakers in different rooms. So, would this mean that I could select an album from Roon that resides on my music hard drive and stream it to the Connect and the spouse zone, automatically bypassing the Sonos interface? Or would there have to be some kind of “switch” between the two? Just curious, not even sure if this has a practical use (well, it wouldn’t to my wife who wants things as simplified as possible).

We expect to support streaming to all Sonos devices, including the CONNECT. Streaming from Roon to a CONNECT hooked up to a non-Sonos amp/speakers should work fine, with Roon taking over control from the Sonos app when you start playing.

Any updates? When will 1.3 by released?

I suspect it is imminent.

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To the RoonLabs Team,

Thanks for adding the functionality to 1.3. Great job!

Chris