MM v4 & Sonos

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Barry4679
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Re: MM v4 & Sonos

Post by Barry4679 »

drsfp wrote:You are right it is still not possible to queue albums, or playlists to Sonos. However, the other way around works fine, i can acces my MM library through Sonos and thereby bypass the 65k track limit.
Thanks. I hadn't noticed that.

It is a pity that it is so track oriented, eg. AlbumArtist -> alpha track list w/o regard to album
or genre -> alpha tracklist w/o regard to album

the "location" index is better, but the other thing is that it transcodes my flac file down to mp3 before playing (see the cache auto-converted content directory at tools|options|MediaSharing)

is worth knowing though. You using it much? How do you get around the albums thing?
Want a dark skin for MM5? This is the one that works best for me .. elegant, compact & clear.
Barry4679
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Re: MM v4 & Sonos

Post by Barry4679 »

Barry4679 wrote:but the other thing is that it transcodes my flac file down to mp3 before playing (see the cache auto-converted content directory at tools|options|MediaSharing)
My error. I see that this is controlled at the MM end by setting the appropriate options in the Auto-Conversion tab of the Options screen accessed via Tools|Options|Library|MediaSharing.
Want a dark skin for MM5? This is the one that works best for me .. elegant, compact & clear.
drsfp
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Re: MM v4 & Sonos

Post by drsfp »

For those still wondering how to integrate MM with Sonos. Try the beta version of MM 4.1. It allows you to select the Sonos as a player and subsequently plays all the tracks you queue up in the playlist! This just made my day because it finally gives me a way to easily navigate my whole library without running into the 65k track limit of Sonos. I will give it some further tests, but so far so good!
MarkODD
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Re: MM v4 & Sonos

Post by MarkODD »

drsfp wrote:For those still wondering how to integrate MM with Sonos. Try the beta version of MM 4.1. It allows you to select the Sonos as a player and subsequently plays all the tracks you queue up in the playlist! This just made my day because it finally gives me a way to easily navigate my whole library without running into the 65k track limit of Sonos. I will give it some further tests, but so far so good!
How do you select the Sonos as a player?
Lowlander
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Re: MM v4 & Sonos

Post by Lowlander »

Right click on the Player in MediaMonkey 4.1 and choose Select Player from the context menu.
MarkODD
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Re: MM v4 & Sonos

Post by MarkODD »

OK, I can select player : Sonos Play5 Media Renderer, but when I try to play a song nothing happens for about thirty seconds and then the pause button changes back to a play button.

When I monitor what is happening using the Sonos software I can see this message: "unable to play ItemID = 72702.flac. unable to connect to 10.0.0.1:55827."

10.0.0.1:55827 is the addresss of the MediaMonkey library in the Media sharing (UPNP/DLNA) Tab.
drsfp
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Re: MM v4 & Sonos

Post by drsfp »

It's still in beta, so some errors might occur... I noted the playlist does not always play continuously and also that when clicking on a next track to play the current track would start again.

I'm not familiar with your error though, but have you tried different filetypes? I see you tried to play a FLAC file, SONOS does not play all FLAC files...
Lowlander
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Re: MM v4 & Sonos

Post by Lowlander »

And when you come across bugs you should capture them with a debug log (step 4b) as the team doesn't have all devices to test with and send it to support: http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... ?f=6&t=341
MarkODD
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Re: MM v4 & Sonos

Post by MarkODD »

Trouble ticket has been raised for this issue and I have sent a debug log.

http://www.mediamonkey.com/support/inde ... etid=19933

I also tried placing the Sonos in a different location where I knew there was perfect wi-fi reception just in case it was a black spot causing the error but the same thing happened. I also tried to play an MP3 with the same error.

This is just about the number 1 feature that I have been wishing for from MediaMonkey so I hope it is able to be resolved. The Sonos software is nowhere near MediaMonkey in terms of managing large collections, statistics, ratings, creating playlists etc.
MarkODD
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Re: MM v4 & Sonos

Post by MarkODD »

The developers are still investigating this issue. I have received some suggestions from Ludek with the following results;

When I pasted the link http://10.0.0.1:55827/ItemID=122629.flac into Google Chrome it played the file through the computer speakers no trouble.

I have tried another controller (WMP in Windows7) with mixed results.

When I send a song from a local hard drive to Sonos Play:5 it works!

But all of my music is on a NAS (Sorry, I probably should have mentioned that before now) and when I try to Send To the Sonos from the NAS in WMP I first get a message 'contacting media server' then an error 'Failed to retrieve media information from media server'. This had me convinced the NAS was causing the error in Mediamonkey so I looked at the folder permissions on the NAS and it is user based. I have enabled Guest Access Right = Full Access but get the same error in WMP.

BUT! When I tried to play a file on the local hard drive to the Sonos from Mediamonkey and got the same unable to connect error as before. A debug log has been sent.
Barry4679
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Re: MM v4 & Sonos

Post by Barry4679 »

It works ok here (ie. right click the MM Player widget, chose a Sonos renderer, and MM plays via my Sonos)

The problem that I had before is now fixed (ie. tracks are now played in track number sequence, rather than alphabetical)

It is great. There is such a need for this; see details at the bottom of this post.

There is one issue. I need to keep coming back to the PC to control the tracks which I have queued.

The android version of MM is great. It can see, and play locally on the android, from both the MM library, and the MM server. But I don't have the facility to send to Sonos renderer from android, nor can I control or see anything which I have already sent there from the PC version of MM.

I have a Sonos controller on my android device, and I can see both the MM server and library from within the Sonos controller. I can queue to Sonos individual tracks offered by MM, but not whole albums (ie. no facility to queue a container, just a track). This limitation effectively makes the android sonos controller useless for queuing to Sonos using the MM indices. ... It would have been great if I could have done this from the android version of MM instead.

Where a stream has been sent, by MM on the PC, to Sonos, I can pause & restart using any of the Sonos controllers, but I can't skip or back track. I can see the track/album/artist which is currently playing, but can't see tracks before or after the one which is currently playing.

So if I want to skip, back track, see what is coming up, or has just been played, I need to return to the PC.

It would be really great if MM android could display and use the Player and Now Playing widget, so that I use MM to fully drive my Sonos without having to walk back to the room with the PC all the time.


----- background --
As a private company Sonos don't have to publish sales stats, but about a year ago that announced that they are in one million rooms, and that this has been steadily doubling each year. They say that they expect this growth rate to continue. Recently they released a wireless surround system for TVs too, so that should keep growth chugging.

MediaMonkey would plug so many holes in the vanilla Sonos offering:
* Sonos browser is lame;
* just a very basic set of indices
* no capability to add custom indices
* no capability to filter or sort indices
* much information is entirely invisible to Sonos (date released, date ripped (added), Conductor, Lyrics)
* no capability to handle multiple tags for tracks (ie can't see more than one artist, genre, etc per track)
* no capability to rate tracks, nor any recognition of existing track ratings
* no play count, nor date last played, stored, and existing data not visible either
* no search facility for track artist on a composite albums

* they don't fully support DLNA
* Sonos limited to 65,000 tracks
* no transcoding, so won't play HiRes and various minority formats.
* the world's ugliest method for building or maintaining a playlist
* no facility to backup playlists (factory reset the unit and they are lost)

There have been numerous requests for these facilities for 6+ years on their user forums.

PS: I love my Sonos. It is simple to setup, very well supported, and reliable. The multi-room synch is great. Their wireless mesh is very solid due to built in redundancy. It plays flac and sounds great

So all the very important things are first class, but their browser facility sucks, and MediaMonkey would help a lot.

I think that it would remove all of the above limitations for a lot of people.
Want a dark skin for MM5? This is the one that works best for me .. elegant, compact & clear.
Barry4679
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Re: MM v4 & Sonos

Post by Barry4679 »

I played with the MM beta a bit more since I wrote the above post, and now better understand what MM android is and isn't <g>

To clarrify, I wasn't meaning that MM Android should be both a upnp server and renderer. BubbleUpnp can already do that; ie. it can use a MM UPNP/DLNA index to serve music to be rendered upon a Sonos device. That is not ideal as it (BubbleUPNP) is running on a mobile device with the normal battery & wifi issues.

It is a much more stable solution to have MM, running on mains powered PC plugged into Ethernet, to serve the music for Sonos.

What I was meaning was that it would be good if MM android<->Windows integration allowed MM Android to have access to and control over the PC's Player & Now Playing services.

Even better would be if MM could pass the whole queue across for Sonos to manage, rather than just streaming a track at a time.

I suppose this post should have been in the Android forum, but the Sonos related thread was already here. Please move the posts if appropriate.
Want a dark skin for MM5? This is the one that works best for me .. elegant, compact & clear.
MarkODD
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Re: MM v4 & Sonos

Post by MarkODD »

I agree with most of what Barry4679 said about Mediamonkey and Sonos. I would also like to be able to control everything from MMA and play through the Sonos speakers.

I am not so sure that 'Even better would be if MM could pass the whole queue across for Sonos to manage, rather than just streaming a track at a time.' is the best solution though. Would playcounts be updated? Would ratings be able to be adjusted from MMA?

With regards to my earlier issues with playing to Sonos, i was able to get around it by turning off Windows XP Firewall. It worked perfectly then. I don't really want to permanantly disable the firewall though so I am trying to figure out how to create an exception for Mediamonkey. I tried to allow the IP for Sonos Play:5 Media Server with no success.
kcbeersnob
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Re: MM v4 & Sonos

Post by kcbeersnob »

To confirm before I spend $350 on a Sonos: it is possible to stream music on a Sonos device from MediaMonkey without too much hassle?

I'm looking for a solution to replace my Squeezebox network and Sonos seems to be the best option.
drsfp
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Re: MM v4 & Sonos

Post by drsfp »

Yes it is possible to send music to the Sonos. Currently only with the beta version of mm 4.1 though, but the latest builds are rather stable. With the 4.0 version it is possible to access the library through the Sonos app, but for me that is a rather lengthy process.

Sonos functions quite well as an upnp/dlna player. So it can easily used from pc's, tablets or phones. What it lacks is a good library function, so that's where mm comes into play for me.

Good luck with your decision!
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