MM v4 & Sonos

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Barry4679
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MM v4 & Sonos

Post by Barry4679 »

I see that Sonos is listed in the wiki as a compatible UPnP device.

What is delivered by MM v4 with regard to interaction with something like a Sonos.

I have installed v4, and have a Sonos.

I can see my Sonos listed in MM's list of Media Servers. I can see inside my Sonos units. I can see & open its indices, and I can see its now playing queue.

I can't see which queue is currently playing. I can't add anything to its queue, nor control it any way. I can't pull anything from any of it's index to play within MM.

If I look in my Sonos PC based desktop controller I can see the MM Music Server listed as one of the available Music Services, but I can't open the server nor do anything with it.

On the portable Sonos controller (CR200) I don't see the MM Muisic Server listed at all.

Should I be seeing more than this? Are there any set up instructions which allow me to get past this point?
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 »

My error. I didn't notice that what I thought were just nodes within Tools|Options|Library|MediaSharing, were in fact checkboxes.

I can now open up the MediaMonkey Server node within Sonos. I can queue tracks, but not whole albums, nor play lists.

I can see more indices than native Sonos allows for, but they are not the indices which I would find useful. ... I will play around with it for a while.

When I queued a track the Now Playing display in the Sonos controller didn't manage to display the album art.
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 »

Is this still a current item:
http://www.mediamonkey.com/addons/brows ... d-devices/

Titled: "Networked Devices 4"

It pictures a Sonos unit, and says that it can "manage a library that is stored to a Network-attached Storage device (NAS) to be shared with devices such as the Sonos ZonePlayer." ... Doesn't MM already allow for this?

Is it related to the v4 beta, or has it been superseded by it?

Is it something that I should download as part of a test of MM v4 and it's new DLNA offerings?

Are there any further details or specification?
Want a dark skin for MM5? This is the one that works best for me .. elegant, compact & clear.
Lowlander
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Re: MM v4 & Sonos

Post by Lowlander »

No, it indicates you can use MediaMonkey to manage files on a NAS (like any network share) and that you then can use Sonos to directly connect to the NAS. If Sonos supports DLNA then you should be able to have it connect to MediaMonkey 4. I recently looked and couldn't find evidence of Sonos supporting DLNA, but I didn't search very long.

So I'd suggest to look into the Sonos manual or contact Sonos to verify if it supports DLNA, if it does than create debug logs in MediaMonkey for any issues you come across when connected from Sonos to MediaMonkey via DLNA: http://mediamonkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=341
Sebastian78
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Re: MM v4 & Sonos

Post by Sebastian78 »

I posted a similar question without logging in and the discussion was locked...

Anyways, this is what I found from Sonos:

Sonos and DLNA media servers
Question

Does Sonos support streaming music from a DLNA device like a PS3?

Answer

Sonos does not support streaming music using a DLNA server at this time. It has been submitted to our product development team to be evaluated for a possible future release.

So.....no.

I'm in a kind of breaking point...I'm starting to use my local mediafiles less and less. I have an iPad and have tried AirPlay on a regular stereo. I pay for Spotify and want to stream it wirelessly in my house. I fear, if no good solution will arrise, that I will drop my local files all together and only use services like Spotify..
Lowlander
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Re: MM v4 & Sonos

Post by Lowlander »

I wonder who added Sonos to the wiki: http://www.mediamonkey.com/wiki/index.p ... NA_Devices Maybe they can share a light on to whether this is supposed to work or not.

If you're still looking to purchase a system you might want to look at Aluratek and Grace which both sell DLNA capable Internet Radios.
rusty
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Re: MM v4 & Sonos

Post by rusty »

I've removed Sonos--if it doesn't support DLNA, it clearly probably doesn't belong on the DLNA page :D

-Rusty
drsfp
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Re: MM v4 & Sonos

Post by drsfp »

Perhaps Sonos users will find the following page interesting: http://forums.sonos.com/showthread.php?t=12777 It lists software that communicates well with Sonos. Amongst other things it mentions Upnp software. Hopefully this software can inspire some of the smart techsavy people here to create something for MM...
Landau

Re: MM v4 & Sonos

Post by Landau »

I can easily play a music file on the Sonos speakers by right-clicking a music file in Windows Explorer and selecting Play To Sonos ZonePlayer Sound Renderer. Is there a way to do the same thing from MonkeyMedia? I would like to use MonkeyMedia's intuitive interface to play my music collection.
Lowlander
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Re: MM v4 & Sonos

Post by Lowlander »

No, Play To functionality has been requested though.
randomparity
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Re: MM v4 & Sonos

Post by randomparity »

rusty wrote:I've removed Sonos--if it doesn't support DLNA, it clearly probably doesn't belong on the DLNA page.
I'm using Sonos Desktop Controller (v3.6 build 16548010) on my PC with a Sonos Play:5 (v3.6 build 16548010a) and can see the MM (v4.0.1.1461) UPnP server and play music from it. Going to Tools\Options\Media Sharing\UPnP/DLNA Server I see that the Sonos identifies itself with the client name "Linux UPnP/1.0 Sonos/16.5-48010a (ZPS5)" while the PC Desktop Controller identifies itself as "Linux UPnP/1.0 Sonos/16.5-48010 (PCDCR)".

Unfortunately, there are some problems:
- I can't copy an entire playlist to the queue, I must select songs one at a time which makes the feature somewhat worthless.
- There is no album artwork displayed while a song is playing.
- Selecting a song and clicking on "Add to Queue" actually adds the file three songs below the current selection.

If any developers want more info (including WireShark traces) I can help gather the data to help get my awesome Sonos working with MM4.

Dave
Robert74
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Re: MM v4 & Sonos (& winamp & shoutcast)

Post by Robert74 »

randomparity wrote:I'm using Sonos Desktop Controller (v3.6 build 16548010) on my PC with a Sonos Play:5 (v3.6 build 16548010a) and can see the MM (v4.0.1.1461) UPnP server and play music from it.
[...]

Unfortunately, there are some problems:
- I can't copy an entire playlist to the queue, I must select songs one at a time which makes the feature somewhat worthless.
- There is no album artwork displayed while a song is playing.
[...]

Dave
I can confirm the quoted part as I have been desperately trying to find a way to play my mp3s and flacs (stored on a NAS) on my Sonos using MM.
Sonos is an excellent audiophile system (if you hook it up to some good speakers instead of using the players with built-in ones) and I have 4 of them running in 4 seperate rooms for almost 3 years. Also the handling via CR200-controller is very nice, ...

...BUT when I use mediamonkey on my laptop to get my mp3s/flacs organized (on the NAS) I would like to start playing an album from within MM (i.e. to decide whether or not to keep it) and not having to grab the Sonos-controller, browse to the very same location I've already navigated to in MM and start playing, there.

What works and what doesn't:
As Dave said, it works for single files from within MM *if* I wouldn't mind dragging a single track to the media-server entry in the tree-view (which is pretty cumbersome), but this won't work at all for a playlist or an album, unfortunately.

...also, when I have just renamed or moved a track in MM there's really not even another way to play it on the Sonos, but having the Sonos rescan the *whole library* first or using yet another tool on my laptop like WMP.

What I've tried as a workaround:
Because of this dilemma, I've now invested some effort into installing winamp + shoutcast (shoutcast being a winamp-plugin which i have configured as MM's media-player) and am *in principle* very pleased with the possibilities of this setup if it wasn't for the delay: shoutcast produces an mp3-stream (320kbit/s) in my local network, which i can easily tune in to on my Sonos - anything being played in MM, gets streamed to the Sonos, thereafter (w/o all the other computer-sound-effects, etc.)...

...BUT: Too bad, there's something like a 60sec. :o delay (independent of the bitrate) produced by shoutcast :-( I've tried to find a way to reduce this delay / time-lag, which I understand is a *feature* of shoutcast to prevent gaps in tracks received over the internet - now I don't need these precautions (to say the least), as I'm generally working on a wired (!) GBit-LAN (especially when using MM to organize tracks on my NAS) as I have very reliable bandwidth and pings of 1ms or 2ms at the most. But apparently there's no way to configure shoutcast for a shorter delay. :-?

What I'd love to see MM do:
I understand these aren't really "shortcomings" of MM, but rather one could wish Sonos to support DLNA or shoutcast to have the delays configured for small buffer-requirements (I'll post a request in their forums as well). Nonetheless, it would be really nice if MM would support one of these in some future release...

1. An easier "Play to"-functionality to play single tracks (should be easy to implement as the functionality is already there, just the handling is cumbersome). If this would even be possible for whole albums / playlists, that would be awesome ('though not sure, if that's as easy...)

2. Alternatively it would be great to be able to stream tracks (albums, playlists, ...) as a mp3-stream with configurable delay over some port of the PC it's running on :-) and without having to install 2nd and 3rd (winamp+shoutcast) software and switch off MM's mediaplayer.

...or maybe I'm missing a solution that's already there?

--Robert
drsfp
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Re: MM v4 & Sonos

Post by drsfp »

It seems Sonos is opening up it's standard to allow greater connectivity with other network devices. I can now at least see Mediamonkey listed as a source in my Sonos setup (when the laptop running Mediamonkey is operating of course). This makes it easy to browse the Mediamonkey library. It is also a great workaround for the 65k track limit of the Sonos library.

However, I am still very much in favor of a "play to" function. On my Android mobile phone I have multiple apps running that can see Sonos as a DLNA/UPnP renderer, and can actually play music to the device.
Barry4679
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Re: MM v4 & Sonos

Post by Barry4679 »

drsfp wrote:It seems Sonos is opening up it's standard to allow greater connectivity with other network devices. I can now at least see Mediamonkey listed as a source in my Sonos setup (when the laptop running Mediamonkey is operating of course). This makes it easy to browse the Mediamonkey library. It is also a great workaround for the 65k track limit of the Sonos library.
How is it a workaround for the 65k track issue? You can't queue albums can you?

I'm not sure that Sonos have done anything to open themselves up have they? I've not seen anything in their release notes. The change has been with MM becoming a DLNA server. The problem is that Sonos support DLNA. We can now see the zones in MM, but can't interact with them in any meaningful way.
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 »

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.
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