Media streaming to SONOS

[James Blonde]

This is essentially about the best way I can stream music from my music library to my Sonos, but....I moved from a Windows "server" that I managed with MediaMonkey to a QNAP NAS a couple of years ago. I've started looking into trying to get my QNAP to act as a music server.

Even before I got the NAS, I had never really figured a good way to link my music library to my Sonos system, meaning my music library has been gathering dust and I've been using Spotify more and more. But given my music library is mostly high res audio, it's such a waste - and as I tend to listen to mixes rather than albums or my own playlists, Spotify just keeps serving up the same music.

I generally listen to random mixes, based on rating and occasionally genre. (my most used playlist is an auto playlist >4* across all genres except spoken) But my file metadata is pretty good across my MediaMonkey library - ratings are definitely included in the file metadata (I guess pretty much all of the other metadata would be scraped by whatever scraping service the media servers use).

I copied all of my music into a music share on my NAS but done nothing more with it. I've still got a full copy on my PC as well, which I still manage with MediaMonkey - I just never listen on my PC any more. I use Plex for my movies and TV, and it's great for that, but awful for audio. It can't read ratings, can't import playlists, etc. So I can't manage my music in a useful way. I don't know about any other music servers available on QNAP, but....

What I want to be able to do is manage my NAS music library in the same way I do with MediaMonkey locally, or Plex for my videos. Basically have a great, intuitive and clear GUI on my PC that manages my media server library, reads all of my existing ratings, playlists, etc. allows me to create auto playlists based on the metadata, and then allows me to play those on Sonos.

Would be great if Sonos had an existing integration, but I think that's unlikely. So I guess it would be through the Media Server plug in (which doesn't seem to be accepting songs from my media server and doesn't have a shuffle option!) or using the Sonos music library (which works, does have a shuffle option, but doesn't have a filter on ratings.... so I'd have to cheat that use a ratings generated playlist)

Anyone got any suggestions???

(Can you just build a MediaMonkey server for QNAP NASs that does all of this AND integrates with Sonos please?!?!?!?!?!?!? )

[Lowlander]

MediaMonkey supports the DLNA and Chromecast standards, so as long as a client supports this you can use MediaMonkey to play to/from the client.

You'll have to read up on Sonos documentation on how to get it to work with DLNA (I'm not sure they do this well as Sonos is more of a proprietary solution.

[James Blonde]

It's not the playing from the server (either using Sonos or my PC, phone, etc) that's the problem here, it's more managing the NAS music library and being able to set up playlists and maybe ratings that Sonos will recognise and be able to sort on.

I'll have a look into using MediaMonkey to manage the server library remotely, and whether I can get playlists in that way - that might arguably provide a solution or workaround to the problem.

I’ll also use that reply to bump this again just to see if anyone has any other ideas, but I’m suspecting not, and I’ve asked in a few different places.  I’m fairly sure I’m not the only person who’s had these questions, but seems surprising that there don’t appear to be any easy or obvious answers

[Barry4679]

I’ll also use that reply to bump this again just to see if anyone has any other ideas, but I’m suspecting not, and I’ve asked in a few different places.  I’m fairly sure I’m not the only person who’s had these questions, but seems surprising that there don’t appear to be any easy or obvious answers

I have Sonos & MM.

I don't have much add to Lowlanders statement of the facts other than to add the fact that Sonos advise that they don't implement or support connection to DLNA.

That is not to say that is no degree connection and usage between the two, but it is lame and limited.
There is nothing that MM can do here. One of the MM Devs (Ludek) did some work with me a long time ago, but we could get nowhere.
The fact of the matter is that MM implement an industry standard way of sharing and home music interconnection, and Sonos do not.

BTW I am not fully up to date on all this. I gave up a long time ago. I still use the S1 version of the Sonos control software.

You asked about using MM playlists on Sonos. I do this often.
I have my own s/w to achieve this, but it can be done manually. The following may not be most efficient method, but it works:

1. Setup a folder on your NAS for your playlists
2. Get Sonos to index that folder (Manage>MusicLibrarySettings)
3. Make your playlist in MM
4. Export it to the above folder in mu3 format (in MM5 this is SendTo>M3U/XSPF menu option)
5. If this a new playlist you need to get Sonos to index the playlist (Sonos: UpdateMusicLibraryNow)
6. NB. If Sonos has already indexed a playlist of this name, you can skip the above step. When you browse the playlist you may see the previous contents, but when you play it you will hear your new changed contents
7. To play the playlist on Sonos you need to browse to "Imported Playlists" .. (Sonos: Music>ImportedPlaylists)

So ... probably more steps than you were hoping for ... hence my comment above that the connection is lame and limited.

I don't play playlists too often for another reason. I nearly exclusively listen to whole albums. I play at least 7 per day, and I dont need a playlist. I browse using MM as it is a better browser, and access to more data than the Sonos index.

When I have selected an album, I queue the track using the Sonos controller. I know that it sounds horrible to have to navigate to the album twice. But I only do it about 7 times per day. And the Sonos browser is very fast and powerful. I always have the apps open on my desktop,

Example, say I want the play the soundtrack album for "You've got mail" ... type just got m, and the album is the only entry in the album tab of their universal search facility. You are ready to queue just by selecting some reasonably distinctive part of the album name. And it has not disrupted my position within MM.

The Sonos lookup is very fast because each Sonos speaker includes a computer which contains its own synchronised version of the full lookup database. It doesn't need to send the request off to your NAS or the MM Media Server, and wait for a response.

I guess in the unlikely event that someone else has read down to here in this thread, they probably think. That I am nuts. But the thing is that I love my Sonos system even more than I love MM5 ... so whatya going to do?

[James Blonde]

You know what @barry4679, those instructions might be exactly what I'm looking for - will give it a go today! Thanks!!!

Because the playlists are pretty static, it doesn't really matter if it takes a while or is a bit of a faff to set up, I only need to do it infrequently! I'll come back and update once I've tried it.

You might have saved me a Roon subscription - was getting close!!

[James Blonde]

So coming back to this to provide my answer to my own problem.... I've decided I'm going to keep managing my music library on my PC using MediaMonkey (with a backup / copy on my NAS), and I've created a music folder on my NAS with a (currently manually exported) copy of my >4* music from MM.

I'm going to use Plex as the music server as I no longer need to worry about filtering by rating as it's all music I'll listen to, I don't have to worry about library size limitations (as I would if I tried to use the Sonos library functions - and I was having problems with your suggestion here @Barry4679 - I forgot to mention I've got a big library)) and can filter on genre if I want to be specific. The downside is that any albums might be incomplete, but if an album has songs that are <3.5*, why would I want to listen to them anyway, even in context of the album?!

Plex at least has a shuffle function which deals with the way I mostly listen to my music, integrates directly with Sonos, and I can play it remotely, play it on my PC, etc. It'll also play my hi res files without a problem.

I'll maybe look to figure out how to dynamically automate the export of my rated music playlist as I update my music library / get new music (I say that.... maybe I won't - not like doing it manually is that difficult)

But not seeing any benefit of continuing my Roon trial after it expires (though maybe I'm missing something? Got a week to find out!), and no point in trying out Minimserver or any of the other Music Server software on the NAS - might as well uninstall.

Bit of anticlimax really!

[Barry4679]

Hi James, it is good that you found a workaround for your problem.

PM me, because I may not notice your new post, if you ever want to get back to getting Sonos to play MM generated playlists.

I'm going to use Plex as the music server as I no longer need to worry about filtering by rating as it's all music I'll listen to, I don't have to worry about library size limitations (as I would if I tried to use the Sonos library functions - and I was having problems with your suggestion here @Barry4679 - I forgot to mention I've got a big library)) and can filter on genre if I want to be specific. The downside is that any albums might be incomplete, but if an album has songs that are <3.5*, why would I want to listen to them anyway, even in context of the album?!

I don't have a small library, but it only 51,000 tracks. Sonos index that many tracks OK.
Each Sonos player has an internal database indexing all of your tracks. The aim is provide steady fast response when you are browsing or searching.

There is no fixed limit for how many tracks you can index. The upper limit is dictated by the length of the path and file name of all of your tracks. If these are long you will prematurely exhaust their storage size.

I could see that Sonos was not going to accommodate all of my tracks, so I got MM to rename the track files names to just the album track number. EG. I have over 4,000 albums, so I have 4,000+ tracks whose file name is 01.flac, etc. That fixed the file limit issue for me. ... I know that it sounds horrible, but I did it 10 years ago, and it hasn't bit me yet. Besides it is easily reversible using MM.