Sonos with other brands

[Jacko]

Just purchased the Sonos 5 and bridge, with remote, and am loving it.

However I was just curious if I could send a signal to a DLNA enabled LG sound system or would the Sonos bridge not allow me to do this.

If it didn't allow me to do this would it be that Sonos is not compatiable on a Brand level, or is it that the technology is different.

ANOTHER idea I had is that I was wondering if its possible to play music through your computers speakers as your streaming with sonos?

Thanks for reading and feel free to comment

Jacko

[controlav]

Sonos only emits audio as an analog signal: it doesnt send a bitstream to anything other than other Sonos boxes.

It is not DLNA compliant, but it can play music FROM some DLNA sources (eg WMP). It cant play TO an DLNA device though. Neither can it play them on your PC speakers, unless you hook up a 3.5mm cable from a Sonos box to the audio in of your PC.

[ratty]

ANOTHER idea I had is that I was wondering if its possible to play music through your computers speakers as your streaming with sonos?

The Sonos controller isn't a media player. The general consensus is that there's no chance of a 'sofware zoneplayer' ever coming about. You can read through this often heated thread to see why: http://forums.sonos.com/showthread.php?t=3004

Originally Posted by controlav

Sonos only emits audio as an analog signal: it doesnt send a bitstream to anything other than other Sonos boxes.

On the network, yes, but the CONNECT does of course output digitally via optical/coax.

[Majik]

Expanding on this a little:

Sonos uses UPnP for control. UPnP is a very flexible standard, but doesn't include any specific streaming capability, because UPnP isn't specifically designed for, or limited to streaming applications. A UPnP media server, for instance, doesn't have to support any sort of streaming.

DLNA is a later standard that is based on, and largely compatible with, UPnP but which includes very specific capabilities related to media streaming. A DLNA media server must support media streaming.

Specific support for media streaming is one of the prime differences between UPnP and DLNA.

A further point is, although DLNA supports media streaming, it doesn't support synchronisation of multiple streams: if you play the same music, starting at exactly the same time, on different DLNA media streamers, they will quickly drift out of sync.

In fact there is NO standard that exists for doing this. Any system which achieves this is, therefore, proprietary and directly incompatible with any other streaming solution.

Sonos have created a synchronised streaming solution which has yet to be equalled by any other vendor (and many have tried including heavy hitters like Cisco). This does involve "internal" network streams between Sonos UPnP devices but, for the reasons I describe above, these streams are not (and could not be) directly compatible with DLNA nor any other streaming audio system.

The subsystem of Sonos devices which are a UPnP player (known in the parlance as a "renderer"), conforms to the baseline UPnP "AV Media Rendererer" standards. The DLNA media renderer standards are also based on these, and are similar enough that in most cases you can play from a DLNA media source to Sonos.

So, in conclusion:

* Streaming from Sonos to something else - not possible
* Streaming from something else to Sonos - possible in most cases

I hope that helps to explain it.

Cheers,

Keith

[Jacko]

Thanks for your replies.

I should have made it clearer I was wondering whether the Mac App or Sonos Windows controller could play audio out when streaming but it doesn't appear to be the case.

In respect to my other quirey I found your answers intresting and very helpful. I'm quite Tech savy, as any young person is, but the detail you went into was clear and concise.

Its a shame that the Sonos: Connect is so pricey, although for what it does and how unrivaled it is one can't complain.

[Mark_OD]

I am attempting to Send To my Sonos Play:5 from Mediamonkey. This is a new feature only available in the 4.1 Beta version of the program. Nevertheless, when I select the 'Choose Player' option there is my 'Living Room - Play:5 Sonos Media Renderer' available to Send To.

When I choose the Sonos as the player and press play 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 that it is trying to queue up the track but then I get 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 of the Mediamonkey software.

I can change the volume level and pause/play tracks that are already in the Sonos playlist from Mediamonkey.

I have been corresponding with the Mediamonkey developers regarding this issue and they are investigating it but I just wondered if anyone in the Sonos world knows what is happening here.

Any suggestions would be welcome.

Thanks
Mark