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Alternative to Sonos, with better multi-user support

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ozaz

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Feb 27, 2011
1,575
513
I recently bought a Sonos speaker for the first time.

Very happy with the ease of use, reliability of the streams, and the amount of content sources/services it supports.

However, I'm disappointed with the lack of multi-user support. There are multiple people in my household and we all have our own music preferences, and streaming accounts.

With Sonos we can only connect a single account from any given service (at the moment, it's my Spotify account even though we have 2 Spotify accounts in the household) and that means the other person does not have access to his own playlists. Also, if others are choosing music from my Spotify source using the controller on their devices, I don't really want it to be added to my Spotify play history and influence the recommendations I receive.

The ideal wireless speaker system for me would be like Sonos in many respects (multi-platform controller, playback handed off to the speaker rather than performed on the phone/tablet, multi-source/service support) but would have much better multi-user support.

Is there an alternative system I should be looking at?
 
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wrx09md

macrumors member
Nov 4, 2013
68
1
I have 3 Sonos in my house and love the ease of use. The sound quality is pretty descent too. After having 3 of these in the house and 3 of us using them all the time I must say your complaint is my biggest one too. I wish I could just select my name from the menu and speed on but thats not the case. I hope Sonos picks up on this because its about the only gripe anyone could have with Sonos.

Really sucks firing up the app and all I see is some Myley Cyrus crap the daughter was listening too.
 
X

xsyanhigh

macrumors newbie
Oct 13, 2014
2
0
That right,hope Sonos picks up on this because its about the only gripe anyone could have with Sonos.
6ea
thanks
 
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nicka8

macrumors newbie
Oct 14, 2014
2
0
its planned

yes, it was raised years ago but its now been marked as as 'Planned' on the 'ask sonos' site. see here https://ask.sonos.com/sonos/topics/support_multiple_spotify_accounts

This means that it will be coming in the next 1-2 release cycles. There was one in May, another in September so I guess a couple more months before the next.

If you're already a customer you can apply to their beta program and you get to test new features before they are made publicly available. If you read some of the comments in the thread you might even get the impression its coming sooner rather than later ;)
 
PinkyMacGodess

PinkyMacGodess

Suspended
Mar 7, 2007
10,271
6,226
Midwest America.
When our house was built, we installed a Russound system that pretty much negates the idea of a system like the Sonos. We can have one of 6 sources in any zone, so we have Sirius/XM, AM/FM, and a couple of Mac mini's on the system and can choose whatever source we want in any zone we want. It's kina 'old school', but they also have much newer equipment that does wireless. They work with Airplay and other technologies from what I have heard.
 
O

ozaz

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Feb 27, 2011
1,575
513
nicka8 said:
yes, it was raised years ago but its now been marked as as 'Planned' on the 'ask sonos' site. see here https://ask.sonos.com/sonos/topics/support_multiple_spotify_accounts

This means that it will be coming in the next 1-2 release cycles. There was one in May, another in September so I guess a couple more months before the next.
Click to expand...

Let's hope so!

PinkyMacGodess said:
When our house was built, we installed a Russound system that pretty much negates the idea of a system like the Sonos. We can have one of 6 sources in any zone, so we have Sirius/XM, AM/FM, and a couple of Mac mini's on the system and can choose whatever source we want in any zone we want. It's kina 'old school', but they also have much newer equipment that does wireless. They work with Airplay and other technologies from what I have heard.
Click to expand...

I don't get the impression from the website that you can connect streaming music services like Spotify. Am I wrong?
 
cambookpro

cambookpro

macrumors 604
Feb 3, 2010
7,189
3,321
United Kingdom
It's a workaround you probably know about, but in our household we have a few Sonos speakers and, like you, have two Spotify accounts.

I just end up sending playlists to the 'master' account and it appears in their inbox which is easy to access. Doesn't change your recommendations being influenced, but it works fairly well.
 
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