Sonos App Now Supports Streaming Music From Plex

[MacRumors]

Plex and Sonos today announced a new partnership that will see Sonos' speakers supporting Plex music playback through the Sonos Controller app. Starting this afternoon, Sonos users can access their full Plex music libraries and discover new music via Plex using the Sonos app.

For Plex customers who have a Plex Pass for premium Plex features, music collections are automatically organized by metadata and sonic fingerprinting.

With our brand new Sonos service, you can now browse and play your entire Plex music collection on any Sonos device, right from the Sonos app. This means you'll benefit from our awesome library and discovery features, and your personal music will look better than ever on Sonos. Even if your collection is a total mess, with sonic fingerprinting for our Plex Pass users and metadata for everyone else, you'll end up with a beautifully organized library.

Plex for Sonos is in beta and thus can be accessed through the Sonos Labs section of the Sonos desktop app or the "Add Music Services" option on a mobile device after signing up for the Sonos Public Beta Program.

Sonos' wireless speakers are available from the Sonos website and start at $199. The Sonos Controller app can be downloaded from the App Store for free. Plex is a free service available from the Plex website, but premium features require a Plex Pass, priced at $4.99 per month.

Article Link: Sonos App Now Supports Streaming Music From Plex

 

[Ballis]

Gots to love Plex ❤️

 

[Uobio]

Yaaaay

 

[thisisnotmyname]

I was looking at Sonos speakers that embed into the walls of your home. The installation I'm looking at would be wired to a traditional receiver though so I'm assuming none of this would benefit me, anyone know?

 

[bluespark]

I was looking at Sonos speakers that embed into the walls of your home. The installation I'm looking at would be wired to a traditional receiver though so I'm assuming none of this would benefit me, anyone know?

If you want to use a traditional receiver, choose traditional passive speakers for your installation. You can always add a non-speaker Sonos source device.

 

[npmacuser5]

I was looking at Sonos speakers that embed into the walls of your home. The installation I'm looking at would be wired to a traditional receiver though so I'm assuming none of this would benefit me, anyone know?

This maybe an option:
http://www.sonos.com/en-us/shop/connect

 

[dbc34]

I'm no audiophile. Is Sonos really $199(at minimum) good? There soundbar is $700 I think. Just seems like really expensive equipment.

 

[SBlue1]

Is Sonos still such a power hog? A pair of Sonos with the sub, bridge and soundbar in standby would waste as much power as all of my LED lights in all of my rooms being constantly on day and night! This seems so unreal for such a modern peace of technology.

 

[sudo1996]

Is Sonos still such a power hog? A pair of Sonos with the sub, bridge and soundbar in standby would waste as much power as all of my LED lights in all of my rooms being constantly on day and night! This seems so unreal for such a modern peace of technology.

The big question is whether the speakers "sleep" by turning off if there's no input. I've found that most speakers in our house, if left on, will always sit there amplifying cable noise. That uses exactly as much power as amplifying music. But, even with a sleep feature, speakers in standby still need to have something running to check if there's input, which might use more than simple LEDs.

We went on a hunt for stuff that was costing us money for electricity and found a stupid subwoofer always on, wasting 80 watts!

 

[Nramos33]

I'm no audiophile. Is Sonos really $199(at minimum) good? There soundbar is $700 I think. Just seems like really expensive equipment.

First things first, the speakers are fantastic. They really do work well, sound great and I love them. I have a sound bar, two play 1 speakers and the subwoofer. Essentially, I have their ideal surround sound setup. The benefit for me is wireless setup and the fact that it works well with my home automation system. Plus, I can control lights and speakers from my computer and cell, which comes in handy more often than you think.

Can you get an equivalently good wired setup for half the price, absolutely you can. But the trade off with wired is the constant clutter of cables. The alternative to cables is in-wall speakers, but wiring them sucks unless you're really handy and I'm not. Plus, wired speakers aren't portable and unless you'll be living at that location for decades, it's not worth it.

If you really hate wires like I do and want a simple easy to setup device, Sonos is worth it. You can always do things cheaper if you want to save money. But I've also cost myself in the long run by saving money in the short term. I don't regret splurging on Sonos even though the sound system cost 2x-3x more than my projector.

 

[BriSpe]

First things first, the speakers are fantastic. They really do work well, sound great and I love them. I have a sound bar, two play 1 speakers and the subwoofer. Essentially, I have their ideal surround sound setup. The benefit for me is wireless setup and the fact that it works well with my home automation system. Plus, I can control lights and speakers from my computer and cell, which comes in handy more often than you think.

Can you get an equivalently good wired setup for half the price, absolutely you can. But the trade off with wired is the constant clutter of cables. The alternative to cables is in-wall speakers, but wiring them sucks unless you're really handy and I'm not. Plus, wired speakers aren't portable and unless you'll be living at that location for decades, it's not worth it.

If you really hate wires like I do and want a simple easy to setup device, Sonos is worth it. You can always do things cheaper if you want to save money. But I've also cost myself in the long run by saving money in the short term. I don't regret splurging on Sonos even though the sound system cost 2x-3x more than my projector.

Thanks for that Info! Right now I have a Bose Soundtouch 30 and it's really annoying that Bose is sooooo slow implementing new services like Apple Music and there apps suck tbh. Nothing you'd expect from a company like Bose. I decided to switch to Sonos Play 5 in the near future but my concern was soundquality. My guess is that there is not much of a difference.

 

[mw360]

I was looking at Sonos speakers that embed into the walls of your home. The installation I'm looking at would be wired to a traditional receiver though so I'm assuming none of this would benefit me, anyone know?

I didn't think Sonos made wall speakers - the bundles I've seen are Sonos Connect with 3rd party speakers (although its not always made clear). If that's what you're looking at then yes, in theory the Connect box should have access to all the Sonos services, including Plex. You might want to review how well that works - I don't have a Connect, but I can imagine potential fiddliness with it. The Sonos gear is controlled by the phone app, but your receiver will obviously be manual, so you might find it annoying to have to use both the app and the receiver remote when switching from say Plex to a CD. Maybe the Connect autoswitches on receipt of an audio signal, or maybe it has a manual switch, I don't know.

After installing Sonos in a couple of rooms I no longer want to deal with receivers and CD players. They can all go to the attic as far as I'm concerned. If you're serious about it, you could try a couple of Play 1's first to get a feel of the system, then get into wall-wrecking if you like it. You can always find a use for the extra Plays, or sell them - they hold their value well.

 

[ozaz]

The big question is whether the speakers "sleep" by turning off if there's no input. I've found that most speakers in our house, if left on, will always sit there amplifying cable noise. That uses exactly as much power as amplifying music. But, even with a sleep feature, speakers in standby still need to have something running to check if there's input, which might use more than simple LEDs.

We went on a hunt for stuff that was costing us money for electricity and found a stupid subwoofer always on, wasting 80 watts!

Here are idle power consumption values as reported by Sonos

https://sonos.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/260/~/sonos-power-consumption-when-idle

Have never actually cross checked myself
[doublepost=1469090415][/doublepost]

I'm no audiophile. Is Sonos really $199(at minimum) good? There soundbar is $700 I think. Just seems like really expensive equipment.

I've been very happy with my Sonos equipment. I'm no audiophile either and I constantly hear people say you can get better speakers for the same price. But Sonos speakers sound very good to my ear and I love the ease of use that comes with the system and the stability of their wireless mesh network.

I don't consider the play:1 or the play:5 to be over-priced given the quality of the experience.

I do however feel that the Playbar and the Connect are a bit over-priced (although I don't own either).

 

[mrfrosty]

I have setup my Plex > Sonos last night. It's only Beta and it doesn't work with my library !
My library is big i guess but it's not unfeasibly large (around 25k songs).

 

[Nramos33]

Thanks for that Info! Right now I have a Bose Soundtouch 30 and it's really annoying that Bose is sooooo slow implementing new services like Apple Music and there apps suck tbh. Nothing you'd expect from a company like Bose. I decided to switch to Sonos Play 5 in the near future but my concern was soundquality. My guess is that there is not much of a difference.

I had Bose desktop speakers for a while and they were great. But Sonos is at least equal in quality if not better. The hard part though is if you want true surround sound with Sonos and a TV you need a sound bar, two play 1 speakers and ideally the subwoofer. That is about $1,800 for a Sonos surround sound. You can get other systems for significantly less.

That said, the wireless setup has never failed me. My Sonos speakers always work well over wifi and sound great. The quality is there, but they are over priced. But, I'll pay extra for something that works well.

 

[thisisnotmyname]

If you want to use a traditional receiver, choose traditional passive speakers for your installation. You can always add a non-speaker Sonos source device.

Replying to yours but thank you all for taking the time to respond. Main goal is to have a clean installation and the contractor recommended Sonos brand speakers that mount in the walls and ceilings so I wouldn't have to look at little pods hanging off the walls or have larger furniture size speakers sitting in the corners of my rooms. These would get painted over and I'll (allegedly) never know they are there. They have another strategy for source control and streaming but wondered if this new announcement would affect me. It doesn't.

Thanks for your feedback all that responded!

 

[macosxuser01]

I wish I could afford a nice Sonos setup. Similar topic but does anybody know when the Google Audio Chromecast will support Apple Music? Or will this never happen?

 

[ozaz]

I wish I could afford a nice Sonos setup. Similar topic but does anybody know when the Google Audio Chromecast will support Apple Music? Or will this never happen?

You're asking the wrong way round. With Google Cast its up to the app developer (Apple in the case of Apple Music) to build Google Cast support into their app. Google have public APIs for developers to use Google Cast: https://developers.google.com/cast/

I don't think it will happen. Apple really should add it to the Android Apple Music app to be competitive with the other music apps on Android. But the problem if they do this is iOS users will be calling for it to be added to the iOS Apple Music app as well. Pretty sure Apple wouldn't want to do that. I think its more likely Apple will add Airplay support to the Android Apple Music app.

 

[mrfrosty]

Update......i did all that last night and no dice......When i try it today it works mostly perfectly. Maybe there was some indexing or other stuff happening for a while that was killing it.

 

[2457282]

I am looking into Sonos, but also wanted to check out the competition. Does anyone know of another system that allows for stereo and multi room functionality like Sonos? I saw a brand Edifier on CR, but it is only bluetooth and not wifi.

 

[ozaz]

I am looking into Sonos, but also wanted to check out the competition. Does anyone know of another system that allows for stereo and multi room functionality like Sonos? I saw a brand Edifier on CR, but it is only bluetooth and not wifi.

There's a few that do multi-room (including Chromecast Audio). But I'm not sure how many have wireless stereo pairing functionality. The competition section of The Wirecutter's article on Sonos may be a good starting point for info: http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/sonos-player/#the-competition

 

[fretn]

I'm no audiophile. Is Sonos really $199(at minimum) good? There soundbar is $700 I think. Just seems like really expensive equipment.

I'm no audiophile either. I knew about sonos and how good it was when I decided to by an iHome speaker because I thought Airplay was the way to go. Yes Airplay is awesome for video but not for music. That iHome speaker was my biggest mistake in my life, I paid 299€ for two years of frustrations.

- the speaker would random loose its wifi connection
- the speaker would sometimes not detect my iphone or ipod when they where connected with a cable
- the battery lasted 20 minutes
- I thought the sound quality was okay.

Then I gave up and bought a Sonos Play:1 and a Sonos bridge (it was still "required" then). As soon as I installed it (5 minutes later, unboxing took more time and setting up this thing) I decided to buy another Play:1 and use them as a stereo pair. Two weeks later I bought another Play:1 for in the bathroom. And if I hadn't to put all my money in my home renovation I would buy a Playbar and a Sonos:5 (or 3) for in the bedrooms.

Then I discovered another awesome feature of Sonos, you can extend its ability by creating your own apps, so I created an iOS widget (see https://www.quicksonos.be) which mimics the sonos controller buttons on each speaker and added a feature to shift your music from one Sonos Zone to another when you move from one room to another.

Yes I thought the iHome sound quality was okay, until I've pumped my Play:1's volume to the maximum ... oh my god
I'm aware that there are systems that sound a lot better, but then you'll pay a lot more and you won't have the multiroom capability and ease of use of Sonos.

 

[sudo1996]

Here are idle power consumption values as reported by Sonos

https://sonos.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/260/~/sonos-power-consumption-when-idle

Have never actually cross checked myself

Thanks. So if you add all those up, you're definitely looking at more idle power consumption than always having LEDs on.

 

[ozaz]

Thanks. So if you add all those up, you're definitely looking at more idle power consumption than always having LEDs on.

I suppose it adds up, but there's no problem with turning them off. They reconnect to the network instantly after powering on without any need to reconfigure. I tend to leave my bridge and my bedroom speaker on all the time. My other Sonos units tend to get switched off overnight and then only switched back on when next needed.

 

[sudo1996]

I suppose it adds up, but there's no problem with turning them off. They reconnect to the network instantly after powering on without any need to reconfigure. I tend to leave my bridge and my bedroom speaker on all the time. My other Sonos units tend to get switched off overnight and then only switched back on when next needed.

Yeah, I keep TV equipment on a surge protector with a switch and just always turn it off. I don't get why all this tech uses so much energy while idle.