Home User Forums SongKong Music Tagger Jaikoz Music Tagger Albunack Music Service

Thursday 17 April 2014

My first Sonos system

Last week I purchased a Sonos Connect to connect Sonos to my separates system and to find out what Sonos requires for the perfect metadata experience for users.

Here are some details about the installation experience and my first (very initial) impressions. Everything about the packaging and product itself is so Apple like I wonder if a former Apple designer designed it for them, but whoever did the design they did a good job.

Now my Hi-Fi is not in the same room as my router and I know at least one Sonos component should be connected directly to your router, but I have used Solwise home plugs in the past to spread my network and I couldn't see how Sonos could differentiate between a direct ethernet connection and an ethernet connection via a Solwise plug. I have router in one room with ethernet connection from router to Solwise Homeplug Av500. Then I have my hifi in next door room with sonos connect connected by ethernet cable to another solwise plug. Both plus are on the same electrical circuit.

I download sonos controller for my PC and the software tells me to hold down the two buttons and release, as soon as I do this the PC software goes to the next stage but after a while it tells me it could not find any Sonos devices connected.

If I repeat the process but turn of the Solwise plug then pressing the two buttons has no effect. So this told me that Sonos software is detecting that I've clicked on the Sonos Connect via my Solwise home connection yet it still isn't happy about something. My first thought was that I needed the bridge so I disconnected the Connect from my hi-fi and connected it directly to the router and it still doesn't work.

I then tried downloading the Sonos Controller for my Mac and this worked, reconnected the connect to hifi and solwise and it still worked, so the problem was actually the PC (and I havent resolved this issue yet)

I tried playing Internet radio through Sonos and it worked perfectly time.
I then tried connecting to my music library on my NAS and it took a while, but once completed that also worked perfectly. When I view my music on my Mac or Phone controller not seeing any issues with metadata so far, but I noticed I have no artist images - something that I will investigate for Songkong and Jaikoz.

As yet I have no have no connection issues at all and have ordered two Sonos Play 1s to test out the Sonos network over a larger area,  the Sonos network is a Mesh network, every single Sonos component acts like a mini router allowing it to send  a signal to any other Sonos component, so fingers crossed that this will work as expected.

My only disappointment so far is that Sonos supports Spotify Premium but not the free Spotify account I have had since the early days of Spotify.

No comments:

Jthink blog Jthink Facebook page google_plus Jthink YouTube channel Email Paul at Jthink Subscribe to Weekly Newsletter