7 ms·
What I really want is for someone to crack the Sonos S1 protocol — the one that allows for low-latency P2P sharing - and then to use one of these Airplay 2 brid
by azinman2 4y ago
What I really want is for someone to crack the Sonos S1 protocol — the one that allows for low-latency P2P sharing - and then to use one of these Airplay 2 bridges with it. Right now the best I can do is to pipe an icecast stream to one which adds seconds of latency. That would allow my older S1 Sonos gear (which I spent thousands on) to have basically unlimited life.
- newfonewhodis 4y ago> That would allow my older S1 Sonos gear (which I spent thousands on) to have basically unlimited life 2 years ago, I bought some used Yamaha (not "smart") speakers and AVR. They are 8 years old now and work flawlessly. My solution to making them "smart" was to just Cast to my Android TV that's plugged into the AVR. That entire set up cost me <$200 and has no end in sight with a very clean upgrade path. It's unfortunate that so much modern hardware is paperweight in a few years just because the company can't be bothered to maintain the software.
- JustSomeNobody 4y ago> the company can't be bothered to maintain the software. or open source it and let enthusiasts maintain it.
- kitsunesoba 4y agoIn my experience AirPlay equipped receivers are also a pretty decent bet for long term support. My receiver is a 7 year old midrange Marantz model and its AirPlay has always worked great. It still gets software updates occasionally too which is nice. If I upgrade it’ll be due to changing HDMI standards (it can’t handle high framerate 4K video), not protocol support. As I understand Airport Express models from the 2000s still work with AirPlay from modern Apple devices too, though I don’t own any and can’t vouch for them personally.
- azinman2 4y agoAirPlay 1 doesn't have the nice multi-room audio support that AirPlay 2 does. It only has a much hackier version that works from iTunes, but not from your iPhone's media controller. But if you only ever want to play to 1 device, then you're set.
- Bellyache5 4y agoThe 3rd generation AirPort Express (A1392; the flat/non-wall wart 2012 version) supports AirPlay 2. All generations of the AirPort Express also have a mini-TOSLINK output allowing for a pure digital audio stream from the source to the receiver/amplifier.
- azinman2 4y agoNot only would that require me to buy an AirPort Express per speaker, many Sonos speakers don’t have an audio in jack. Thus my desire to bridge this purely in software.
- Marsymars 4y agoIt’s a bit janky for what you want do to, but if you have any Sonos S1 device with an input, you should be able to group that device with whatever other speakers you want playing the audio input. (And if that input device is a speaker that you don’t want playing, you can turn the volume all the way down.)
- JohnBooty 4y agoWhile probably not an ideal solution for the parent poster, who understandably wants to make things work with their existing Sonos gear, the A1392 is an outstanding value at this point because there are absolute truckloads of them on eBay for ~$20. Assuming you're okay with AirPlay (which, admittedly, rules a lot of HN folks out) this is a $20-per-room device that gives you full lossless multiroom streaming including your choice of analog or optical out. Really great.
- 4y ago
- germinalphrase 4y agoIf the receiver is turned off, do you ever have to try multiple times (2-3) to wake and begin playing music via Airplay? I'm sure my slimline Marantz is just misconfigured.
- kitsunesoba 4y agoI haven't had that trouble, but I have found that mine (NR1606 model) is more fussy about things like that when it's on WiFi. It definitely "prefers" to be on hardwired ethernet.
- germinalphrase 4y agoMight have to start pulling cable.
- grepfru_it 4y agoFYI my ~9y/o marantz is also hardwired, but I cannot get airplay to work unless I explicitly go to Net/USB and even then it's the same 2-3 attempt (switching inputs) to get the device to appear on the airplay list. After that it's flawless, but the UX pretty much means I'm the only one airplaying to that device. I have since upgraded 3 years ago to a newer slimline model and that has no problem being found regardless of the input used and regardless of wifi/ethernet. My friend with a ~5 year old denon also has no problem. So possible this is a discontinued firmware issue. YMMV
- tra3 4y agoYup. Happens a lot with my Denon. It also likes to disconnect a lot, while my TV (right above it) is streaming YouTube at the same time with no problem.
- germinalphrase 4y agoMy issue is less that it drops connection (seems pretty solid once I have music playing), but that the initial connection can take several tries. My guess is that when the receiver is awoken by Airplay, it is then attempting to connect to the “Last Used” input (or something) which disconnects Airplay.
- reaperducer 4y agoAs I understand Airport Express models from the 2000s still work with AirPlay from modern Apple devices too Can confirm. I stream from my iPhone to a 2012 Airport Express hooked up to the aux in of a Sony HD radio.
- vineyardmike 4y agoSonos has done a pretty decent job at keeping hardware alive. IIRC they still have S1 products alive but created S2 in the last few years because people wanted new features that required more CPU than their old devices could handle. They still maintain an old S1 app for older devices and I think those devices should still all work. I don’t think there’s a plan to “turn them off”. A lack of new features is something that may or may not be a problem. Actually, I think audio companies in general have been pretty good about keeping products alive. Even the old Amazon Echo Gen 1 I think still works… and that’s a full-on smart device that exists for the smarts not the audio quality.
- CharlesW 4y ago> They still maintain an old S1 app for older devices… Their current app now supports S1 devices as well.
- squeaky-clean 4y agoMost S1 devices but not all of them. Some really old S1 devices aren't supported, I think the most popular one would be the Play:5 Gen1 https://support.sonos.com/s/article/4786?language=en_US https://support.sonos.com/s/article/4786?language=en_US
- CharlesW 4y agoAh! That's annoying, thanks for clarifying. I love my Arc system as a "point in time" purchase, but I don't have high trust in or loyalty to Sonos in general.
- yccs27 4y agoThe problem here is the wildly different expectations. It's an audio system, and normally audio systems are expected to work for >30 years. But it's a "smart" system controlled through an app, and apps need to be maintained to keep working on new hardware.
- 4y ago
- malermeister 4y agoBuy a raspberry pi zero with an audio hat, throw max2play on it! https://www.max2play.com/en/ https://www.max2play.com/en/
- rodgerd 4y ago> because the company can't be bothered to maintain the software. Ironically (considering that you're using Yamaha) their MusicCast system have had a reasonable lifespan (seven years on the third generation, although they no longer support their 2003 stuff). But yes, I'm looking at dabbling with HifiBerry (https://www.hifiberry.com/ https://www.hifiberry.com/) for streaming duties for my older stereo gear.
- yccs27 4y agoNot sure if you mean that, but the Sonos S1 interface has been reverse-engineered, see here: https://github.com/SoCo/SoCo https://github.com/SoCo/SoCo https://github.com/jishi/node-sonos-http-api https://github.com/jishi/node-sonos-http-api This allows you to e.g. set the Sonos speakers to play any audio URI.
- azinman2 4y agoAnd that audio URI is then an ice cast with seconds of latency. This is different for the protocol that the speakers use to pipe audio to each other which is near real time.
- packetlost 4y agoIt might not be as realtime as you think, especially if it's buffered. You just need to sync timestamps and buffer for at least the slack in your system. I wouldn't be surprised if it was using NTP/PTP under the hood to sync up system clock time and then just playing back a buffer that's shared across all speakers (or just the channel for that speaker with a timestamp). The actual audio transfer probably gets buffered and only the relative timestamp and simple instructions like "play from this timestamp in the buffer" is actually being used to sync up between speakers. It's probably a limitation of the hardware or the lower-level wireless protocol (bluetooth or wifi) that causes that delay. I'm just speculating though, all of my realtime experience is in hard-realtime scientific control systems.
- squeaky-clean 4y agoIt's probably a mixture of things. Just tried some of mine with the sonos app and there's always a slight 1-2s delay on play and seeking. But actions like pausing or adjusting the volume are instant. I can pump the volume slider in tempo with the music and there has to be only a few ms of latency.
- trynewideas 4y agoI'd hope so. One of those things (initiating music playback or seeking outside of the playback buffer) involves realtime sequential data transmission, and the other (modifying local settings or playback state remotely without leaving the buffer) is just a byte or two in a packet, if that.
- ronnier 4y agoIt's not Sonos, but I use a few of these and they are amazing - https://www.amazon.com/Up2stream-amp-Bluetooth-2-0-Speaker-Arylic/dp/B07X24X1TZ https://www.amazon.com/Up2stream-amp-Bluetooth-2-0-Speaker-A... Low latency, linkplay, HTTP API, you can join multiple of them together for whole home audio. Integrates into Home Assistant. Can play random URLs, can play spotify, airplay, etc. Wifi, ethernet, bluetooth. By far the best product I've found. What I like the most is that it plays whatever I throw at it and I can turn any speaker into a smart speaker. It's also all local.
- layer8 4y agoYou should check the connections it makes. From the review of a sister product: “Now for the bad news. In the last 24 hours my network security blocked: 6,936 calls to AMS ("The Cloud"); 9,523 calls to s000.linkplay.com, 6,050 calls to www.yahoo.com; 6,050 calls to www.microsoft.com; 9,650 calls to Amazon Technologies; 6,049 calls to Aliyun Computing - Beijing China;3,468 calls to Google; That was 94% of the attempted connections outside of LAN.”
- ronnier 4y agoYeah that's if you want stuff like spotify to work and all the streaming sites. You can block those from your router and keep it all local and play MP3s if you like (or air play)
- hackmiester 4y agoI don't think blocking something is an accurate measure. Of course the box is going to retry if it got blocked the first time. What else would it do?
- happyopossum 4y agoThere’s no valid reason for something running in my home to be contacting a server in Beijing. Period.
- 4y ago