Roon and Sonos
Forgive me for raising a topic that may well have been addressed elsewhere, but I have been dealing with an issue between Roon and Sonos. I am in the middle of my first year subscription of Roon and liked it enough (so I thought) to purchase the new Roon Nucleus One. When Roon works, it is wonderful. However .... in one of my setups primarly designed to stream music through various rooms as background using various Sonos components including a port, a Roam and a number of Sonos speakers, Roon worked until for reasons I can't understand it inexplicably would lose control of the Sonos devices despite the fact that the devices do show up on Roon's audio section. I have tried to work with both Sonos and Roon -- Sonos tech concluded that the problem likely lay with Roon while acknowledging that it doesn't have a "formal" agreement with Roon. Roon, whose technical service is nigh impossible to navigate and there is never a live person to talk to, Roon always points you to a do-loop of rebooting and rebooting. I want to use Roon over the Sonos app. In my main high fidelity system Roon works perfectly with my Eversolo Streamer and Qutest DAC. I don't know whether it's because in my main location I have almost 1GB of internet where in our more remote summer place (with only Sonos) I have about 400 mbps. Given the almost $150 a year subscription price, it seems reasonable to believe that Roon should be plug and play, especially when it seems to advertise that Sonos products are Sonos ready. I was especially hopeful that Roon would work because Sonos's spring app rollout was such a failure. If anyone has a magic bullet, please share it with me!
Hi @bfleetwood , I understand your pain. I originally had four Roon zones in my house, but have easily discerned that running multiple Roon zones affects sound quality. I do get that you are using as background. Sonos just grabs its own from time to time... So now I just use Roon in my two main audios systems, and run Sonos for my soundbar, bedroom and bathroom. This works exceptionally well. |
I use an old ZP 90 with ROON and it is not stable. I still use it because it works most of the time. But that's a secondary system so not a big deal. Unless SONOS becomes a formal partner and certifies on ROON then you have to just roll with the punches. From what I hear now SONOS app is going downhill as well. The syndrome where they just keep changing things for changes sake and it all just gets worse.
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I'll be following this thread. I don't use Roon but have considered it since the Sonos app update. I am pretty deep into the Sonos platform for casual or background listening. I have a connect, amp, port, arc and sub. The app has major issues. Volume control is so bad on mine it is barely functional, songs randomly skip or stop playing, some zones work and some randomly don't etc. As you probably know, there are a myriad of complaints out there stemming from the app update 5 months ago. I was at a friends house this weekend and his issues were similar. My system worked really well under the original app. My network has not changed and speed is roughly 950-1k Mbps. I have Eero repeaters set up throughout the house. I stream 4k easily and have a Cambridge CXNV2 that works flawlessly. I hope they get this fixed because I really don't want to switch to another system but it's under consideration. |
The connect that I have is the oldest piece. I am having issues with it and the amp which is less than a year old. I don't use the port, arc and sub quite as much (for music at least) so I need to check them. Maybe they don't interact well and this causes issues but you would think the app update would be thought out well enough to not have those issues. Switching between rooms/systems or engaging multiple is on the verge of being futile. Used to work great. |
I spent 2 hours on the phone with Sonos Support last night. The problem is the Connect which was purchased in 2017. It is now considered a legacy product. These product cannot accept many of the updates in the S2 app and actually prevent newer products from receiving updates if they are incorporated in the system. My only option to use the connect is to downgrade to the S1 app. That is what Sonos owners have done to keep their equipment going. For now I will just removed it from the system since it is bricked using S2. FYI, it was working ok (some issues) before I worked on that system and unplugged it. Once I had everything hooked up again that is when the major problems popped up. I do wonder if other similar products will eventually have the same issues. I'll avoid buying speakers, amps etc with wifi connectivity and app control in the future since they seem to have an expiration date as technology evolves. |
In my case, the "brick" in my wall is the Sonos Roam. It went from working to totally not working. When not outside, I pair it with a Sonos One and a Sonos port that serves an Audiolab receiver and two Ascend Acoustic speakers. When the Sonos app works, which is not always, it sees each speaker in the series. Roon sees the Roam but will not play and it loses control of the audio device. The Roam is not a legacy device; nor is the Amp. In every case where I have reached out to either Sonos or Roon support, they end up pointing fingers at the other. Given the prevalence of Sonos in the wireless speaker arena and the fragility of the Sonos App, one would think they might figure something out. Sadly, I am invested in Sonos for some of my music and wish there was a better more hi resolution solution. |
