[Aaronmacaron]

I see a lot of negative comments in this thread about Sonos in general, which is interesting to me because I'm currently thinking about buying Sonos speakers. What exactly don't you like about it? Is there a good alternative to Sonos that ticks all the following boxes?

  - Connect two or more speakers wirelessly to get stereo sound (I hate cables)
  - Good support for different audio sources (bluetooth, Spotify, AirPlay, aux, etc..)
  - Ability to connect speakers of different models (which means you can upgrade your setup later as you see fit, for example add a subwoofer)

[rsync]

I entered the Sonos ecosystem in 2005.

There were many solutions that would allow you to play your music collection from SMB/Samba but the Sonos was unique in that it didn't require a piece of server-side "helper" software.

You see, in 2005 decoding mp3 took some horsepower and these stripped down streamer devices didn't have enough. This meant you had to run some transcoder "server" on your fileserver just to send it over to the speaker. Of course those software pieces were Windows based, etc.

So the Sonos was special: it had enough horsepower to handle mp3 compression and you could just point them at SMB and it would just work.

The first sign of trouble was a circa 2008 UI redesign they did to the desktop client ... all OS primitives and OS UI elements were removed and some "expert" clearly attempted to reimplement every normal UI element in their own "modern" way.

Now fast-forward to the present where, although you can use the desktop client you cannot set up the speakers or even name them without using a phone app.

I say this in all seriousness:

I hate what Sonos did to their product so much that I have considered buying and donating their equipment to engineers and paying them to reverse engineer and publish everything that can be learned about their entire tech stack.

[HelloMcFly]

The app update was fucking terrible, but it's not the absolute mess it was originally (it's still sluggish at times, but I haven't had it outright fail me in a couple of months). Ultimately, I still find Sonos to be better for me than alternatives because the sound truly is good, and the ease of setting up a home theater wirelessly that I can also use to play my records is unmatched by any alternatives. As bad as Sonos's new app launch was, they still don't have a good competitor doing quite what they do.

The speakers support AirPlay and the newer model of speakers support Bluetooth. I don't think any of them support Aux.

[spott]

The newer era speakers, and the five have audio in.

[HelloMcFly]

Ah, through USB-C? That didn't occur to me.

[spott]

Through an audio jack.

[HelloMcFly]

Mine do not have an audio jack.

[spott]

What model do you have?

The five and era 100 both say they have a line in on the website.

[mleo]

I've had a Sonos system going back 10 years now. I started with 6 or 7 speakers and now it is at 15 [9 zones] Sonos speakers and 12 HomePods [6 pairs]. There have been hiccups along the way:

- Migration from S1 to S2 having to replace early, older models such as Amp and Port. But have received some discounts on new speakers

- Unifi network & Sonosnet issues with STP. Mostly solved by disabling Sonosnet

- Sonos Roam speakers failing

While having occasional issues with the new app design, it hasn't impacted much on a day to day basis. I didn't use much of the features that were lost initially, though I can see how it would be damaging to those who do.

For playing whole home audio, I generally use Airplay integration and just group the speakers through AppleTV or iPad. I occasionally use the app to do so.

The value I receive from each: - Sonos supports surround sound, whereas the HomePods do not.

- Sonos is tied into home automation and some custom TTS announcements

- Sonos Amp works with outdoor speakers and can update the speakers

- The HomePod minis are small and less intrusive in certain areas of the home

- HomePods have access to Siri and home control

At one point I had several Echo devices, but it was annoying to constantly update that system for home automation integration. HomePods replaced all of those except for an Echo Show in the Kitchen.

I never use bluetooth, nor felt it is a missing feature of my Sonos system or HomePods.

[baumy]

To directly answer your question - when I was trying to setup whole home audio and decided I didn't want to go the rpi route of doing it myself, the alternatives to sonos that I found were "Audio Pro" and "Bluesound". I ended up going with Audio Pro, so can't speak to bluesound, but it should tick all of your boxes.

I have 3 Audio Pro speakers, 2 different models, and they all sync up perfectly. I can select 2 to be stereo if I want. I can play from spotify, airplay, bluetooth, or google cast. The models I have do support 3.5mm input, but I've never used it so not sure if you can plug into one and have it also play in the others. As a bonus, it's all compatible with the wiim streamer devices. After buying a couple wiim minis, my klipsch TV speakers + computer speakers are able to join the whole home system with the Audio Pro speakers.

If I had to do it all again, I might just buy powered speakers of any brand of my choosing and get wiim minis for each of them. That's another viable alternative you could look into. But the Audio Pro speakers are pretty nice imo.