AirSonos on Netgear ReadyNAS

by Volker Weber

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Yesterday, I talked about AirSonos and how it lets you stream via AirTunes to SONOS players. Biggest downside: you need to have a computer running at all times. As it turns out, I have one computer running at all times: my Netgear ReadyNAS Pro.

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I asked Stefan Rubner, my ReadyNAS guru, if it is feasible to run AirSonos on ReadyNAS. He asked whether I was on ReadyNAS OS 4 or 6. I am on OS 4, since my box is already a couple of years old. That meant he had to port lots of packages back to OS 4, but he made it work.

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There is only a small limitation, which means that you redirect all of your Mac's output to the Sonos player.

When playing from a Mac, direct streaming from iTunes is currently not supported. To work around this, hold the “alt” key and click on the speaker icon in your menu bar. Select the “Airsonos @ __” device as the output device and then start iTunes. Streaming to your Sonos device should now work as expected.

If you have a ReadyNAS, I recommend you visit RNXtras.com to get your add-ons. And maybe you can spare a little bit of money and donate.

Comments

How do you differentiate between the three TVs and the two bathrooms?

Andrew Magerman, 2014-08-19

I still do not get any advantage of the setup. What is the plus in functionality?

Ingo Seifert, 2014-08-19

You don't. If you have stereo pairs (Office, Bedroom, Kitchen) or surround (TV), AirSonos does not understand that. You can pick any of the players and send music their way. The players collaborate and figure out what to do.

Volker Weber, 2014-08-19

Ingo, why do we do that? Because we can. ;-)

Airplay has no advantage. If Sonos can play the same source by itself, that is always better and more robust.

Volker Weber, 2014-08-19

Ingo, just one example: You can't play Spotify Radio on your SONOS. Why? Because there is no API from Spotify. But SONOS users are missing the functionality. With this solution this could work (didn't try).

Thomas Lang, 2014-08-19

@Ingo: As Volker said: Because we can. I love a little technical challenge from time to time and backporting all the needed NodeJS stuff was exactly that.
As for use cases: My kids love to be able to play their music on my Sonos system while I love to not having to add their stuff to my music library ;)

Stefan Rubner, 2014-08-19

In all that hacking-sonos-spirit I've sat down to write an open SONOS Music API example app shared on github that takes a proprietary stream source (in this example Xenim Streaming Network - used by many german podcasters to live-stream) and puts it into the Music Services of your sonos controller. Works already and is to be offered free-of-charge soon as a music service. Next step will be a finally decent podcast support for SONOS.

Get the xenim thing here: https://github.com/bietiekay/sonos-xsn-service

Daniel Kirstenpfad, 2014-08-19

Got it. *sits back and relaxes*

Ingo Seifert, 2014-08-19

@Stefan: Is there a chance that you are releasing as well an R6x86 version?

Torsten Otto, 2014-08-19

For me also would add the bonus of soundcloud being nicer to use... I seem to have some major problems with my ISP also and that get the Sonos software to fail quite often. These problems do not occur when using the native apps. Also Spotify sync sometimes takes quite some time when adding new playlists etc...

anyway, in general I like the idea of being able to use Sonos via Airplay. Not sure my Asus Router can play nice too...

Teymur Madjderey, 2014-08-19

Reads interesting. Some of the packages are not free. I am fine with this. But a lot of these non-free packages can be used on this or on the other side of the fence. So its ok that the imprint is missing. But I miss payment options Bitcoin and / or Paysafecard.

Richard Kaufmann, 2014-08-19

@Torsten: I'm looking into providing an R6 version as well, yes. Probably even for ARM and x86.

Stefan Rubner, 2014-08-20

Wie sind es denn mit einer Implementierung für meine Synology aus? :-)

Martin Imbeck, 2014-08-20

Ich weiß, ich bin ketzerisch: das alles wäre unnötig, wenn nur ein Sonos im System ein Bluetooth-Interface hätte. Wer braucht heute noch Line-In?

Ingo Seifert, 2014-08-20

Ja, Bluetooth im Sonos wäre schick: ich starte beim Frühstück ein Hörbuch im iphone, höre es über Sonos. Dann steige ich ins Auto, höre da weiter wo ich beim Verlassen des Frühstückstisches aufgehört habe usw. - ohne ein Gerät anzufassen. Der Teil im Auto funktioniert heute schon perfekt, warum also nicht zu Hause?

Axel Koerv, 2014-08-20

@Martin: Da müsstest du vermutlich jemand fragen, der sich mit Synology auskennt ;) Sollte aber technisch durchaus machbar sein.

Stefan Rubner, 2014-08-20

Ich habe es mit Synology gestern mal versucht. Ich kenne mich allerdings nicht sonderlich damit aus. Vermutlich deshalb bin ich beim Kompilieren von node.js mit einem Fehler gescheitert, den ich bisher nicht beheben konnte.

Falls sich jemand mit mehr Ahnung daran begibt, kann ich meine Erkenntnisse gerne teilen.

Thomas Lang, 2014-08-20

One thing I forgot to mention why I would prefer to use the spotify app... not only the last.fm scrobbling, but also the connection to facebook. I know, most probably don't care, but sometimes fun conversations come out of that...

Teymur Madjderey, 2014-08-20

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