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Comment by azinman2 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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It's not Sonos, but I use a few of these and they are amazing - 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.

You 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.”

Yeah 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)

I 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?

There’s no valid reason for something running in my home to be contacting a server in Beijing. Period.

I think you are not the target market for cloud services.

Companies often buy services based on cost. If the cost is less to get a server in Beijing, many will choose to get one there.

The country in which the server is located has little to do with the privacy or security posture of the service.

That makes zero sense to anyone who’s ever worked on hosting things in China.

Their Great Firewall makes it a no-go for practically everything and everyone. At the best of times the latency and packet loss are hideous, with abysmal throughput. And then you get cut off randomly for hours, days, or decades at a time on the whim of random CCP members with no recourse.

Paying them is a giant pain in the arse as well.

It is quite literally never the best option.

Hosting sites in Russian — in the middle the current war — would make more sense!

Are you okay with it contacting servers in the US? Other countries? If so, which? Where do you draw the line?

Personally, I run my smart home fully locally, but it's interesting to me to see the geographic location of the server emphasized so strongly.

Let's be realistic. We're in a complicated time.

If you're in the western world, you really should consider avoiding IoT devices that call home to Chinese servers. You could be turning yourself into a potential botnet member if things go geopolitically sideways by keeping these products on your network. If you have access to other networks from home, you're inviting access into those networks from a box that should only be there for streaming music.

Better if things don't call home at all, but second best is choosing western servers under control of western actors.

I hope that one day we no longer have to consider the political origin of servers our devices to call back to, but that's a few years away at least. In the meantime, devices that call back to noone are still the best.

I don't disagree with what you posted, but I find it naive to believe that a "western" server doesn't expose you to the same risk.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

Same risk, different rule of law

* you could be turning yourself into a potential botnet member

wherever the server is

* you're inviting access into those networks

wherever the server is

Apparently those requests weren’t necessary for using the device, so arguably it shouldn’t do them without user consent in the first place, and certainly not retrying multi-thousand times per day. It just shows that data economy and privacy wasn’t a design consideration of the software, which should be a red flag.

I’ve been looking for a version of this with 2.1 for a passive subwoofer with bookshelf speakers. Everything I’ve seen is only two channels.

Unless maybe I set the sub as a second airplay or Bluetooth device and run one of these [1]? I’m not really sure how all of that works.

https://pimylifeup.com/raspberry-pi-airplay-receiver/

2.1 systems generally use powered subs, not passive subs.

For use with higher-quality bookshelf speakers, you can send the stereo line level signal to a 2-channel amp and pass the high-level speaker lines through your sub. I do this with Belkin AirPlay 2 receivers and it works well.

Not all subs have high-level passthrough though.

I'm building my own subwoofer, so I'm assuming you mean the sub has a plate amplifier in the back? Like this:

https://www.daytonaudio.com/product/776/sa70-70w-subwoofer-p...

Yes, exactly. And that plate amp has the passthrough I mentioned, which not all plate amps do.

> 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.

> the company can't be bothered to maintain the software.

or open source it and let enthusiasts maintain it.

In 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.

AirPlay 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.

The 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.

Not 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.

It’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.)

While 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.

I have two Chromecast Audio devices which similarly provide both analogue and optical digital outputs, but they seem to be much more expensive second hand than the Airplay alternative.

I'm not sure if Chromecast Audios support lossless, if that matters.

Shame there’s nothing similar for video airplay. I needed to add airplay to an old/cheap dumb tv just for apple fitness in my partner’s workout room, and the only cost-sensible thing was an ad-infested roku device.

    Shame there’s nothing similar for video airplay.

Isn't there? You can pick up 3rd/4th gen AppleTVs on eBay for $20 all day long.

I had a 3rd gen Apple TV, but it had grown nearly unusably buggy. Still-supported apps would randomly crash or fail to stream, AirPlay would randomly fail entirely or fail to play video, streams/AirPlay would randomly stop, various operations would randomly take minutes to complete or time out.

Basically the issues as detailed here, though I had it more recently than the 7.6 software update: https://tidbits.com/2020/09/28/third-generation-apple-tvs-su...

If 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.

I 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.

Might have to start pulling cable.

FYI 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

Yup. 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.

My 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.

Hard to say what's going. My denon is my first "real" receiver, it's been underwhelming.

As 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.

Sonos 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.

> They still maintain an old S1 app for older devices…

Their current app now supports S1 devices as well.

Most 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

Ah! 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.

The 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.

Yea I agree. I personally still come to the conclusion that it’s probably worth it assuming the business continues to operate as they have been. But eWaste does suck to generate knowingly.

I have a record player (and DAC) and an amp and passive speakers. I have the full HiFi setup - the record player is setup to avoid vibrations and the speakers are properly distanced from the wall etc. I can tell you without any hesitation that the price-per-minute-listened of my Sonos system is a small fraction of the HiFi (which will last 30 years). If I upgrade the Sonos every decade I’m sure it’ll still “make sense”. That’s excluding the cost of media for which records cost a lot more than streaming. Personally, I think the Sonos sound “more than good enough” to enjoy without missing anything from the record player.

That said, I don’t love the generation of eWaste, and I hope the Sonos lasts for more than a decade. And every day that Amazon/google keep their smart speakers alive is a good day for eWaste. I can only dream they’ll allow you to update the firmware when they finally EOL them. (I know they won’t though).

Buy a raspberry pi zero with an audio hat, throw max2play on it!

https://www.max2play.com/en/

> 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/) for streaming duties for my older stereo gear.

Not sure if you mean that, but the Sonos S1 interface has been reverse-engineered, see here:

https://github.com/SoCo/SoCo

https://github.com/jishi/node-sonos-http-api

This allows you to e.g. set the Sonos speakers to play any audio URI.

And 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.

It 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.

It'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.

I'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.

It’s more than a byte or two — Sonos uses SOAP for RPC.

If you have a Sonos amp with an input plug, you can play that in near real time. There isn’t much buffering there. It’s low enough latency you can watch video and the lips looks like they match. There’s actually a setting where you can tell it the priority of the audio, which I assume just controls the buffer size.

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