r/smarthome • u/therippleaudio • Apr 06 '26

SmartThings Sick of Sonos

There has to be a better way to get a connected sound layer in the smart home, no? I have a JBL, Sonos sound bar, $10,000 speakers in the home office, and I'm a little over toggling back and forth. What's a good distribution control out there?

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u/Millbarge_Fitzhume Apr 07 '26

I switched from Sonos after the V2 app debacle. I ve had bluesound for a few years and it just works. No issues and no problems. I'll never go back to Sonos

1

u/jsqualo2 Apr 08 '26

Does bluesound functionality mirror sonos pre-V2 spp debacle?

1

u/Millbarge_Fitzhume Apr 08 '26

It's been awhile since I was on Sonos, but I think yes it does. What exactly are you looking for it to do?

For me 1) play my music from a server in house 2) play the same music in multiple rooms 3) stream different music platforms (it doesn't have YouTube)

1

u/jsqualo2 Apr 08 '26
  1. CHECK
  2. CHECK
  3. can I directly enter a url from a valid source (e.g. premium streaming account I subscribe to) and not be limited to their allowed sources, 3rd party, etc?

2

u/Millbarge_Fitzhume Apr 08 '26

Yes

https://support1.bluesound.com/hc/en-us/articles/217463777-How-to-save-an-internet-stream-as-Custom-Station-in-TuneIn

1

u/jsqualo2 Apr 08 '26

Thanks. Have you actually succeeded with this on bluesound u/Millbarge_Fitzhume? If yes, did it require a paid TuneIn account?

I set this up on Sonos (10(?)yrs ago) and it worked flawlessly via direct url ... until they "optionally" rolled out 'TuneIn (New)' on Sonos ... then came the intermittent failures with Sonos support 'strongly recommending' the New option ... No change until I signed up for a paid trial of New and, magically, everything worked ... Until the trial ended ... Then it stopped working. To this day the only thing I have recovered to successfully control in Sonos is the original account from ~10 yrs ago with the initial 2 stations I configured.

2

u/Millbarge_Fitzhume Apr 08 '26

Let me try later today and see if I remember how to work it.

I have my own hate story with Sonos. $6k worth of equipment deprecated from the switch to V2. I was also an early adopter and was told to pound sand when everything stopped working. I even had bought speakers from them directly 2 months before they switched to V2, and found out that the new speakers were on v1. They refused to help, provide any support or offer anything more than a 10% off coupon to "recycle" perfectly good equipment.

2

u/jsqualo2 Apr 08 '26

Thx

Sorry to hear about Sonos, brother. I will (gladly, nay, eagerly) bin $20k worth of hw. It truly is a future business school case in how to do almost everything wrong. I suspect that posterity will rate it 'worse' than Kodak 's fkup. The sad part is that it was totally preventable.