I’ve been spending a lot of my time in the past week trying to figure out how to enjoy my Plex Music libraries through either my old stereo and speakers (30+ years old) or my existing Sonos speakers.
I’ve looked at or investigated purchasing a new stereo; purchasing a Yamaha Expander/Streamer; bluetooth speakers ; a micro stereo unit and; using Volumio + Raspberry Pi. Today a guy wanted to see me $5000 worth of new stereo!
I’m totally at a loss.
Sonos makes the most sense but you have to use their app which in my experience (reconfimred just now) does not really work well with Plex–constantly sending messages like ‘can’t connect to Plex’, playing songs out of queue etd. Plus you can only add songs to a ‘Sonos Playlist’ not to my Plex playlists that I maintain on my iOS apps (Plexamp and the original iOS Plex app) and computer.
Bluetooth speakers other than Sonos…even though advances have been made and some are very highly ranked (Edifier S1000DB, for example) I’m not really keen on or sold on the reliability and effectiveness of Bluetooth all the time.
Raspberry Pi seems too fidgety to me and I’m not that kind of guy. Plus with Volumio I’d have to use their app (again) on top of the Plex app (presumably).
My old speakers just don’t have the dynamic range (virtually inaudible bass…very flat) so I suppose I could replace them and see if that improves things.
i guess what I’m asking for others’ views and experiences about is: what seems to be the best way to stream Plex to another set of speakers without having to a)spend a bomb 2)build your own kit or 3)have to contend with a cumbersome layering of different apps? I just want to hit an album listen to it, enjoy the ‘look’ of Plex (Plexamp) and be able to build my Playlists. And have great sound without some other company’s ‘unique streaming experience and app’ interfere with everything.
I see you have a Plex Pass. If you are using the Plex for iOS app, you should already have the ability to cast your music from the Plex app to your Sonos speakers. Hit the cast icon. At the bottom of the list, you should see the option to link to your Sonos account. If you don’t see this option, then the app is unable to find your Sonos speakers on the network and we would need to look into why.
thanks for your recommendation. I did indeed find Sonos on the iOS app and it connected quickly when I selected it. Howerver, playback was horrible. It took a long time to connect to a track and eventually would play a single track and then stop and I’d have to disconnect from sonos and try again. Or entire tracks would be skipped and eventually one would play but not with the wrong title! After one or two tracks no more tracks play. Now this could be a Australian issue as we have generally poor broadband and during lockdown the usage is high but my kids are able to play spotify without any issues or glitches through the same Sonos and indeed we stream TV through Sonos without any problems at all. So it appears it is a Plex specific issue.
Wondering if anyone has similar issues or is this something really local?
I was looking to solve a similar issue in my garage. I had an older reciever and some speakers in there, but wanted to add plex audio to it. I use a chromecast audio, and cast it from the plex app on my iphone. I have good wifi near that device so it works quite well. I only use it a handfull of times a month, but once I fixed the wifi coverage, it had been great.
Perhaps with so many moving to Bluetooth crap you can get a good deal on some quality used ones in your area? Low tech non powered speakers tend to last a looong time if not abused.
yeah. i pulled out an old pair of Bose 401s from the garage and wired them up. They are much better than the current little bookshelve speakers I’ve been using so will now invest in a new receiver that has all the streaming, wifi, bluetooth, hdmi capability of the modern age and go with that.
