Sonos, random play, and playlist questions

[Jon Degenhardt]

Hi,

New Brennan owner here. Have had the B2 a few days now, plus new Sonos speakers to go with it. Very happy with the B2. I've hit some issues with random play and playlist when connecting to Sonos. These seem well known inside these forums. I want to make sure I understand the situation correctly and get advice about the best way to forward.

One issue is that random play of all albums stops after a bit. Simply restarting plays the same set again. From the forums I gather there is a 20 track upload to Sonos, this is what gets played. To manually restart with a new set, the randomization should be reset by turning random mode off/on again first.

Random play of playlists does not work with Sonos.

Is this a correct synopsis?

I did get Sonos connect to the Brennan B2 as a NAS device. Sonos random play works across all tracks. However, Sonos cannot see playlists created on the B2, and Sonos indexing needs to be redone to capture updates to the music library on the B2.

To me, it appears that running random play from Sonos is the current way to get around the 20 track limit. And, if I want random play of playlists, I need to create playlists on Sonos. Is this correct?

I am wondering if I should go the route of organizing music (playlists and such) on Sonos rather than the B2. I'd prefer to do it on the Brennan because the playlist manage is very convenient. Is there a way to export or expose the Brennan B2 playlists to Sonos? That would be very convenient. (If straightforward, I could write a program to export it.) Or, is something enough people want that I should hold for a while and wait for upcoming software features?

--Jon

[fred.w....@gmail.com]

Hi John,

Yes you are correct, driven from/by the B2's UI the maximum number of "random" tracks is 20. There is an item on the wish list to make this bigger but no date when/if this will happen.

The reason for this is that the B2 does not play music on the Sonos speakers itself, rather it communicates with the Sonos system/app passing music files to the Sonos system to play.  You can see this because in the Sonos App what has been passed is visible in the play list.

As you suggest turning on the B2's NAS and getting the Sonos App/system to use this as a music library does allow the Sonos "random play" to operate across the B2's entire music holdings. BUT the B2 can not see or utilise the 

B2's playlists so you can't from Sonos' end "random2 from within a playlist.

I don't think there is a utility to import B2 playlists into Sonos (or vice versa)...... BUT..... B2 playlists are just simple text files (that are editable in a word processor), where each line is a pointer to the B2's music holdings. I.E. they are simple and 

If you knew how Sonos' playlists were constructed (which I don't) I am sure you could convert the B2 information.

Fred

[Jon Degenhardt]

Thanks Fred. Haven't looked into it closely, but it appears that Sonos can import several forms of playlist file. At some point I'll probably try writing a program to generate a playlist Sonos can import from the B2 playlist files. (If I did that, I could probably write my own randomizer as well, which would be kind of fun!)

--Jon

[fred.w....@gmail.com]

Hi Jon,

To help there are Brennan functions to export playlists (the text files). 

for all playlists

for a specific playlist

Note -  you can also do the reverse!

Finally the complete "Scan Disk" Brennan music database (b2db) can be exported and loaded too (again text file).

Enjoy yourself  and please upload any tools you make so that we can all benefit from them !  :-))

Fred