Sonos Bar Gen 2 and Brennan

[GreyBuzz]

Hi,

I have had the Brennan about 2 weeks and it’s Fabulous! Thanks😀

I have been digging out the tunes lost in the drawers in the 80’s and have been looking at the features of the new Sonos Gen2 bar bought to brighten up the musical void now the kids have gone!

There are a few interesting issues with the Sonos support that I suggest could do with an update please?

1) Speaker selection

Menu- Top left click Brennan or Sonos to select output channel speakers.

The Sonos music appears to have its own music independant “Queue” and this can be selected via the Sonos app to “TV”. This means when you select the Sonos speaker option from the Brennan, the Sonos Bar May by playing the “TV” queue or the Sonos music “Queue” list? This means it doesn’t always hop to the Brennan requested music track and lots of messing about to find out how to get the right noise out of the right holes ensues…

2) Sonos volume control is only active when you select the Sonos speakers, so you can be playing a track and want to turn down the volume but the Sonos won’t respond as you have the Brennan volume control selected top left. It needs different zone volume controls or a master for all zones please?

3) As a result you can play different tracks to both the Brennan speakers and the Sonos but not synchronise the two speaker streams to play in phase music out of both? Have been looking but haven’t found that bit if it’s there.

4) So could you please add a “Synchronise button” to the speaker selector in the top left so that you can send out the same stream to both locations? You may also need to add in an audio delay( if you can) as the Sonos processing delay may be longer than the Brennan wired outputs. Otherwise you get an audio doubling effect.

5) I have been using Volumio up to now, and the Brennan is really great, but it could do with a Brennan “Mini”? A short piece of code to make any raspberri pi and an audio hat ( Hifi Berry or whatever) operate as a clone dumb speaker repeater. I have various speakers I can’t drive without rewiring the place. A raspberri Pi audio stream speaker would allow the Brennan to be “All powerful” in the audio verse! As the old amps are now useless..

The Brennan has glicked out on a few occasions when double streaming to Sonos and playing audio, as well as ripping a CD, but that maybe a bit too much to ask of it!?

6)

Cars and audio formats

I want the music to be playable in the Car, the FLAC files are great, but the car plays .wev and MP3. Is there an “Export as” button, so I can degrade my ears with a USB in the car of suitable music please? I don’t want to have to re-rip the lot as mp3..

Really enjoying it at the moment, so thanks.

Greybuzz

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

Hi Greybuzz,

Glad to hear you are enjoying your Brennan.

The Sonos speakers are "driven" by the Sonos system/app not directly by the Brennan. As I understand it the Brennan queues music into the Sonos system telling the Sonos system which speaker it is aimed at. The playing of the music on the Sonos speaker comes to the Sonos speaker through the Sonos system/app. You can see this by opening the Sonos App and seeing what is happening when the Brennan is playing to Sonos speakers.

This is the reason why music from the Brennan can not be synchronised to different Sonos speakers unless these have been grouped as a set by Sonos.

It is for this reason you cant synchronise the same music across all your house speakers, including the directly connected ones. So I dont think what you want on your wishlist is going to be possible/happen.

Fred.

[PMB]

Hi Greybuzz,

1. That's a great tip - does this only apply to the TV soundbar model I wonder?

2. Volume control - are you referring to the Sonos app volume control as the buttons on my Sonos speakers do change the volume?

3. Sonos have some clever software that synchronises the sound on their units. We would need to integrate with that software which I'm sure is never going to happen.

4. As above.

5. We do not recommend asking the B2 to do too many things at the same time, especially when ripping. So do not have it playing when ripping.

6. There is a FLAC+MP3 compression setting which produces mirror MP3 copies of your FLAC files. It is very slow to run and will take a long time to convert, depending on how many FLAC files you have. These MP3s can then be exported using Playlists - see this page - link - on our US web site.

Other owners tell me they do a backup (Export to C), load this onto their computers and use 3rd party software to convert to MP3, as it is faster.

Paul

Brennan Support.

[GreyBuzz]

Hi Fred,

The Brennan can stream to at least two destinations at the same time… so if the Sonos bar is selected by the Brennan as “destination” then surely the internal speaker streamer “Destination” can have the same audio “streamed” or played in sync with the Sonos stream? So you get synced music out of both local and Sonos speakers?

The Sonos zoning as I understand is managed by the Sonos, but the music stream isn’t?

Would be a good feature?

:-)

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

Hi Greybuzz,

Hope we are not talking at cross purposes, but by the " the internal speaker streamer " do you mean the Brennan playing to speakers directly connected to it by wires?

If so then, while you could have the same track playing to these as the Sonos,  there is no way to synchronise the timing of what comes out of theses directly connected speakers and the Sonos speaker system. 

Fred

[GreyBuzz]

Hi Paul,

If you select top left and change your speaker from Brennan and play a track, adjust volume, then select Sonos via the same menu, then play a track and adjust volume, you can play different local and remote Sonos tracks at the same time with independent volume controls. ( you already have two zones but not synchronous).

The stop/start and volume are zoned already on the Brennan what is lacking is a master volume for both zones at the same time and a synchronous source?

With synchronous play on the two zones you already have this would be a great feature ( excluding the Sonos zones…..) that “ Should” already be controlled by the ganged controls applied to the Sonos?

With the addition of a Raspberrypi dumb streamer Receiver plugged into another amp and existing speakers you could quickly have a “ Sound empire” across your estate!…all controlled from one volume control without having to fork out for a Sonos?

:-)

[GreyBuzz]

Hi,

Yes. 

The synchroniser effectively is the single source or the single audio stream?….multicast to two ( or more destinations), the timing “offset” between the local wired, and remote Sonos could be adjusted by adjusting the stream timing of the local feed to match the remote ( Think lipsync timing on your tv).

In essence just start the local track on the Brennan a preset ( adjustable ) delay behind the stream sent to the Sonos, it’s what PA systems do to .. stop, stop, the, the, echo, echo? 😀

Providing your network isn’t stressed the delay should be consistent point to point?

GreyBuzz

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

Hi

To do what you would suggest, you would have to (within the Brennan) know the characteristics of the timing happening in the Sonos system. (so that you could delay the connected speakers to match). Such information is not available outside the proprietary Sonos system.

It is AMAZING that Brennan have managed to interface to the Sonos system at all.

Fred.

[Daniel Taylor]

I was not aware that the Brennan could control the volume of the sound through the Sonos speakers.  Is that true?

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

Yes it does with mine

[Daniel Taylor]

That's interesting.  The Sonos spec must allow for it, where Bluetooth doesn't.  Always more to learn.

[Peter Lowham]

Hi Daniel,

The Sonos system works in a different way to Bluetooth devices.  Bluetooth uses a constant streaming method where the B2 streams the music content in real time to the Bluetooth device.  With the Sonos, the selected music content is uploaded from the B2 to the Sonos speakers in bulk and this is played from the Sonos in its time.

You can see this happening by watching the Sonos app from a PC/Mac while selecting music from the B2.  The music will start to appear in the Sonos app play queue and the Sonos will start to play the music.  The Sonos queue will then contain the queue of music as sent from the B2 and will play it without further intervention from the B2.  In fact you can power the B2 off and the Sonos will play on until its music queue is empty.

The Sonos has a lot of processing capability and a lot of memory; hence the high cost.  It is also a true LAN (local area netork) based product.

The volume control from the B2 probably works using network packet based 'control commands', where the command can be 'volume up', 'volume down', 'stop play', 'pause play', etc.

Bluetooth devices are relatively simple in electronic terms, and have to be in order to keep the size, weight and power consumption to a minimum.  Bluetooth is a PAN (personal area network) based product, and this is shown in the low power levels allowed by definition (and law).  The problem is that these PAN devices are being promoted as LAN devices but don't have full capabilities in the LAN environment.  That's not to say that the volume contol cannot be implemented in a Blutooth device, but the more features that are provided, the more hardware you need in the device.  

I only use Bluetooth in PAN mode, for example I use a BB1 and Bluetooth headphones on Transatlantic flights.  I don't use Bluetooth for speakers as reckon that it can be glitchy and prone to interference.

Regards,

Peter.

[GreyBuzz]

Hi again!

Using a sound mixer (Like the Allen and Heath SQ5), you can assign a single gain control to a DCA (Digital Controlled Amplifier) . This is a master control that controls a group of other device gain controls, all set to relative positions as required. Effectively this is the suggestion I would like to see implemented? 

The Brennan already does this with two audio destinations, but doesn’t have one master volume…Yet? 😀

The synchroniser part could be a simple delay implemented in milliseconds, applied to the shortest audio path route to account for the delay between the longest and shortest routes. (Assuming it stays reasonably constant) It doesn’t need to be applied to the Sonos! 

The audio play out on the Sonos is determined by the Sonos “Queue manager”(?) and would be no-doubt tricky to fiddle with..so the Sonos just gets in with it’s job…

You can already do this badly on your Brennan, cue both speaker destinations with the same track, start the Sonos track, then the Brennan local track as quick as you can! 

You can control the track timing with the Brennan speaker destination, but not the Sonos☹️

I can almost get them in sync but not quite!

Would be good if it was an available but I understand why not yet?

GreyBuzz 😀

[GreyBuzz]

Hi,

By the way there is a Bug in the GUI…

If you select Sonos from the destination button and get the Sonos queue destination and vol control displayed, then switch back to the Brennan speakers; the button gets stuck saying Sonos all the time and won’t switch back. ☹️ The button should just say Brennan or Sonos, as “living room” won’t fit on the button?

You know you are on the local speakers as you have track timing control.

😀

[GreyBuzz]

Ahh!

Would edit post but can’t seem to..

There are TWO active buttons to control the speaker menu!

Top left button, selects “Named speakers”, this does change name.😀

If you press the button on the right of this it always says Sonos, but brings up the menu to select the speakers and offers the scan speakers button. Maybe this should Sal “ Select”?

Been doing it the hard way☹️

GreyBuzz