Re: Sonos and alternatives - OMO
 

I use a bluetooth gadget connected to a pair of (surprisingly good) Creative Gigaworks T20 speakers and can play music files from NAS and from Android phones, Android tablet, Chromebook and a Linux laptop.
The speakers have two inputs, the second one is connected to a Humax Foxsat HDR for radio channels and music files from a USB hard drive.
The speakers and bluetooth gadget can both be had for less than £100

Re: Sonos and alternatives - OMO
 

Creative speakers? That is not even remotely surprising. I have had their T40's for years and the sound quality is incredible! They put my panasonic TV speakers to shame

Re: Sonos and alternatives - OMO
 

Amazon Fire Sticks are great and all support bluetooth output and whatever any app you can install on it for input. Comes with a native SMB/CIFS browser. Not especially pretty but does the job and install something better if you like. Bluetooth receivers are about £3 off wish.com or ebay - a month's wait for the postman, obviously.

These receivers will plug directly into any 3.5mm input directly.

If you can hear the difference between bluetooth compressed audio and uncompressed then you've not been riding fast enough in a cheap enough helmet. Also easy to fix :p

Re: Sonos and alternatives - OMO
 

if you own a PDA or a smartphone then your cheapest option would be a raspberry pi with a wifi dongle and Moode software. the Pi streams the music from your NAS you then plug the pi headphone socket into your amp using a phono/jack splitter/gender changer.

the Moode is the front end you use as a graphical interface.

all for the princely sum of around £50-100 depending on if you want a fancy box or not. if you spend another £30 odd then you can get a dedicated sound card with proper phono plugs on it, you also get better sound quality.

it would all require you to have a little steep learning curve regarding the software. think of it as a fun project with an end goal :-)

Re: Sonos and alternatives - OMO
 

Don't need a pi, install VLC on smartfone and play files on NAS using VLC, sending audio to a bluetooth receiver.

Re: Sonos and alternatives - OMO
 

Cool, I should be able to do the same from my PC music folder on my home network?

It'll save me copying my music to a memory card

Re: Sonos and alternatives - OMO
 

Since we got Spotify last Chrimbo I have honestly not played a CD or ripped tune from the library on the PC once. I'll probably get a setup in the sitting room at some point connected to the TV (as its speakers are terrible) which also has Cast built in - so simple to listen to Spotify that way via tablet or phone.

Re: Sonos and alternatives - OMO
 

Although I found out how to, doing it wasn't straightforward.

An easier path was using Sounders to bridge between my PC and my android device over WiFi.

Play my playlist using musicbee, connected to my TV soundbase using my android device over Bluetooth.

Easy peasey