Wifi (or other?) speakers with seamless streaming and great sound?

December 8, 2022 9:55 AM

I want to get my husband some great speakers to stream Spotify to. We have the Sonos Five--the sound is good, but the streaming is not seamless. My husband gets particularly frustrated when the sound drops out/music gets interrupted. This seems to happen when his phone or tablet is doing something else (like receiving an email while playing music). Is there speaker/system that does not have this problem?
posted by CiaoMela to Shopping (10 answers total)

Do you an an old phone or laptop that could take over the streaming task?
posted by theora55 at 10:00 AM on December 8, 2022

Is it an option to use the Sonos app instead of streaming from your phone? This is one of the main features of Sonos - it has its own streaming software, and doesn't require a phone or tablet to be connected. Most (all?) other speakers use Bluetooth or Airplay which is always tethered to a device and may play system sounds from that device.

While Sonos supports Airplay (and some speakers support Bluetooth) if you use the Sonos app to pick your music it won't be affected by what you do on your phone.
posted by kaefer at 10:00 AM on December 8, 2022 [11 favorites]

Is he streaming via Bluetooth? It should be possible to set the speaker up to stream directly from Spotify, in which case you could literally turn the phone off and it would keep going, you're just using the phone as a fancy remote control. If it's still experiencing dropouts using Spotify Connect then there might be something else wrong, maybe a dodgy wifi signal or other connectivity problem, which probably wouldn't be fixed by a new speaker.
posted by BungaDunga at 10:03 AM on December 8, 2022 [7 favorites]

kaefer has this. It sounds like your husband is streaming to the Sonos Five via AirPlay, which is definitely not the best approach to using Spotify or other services with Sonos speakers. Indeed, when streaming via AirPlay, activity from other programs on his devices can disrupt or interrupt the stream, and this is likely to be the case with other speakers as well.

If he uses the Sonos Controller on his laptop or phone, and he puts his Spotify credentials into the Controller, he can stream from Spotify directly to the Five without using his laptop or phone at all (except as a kind of remote control, when necessary), meaning that music will continue playing seamlessly no matter what else is going on with his device.
posted by eschatfische at 10:11 AM on December 8, 2022 [7 favorites]

Just coming to say, I have used a lot of these products and Sonos is the best in terms of reliability. It's not even close. This is a big part of why they command the premium that they do. I am confident that any other speaker you get will have the same problems or worse, so it's best to try to solve it with what you have, via the method that kaefer recommends. This is what makes Sonos good, and if you're not using it, you're missing out on the benefits.
posted by primethyme at 10:16 AM on December 8, 2022 [3 favorites]

Listen to these guys; what you're describing is a device or connection problem, not a speaker problem. (Even if it wasn't a Sonos, that'd still be the issue. Especially when you mention that it happens when his device is doing something else... that almost certainly nails it as the device slowing things down.)
posted by stormyteal at 10:24 AM on December 8, 2022 [4 favorites]

It sounds like your husband is streaming to the Sonos Five via AirPlay, which is definitely not the best approach to using Spotify or other services with Sonos speakers.

My experience with AirPlay has been the same, though not with Sonos speakers. I used to AirPlay Pandora to my main stereo system, and was eternally plagued with drop-outs. I started using the Pandora app via my Roku stick (the tv is part of the stereo system, too) and things have been seamless ever since.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:22 PM on December 8, 2022

Have you tried connecting the sonos via Ethernet rather than wifi, if that’s an option in your physical space?

Bonus: if you have multiple sonos speakers and you hard wire at least one (any one), it’ll create a separate network that all your sonos speakers will connect to which can be a little more reliable and have less interference.
posted by mosst at 5:05 AM on December 9, 2022

Also, Sonos has pretty great customer service that will help you troubleshoot any connection issues - those really shouldn’t be happening. I have a pretty sizeable sonos collection that I mostly stream to via Spotify Connect and have never once experienced any audio interruptions.
posted by mosst at 5:07 AM on December 9, 2022

Note that once you setup Spotify in the Sonos app, you can then use the Spotify app to stream natively (i.e. not through airplay) to the Sonos - you're not stock using the Sonos app, which is admittedly slightly clunky
posted by matildatakesovertheworld at 10:59 PM on December 9, 2022