Question

Voice Memos

  • 23 April 2017
  • 3 replies
  • 7255 views

Why can't voice memos be played via Sonos?

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3 replies

I would think they could, under specific conditions.

1) The saved message needs to be in a compatible audio format
2) The saved message needs to be in a location that Sonos has access to
3) Playback of the saved message would need to be initiated using the Sonos controller app.

Now, if you're suggesting that you want to play them using the normal app on your phone, there's a whole bunch of extra information.

Sonos ecosystem is a "pull" service, i.e. you use the controller to tell it where to get data from, then it makes the connection and goes and gets the data. Even in the case of the new "casting" feature of Spotify, it's still just telling the speakers where to get the data from (to my knowledge), not actually playing the data from your phone/tablet/computer. There is no current method set up for Sonos speakers (using their own software) to accept data that is being played "now". Basically, that's what a bluetooth speaker does, takes the sound being output by the device and pushes it to the connected device, But Sonos works in the other way, not accepting a "push", but instead telling the speaker where to "pull" the information it's playing.

Since that setup is the basis for their key feature, i.e. whole home synchronized music, I don't expect them to switch gears any time soon and offer a "push" function that will replace the "pull" that they have implemented. It would be a complete rewrite of pretty much every bit of code, and be, as the coders like to say, non-trivial. And I suspect that if they were to do so, it would break the ability to do the whole home synchronization thing. This is, by the way, the same reason as to why Sonos devices are not good computer speakers, which is basically the same thing, a "push" process.
Thank you, that's a very technical answer (not a bad thing) but I'm really looking for a practical solution. Your reply implies that Sonos haven't really addressed this, so I hope they will at some point. But thank you.
I believe there is a 3rd party app on iOS called Intercom for Sonos. No experience with it, and since it is 3rd party there is no support for it here.