<Solved>Does anyone have any experience with Noson?<Solved>

[Huecuva]

So I'm trying to convert my old man to Linux since I built him a new computer and his Windows 7 has expired. I've dual booted his "new" machine (i7 920, 16gb DDR3, 120GB SSD. Geforce 210) with Windows 10 and Mint 19.3 Cinnamon. He uses Sonos a lot and it's hard to convince him to switch to Linux if he can't use his Sonos in Linux.

Noson is supposed to be an excellent Sonos controller for Linux (also the only one) and both the github page and the software manager entry say that it can be used to manage a local music library. However, the menus are incredibly basic and I can't find anything about a local music library in any of them. It can play the existing internet radio streams, but I can't point it toward a local library. Some of the comments in the software manager mention this as well.

Does anyone know if Noson actually does support local music libraries or is that just a bogus claim? I've asked about this on r/linuxquestions as well and, well...it's reddit.

Thanks in advance.

[deepakdeshp]

Can you explain what re you trying to do with Noson? For that objective there may be a more suitable Linux application. Somebody may chip in.

[Huecuva]

Sorry. I figured Sonos would be relatively well known. It's a music player service that allows you to play a bunch of internet radio stations as well as a local music library. I think you need to buy one of their speakers to use it and it creates a "Sonos Zone"...or something. I don't know exactly how it works. I don't use it. My old man does.

Noson is a Linux version of their app that connects to the internet radio streams and plays the local music. My dad controls it from his iPhone. He doesn't need his PC to listen to the internet radio streams, but in order to listen to his local music library, his computer needs to be turned on so the desktop app can access the local library. The Windows app quite easily lets you point it at a local library and have it update its database which can take a while if you have a lot of music.

When I install Noson on my dad's machine, it quickly detects his "Sonos Zone", provided the firewall is off, and lists all the streaming music channels he can connect to. However, I am completely unable to locate an option to play locally stored music files anywhere in the menus. The github page for it states that it can play local media so there should be a way. Even comments on Noson's entry in the Software Manager indicate that they were unable to get it to play their own music.

When I google this problem, all I can find is people using the Windows Sonos controller in Wine and Playonlinux and they say it works great, but I can't get it to work either. Sonos will not install correctly in Wine. I'm not very familiar with Wine, I don't use any Windows apps in my Linux, as I'm perfectly happy to find native solutions (hence my attempt at Noson) so it's quite possible that I am doing something wrong but it seems like a fairly simple process. I've tried installing it as a 64 bit app and as a 32 bit app (I don't know which it is, Sonos doesn't make it clear on their website) but I'm not have any luck with either option.

[Huecuva]

Nobody has any experience with Noson at all?

[wallyUSA]

Nobody has any experience with Noson at all?

I use Sonos on my wife's Win10. Have not tried Noson but would like to know more about it. I hope someone else can help!

Be interested in seeing if we can use Win10 Sonos & Mint Noson at the same time!

[humbleman]

Nobody has any experience with Noson at all?

I use Noson, not that experienced though.
I set up Sonos before i started using Linux Mint so the connection to my music library, which resides on a FreeNAS server on my local network, was done in Windows or by mobile app. Can't remember which.

Anyway, that library is reached through the "My Index" in Noson. There is also "This Device" in Noson if that's the kind of local you are looking for. I haven't tried that though.

Both "My Index" and "This Device" are found by pressing the three lines button in the upper left of Noson.

[humbleman]

TEXT... It can play the existing internet radio streams, but I can't point it toward a local library. TEXT

I read your post again and looked at GitHub and it states:

"Streaming my local music files
Noson will scan music files only from the standard directory containing audio media. Depending of the platform and your language, it could be "~/Music" on freedesktop. When you drop files in this location, you should be able to stream them to your Sonos device with Noson. The local library will be exposed in the page "This Device". Supported files are flac, mp3, mp4 and ogg."

If placing the music in the standard directory only allows to start it from Noson on the computer and not from his phone maybe it could be an idea to share the music folder on the network and pick it up from the Sonos mobile app?

In Sonos app for Android (sorry), settings - system - music library - music library setup - add shared music folder.
There you can add something like \\Mycomputer\Shared\Music and a username and password.

Best of luck to you!

[Huecuva]

So the local library has to be in a certain, preconfigured location? That doesn't make any sense, and could be quite problematic if true. My dad's MP3 library is located on an external USB hard drive and I'm not sure if there is an effective way to mount the music folder on said external USB HDD to the preconfigured music folder for Noson.

The problem isn't that Noson will only start playing local music files from the PC, but rather that I couldn't make Noson see local music files at all. If, as you seem to indicate, the music has to be in a preconfigured and static location then that explains the lack of a way to configure a local music library. I just need to figure out how to mount my old man's /dev/sdb1/Music to ~/Music, because there is no way his music is going to fit on the SSD that Mint is installed on.

[humbleman]

So the local library has to be in a certain, preconfigured location? That doesn't make any sense, and could be quite problematic if true. My dad's MP3 library is located on an external USB hard drive and I'm not sure if there is an effective way to mount the music folder on said external USB HDD to the preconfigured music folder for Noson.

As I understand it, in the systems default music folder like /home/user/Music.
If it's possible and/or a good idea to mount an external usb hard drive to that is above my knowledge, maybe someone else can help?

The problem isn't that Noson will only start playing local music files from the PC, but rather that I couldn't make Noson see local music files at all.

I was just thinking ahead if it still wouldn't be possible to start music (that is in or mounted to /home/user/Music) from the Sonos mobile app then perhaps a share pointed to in the mobile app could work. A Samba share does for me from my server to Sonos.

[Huecuva]

As I understand it, in the systems default music folder like /home/user/Music.
If it's possible and/or a good idea to mount an external usb hard drive to that is above my knowledge, maybe someone else can help?

I guess I'll just have to give it a try the next time I head out to my old man's place. Trying to walk him through that over the phone would be a nightmare.

I was just thinking ahead if it still wouldn't be possible to start music (that is in or mounted to /home/user/Music) from the Sonos mobile app then perhaps a share pointed to in the mobile app could work. A Samba share does for me from my server to Sonos.

Ah. I don't anticipate that being a problem, provided I can figure out how to mount his music folder to /home/user/Music, but I will keep it in mind if it does occur.

[Huecuva]

So it turns out that it isn't possible to mount the drive as I was expecting. However, it is possible to create symlink to pretty much the same effect.

Unfortunately, Noson still couldn't detect the local library like that. In order to get Noson to detect the local library, I had to reconfigure the location of the default Music folder in Linux so that it no longer searched ~/Music and instead searched his external drive.

However, as you sort of predicted, the phone app did not in fact detect the local library even still, and I ended up having to use the method you suggested of sharing his library on the network and adding it as a shared folder in Noson. That took some time to build up index, but it worked.

Thanks for the help.