Sonos users don’t need to be sold on the convenience and simplicity of their chosen audio system. With its dead-simple setup and intuitive app-based (or increasingly voice-based) control, Sonos remains the standard-bearer for what a wireless home audio system should be. But despite its broad compatibility with music-streaming services and excellent universal search, there are still a few things that Sonos can’t do, like play certainhi-res music files, deal with libraries larger than 65,000 songs, or keep playlists synchronized between devices. While streaming services are the future, for those with massive music libraries at home, these are serious limitations.
That’s where integrating thepowerful media server Plexcan help. We’ll cover all of the ways Plex can enhance a Sonos system, how to install it, and how to integrate and use the new features within the Sonos app. Let’s go!
What is Plex?
Plex is media server softwarethat you install on a home computer or a Network-attached storage (NAS) drive. It’s free (though some advanced features require a paid subscription toPlex Pass), and does a fantastic job at automatically organizing and presenting your movies, TV shows, photos, and most importantly for our purposes, your music. Once the server is up and running, you can connect to it through an almost limitless set of devices, from smartphones to tablets,media streamers,smart TVs, computers — the list goes on. Not only does Plex make short work of organizing all of your media, but it also makes that media accessible from anywhere on just about any device. If you want to try out Plex for yourself once you’ve finished this article, ourdetailed Plex explaineris the best place to start.
Why do I need Plex if I have a Sonos system?
If it sounds like Plex does the same thing as Sonos, that’s because in many ways it does. Both systems are designed to automatically index your music library so you can browse it by album, genre, artist, song title, etc. Both let you search and play your music collection too. But the Sonos system has certain limitations that prevent it from being as powerful as it could be. The reason for this is that all Sonos capabilities are supported by the computing power inside each Sonos component. Since Sonos continues to support even its oldest components (something we applaud the company for), that computing power can be fairly limited. There is no separate Sonos “brain” — even the Sonos app that runs on your phone or tablet is little more than a fancy remote control — which means there will always be limits to what the system can do.
Plex, on the other hand, lives on your home computer or NAS drive, giving it way more computing resources. In fact, many of Plex’s best features, like the ability to perform on-the-fly conversion of one file type into another, are made possible thanks to the hardware it’s using.
So, while you certainly don’tneedPlex, if you want to extend what Sonos is capable of, it’s by far the easiest way to do so.
How can Plex improve my Sonos experience?
Plex can help by eliminating some of the inherent limitations of the Sonos system:
Plex also delivers features that expand what you can do with your music library:
How do I use Plex with Sonos?
Integrating Plex into your Sonos system is very easy, but before you can do it, you’ll need to get the Plex Media Server set up on your home computer or NAS drive. Follow the instructions in ourPlex explainer(the same one we mentioned above) to get that working, then follow these steps to add Plex to your Sonos system:
If all goes according to plan, you should now be able to browse Plex as its own music source within Sonos, and universal searches should find matches within your Plex library. All of the playback options that you’ve become accustomed to like adding songs to My Sonos, or adding tracks to a queue or a playlist, or getting album info or browsing an artist, should all be available when working with Plex content.
Can I use Plex without the Sonos app?
On the other hand, there’s no way to control speaker groupings, or cast to multiple speakers from Plex simultaneously, so depending on your setup, you may still need to jump back into the Sonos app for some features.
What else can Plex do?
If you’re a fan ofpodcasts(and you don’t pay for a premium streaming service), Sonosdoesn’t offer a very robust set of options. It comes down to using the TuneIn service to find podcasts or using a third-party app to find and download them and then stream them from their current location. With Plex, you can manage your favorite podcasts from the media server, and they’ll be available on all Plex devices, including Sonos. Because you’re accessing the podcasts from a central source, keeping track of which episodes you’re listening to (or have finished) is all done automatically, across all of your devices.
As we noted in the beginning, Plex is about more than just music. You can use it to organize and access all of your media on any device. With an optionalPlex Passsubscription — monthly ($5), annual ($40), or lifetime ($120) — you can do even more, like viewing and recording live TV, adding parental controls, and for music lovers, adding even richer metadata to your audio collection and even automatic lyrics.
