Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Streaming Sooloos v2.449 Experiences (Post Update)

With regard to the Sooloos experience vs the Sonos experience, they both have their advantages and disadvantages.

Sooloos Advantages

The album art view of your music library is better (as opposed to browsing music services). I like the way album art covers the entire screen, rather than Sonos which only uses part of the screen. Also, the Sooloos interface lets you sort the album art several ways. Finally, the Sooloos interface is much snappier as it has already loaded the album art and other metadata into its database. Sonos has to load the album art on the fly from your NAS.

Expanded Metadata and better search (of your library). Sooloos captures more metadata and it's search capabilities (of your library) are far superior (and snappier). Sonos is better for browsing music services (see below).

I really like the way Sooloos integrates albums from music services right into your library. Sonos separates "your library" by services. This advantage is magnified when using TIDAL. Since TIDAL streams lossless FLAC, the ability to add CD quality albums directly to your own library is fantastic. Sonos will also play TIDAL albums losslessly, but you have to navigate into the TIDAL service (within Sonos) to browse albums you've added to your library.

Sonos Advantages

Sonos shows you album art when browsing/searching music services. The Sooloos UI for searching music services is all text based.

Sonos supports many more music services.

Sonos lets you search across music services to find an album.

In many other smaller ways, the Sonos UI has more finesse.

Bottom line: I can easily play Sonos or Sooloos through my Meridian speakers. If I'm not grouping rooms, I always use the Sooloos interface as I prefer it. The integration of music service albums into one integrated library, the additional metadata, better searching, and snappier interface combine to make Sooloos a better overall experience.