How to stream what you hear to your Sonos speakers – explained

Open up a new world of audio you can bounce around your home

Paul McNally

Paul McNally

Reviewed By: Kevin Pocock

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Sonos speakers are great but it can also be incredibly annoying that you can’t play your own music through many of them easily and have to use Sonos’s own curated app to listen to services through. In the main this is fine but one thing that has been highlighted during all our lockdowns is that we haven’t really been able to listen to many of the shows, DJs, and events broadcast live on YouTube through our expensive speaker solution.

This has led me to jerry-rigging laptops to Bluetooth speakers through into the garden just to listen to live broadcasts. It’s 2020, life shouldn’t be like that, I want to stream the audio to my Sonos: Play 1 speaker setup through my house.

With a little bit of know-how though you can trick your Sonos into playing whatever your PC is playing and beam it magically to anywhere in your home.

How to stream what you hear to your Sonos speakers

Step

1

Download Stream What You Hear

First, you are going to need a great little piece of Windows software called Stream What you Hear – go and download and install that for starters.

Once it has installed itself it will make a new home for yourself in your taskbars apps section.

Step

2

Use Stream What You Hear

Find it and right-click on it. From here you may have to do one of two things. The easiest way to get it working is if you select the Stream To > option and simply select any devices that are shown there.

As you can see from the image it can see my Sonos speakers as well as my TV and my Xbox One. Tick the ones you need and it will instantly start broadcasting the audio from your PC to your selections.

So make sure you have whatever DJ set or something that you want to listen to playing on YouTube and check it is going through your sound system. Result!

Step

3

HTTP live streaming

Should your Sonos devices not be shown there is a further step you can do you achieve the same end product.

Select Tools and then HTTP Live Streaming. A box will appear with a local URL in it. Copy that URL now.

Step

4

Sonos app

  1. Now open the Sonos app on your PC (download it here if you don’t have it already but you should have). Select Manage from the top menu and then Add Radio Station.
  2. Paste in the URL and give your new stream a name. That’s that done. For good measure select Update Music Library Now.
  3. Now go to the Sonos app on your phone. Select the Radio service (which may be listed as Radio by TuneIn depending on your location. And then within My Radio Stations, you will find the stream you just created and can broadcast to your heart’s content.

Now you should be set. It really does open up a new way to use your Sonos ecosystem as there have been so many great live events during the pandemic. You can even record the stream to your Hard Drive on your PC for later listening too which can also come in really handy. If Sonos’ ecosystem isn’t for you though, it might be worth checking out these other great speakers.

Paul McNally

Paul McNally