App of the week, Software

SonoBus: An Open Source Peer-to-Peer Audio Streaming App with Cross-Platform Support

Brief: An interesting open-source peer-to-peer audio streaming app which offers a simple user interface with powerful functionalities.

SonoBus: Cross-Platform Audio Streaming App

Audio streaming services are extremely popular nowadays when listening to music. However, a local collection is still a useful way that does not require to be constantly connected to the Internet.

Even though a streaming music service is convenient, you do not really own the music. So, if there is a licensing issue, the platform might remove your favorite music, and you cannot do anything about it.

And, with a local music collection, you do not have that problem. But, how do you stream your local music over a network of devices or share with a group?

sonobus screenshot

SonoBus can be a solution to the problem. Not just limited to music, but just any audio like practicing music with a group of friends remotely or collaborating to make music, why not?

Let us take a look at what it offers.

Features of SonoBus

sonus screenshot 1

SonoBus is relatively simple to use, but the features offered can be overwhelming. So, before proceeding, you might want to know what it lets you do to get a head start:

  • Ability to connect to multiple users
  • Create a group with optional password
  • Share audio input from your microphone
  • Share audio stream from a file
  • Mono/Stereo support
  • Playback to the group
  • Record audio from everyone
  • Ability to mute individual users or everyone
  • Can be connected via the Internet or the local network
  • Metronome support for collaborating to make music or remote practice sessions
  • High-quality audio support up to 256 Kbps
  • Input mixer
  • Pan support
  • Useful effects supported (Noise Gate, Compressor, and EQ)
  • Works with JACK and ALSA
  • Cross-platform support (Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, and Linux)

While I tried to mention all the essential features, you get so much control to adjust the volume, quality, latency, and how the audio sounds with the help of effects.

sonobus official

The best thing about it is cross-platform support, which makes it an interesting choice for any group of users no matter why you want to stream audio.

Installing SonoBus in Linux

You can easily install the Snap package or Flatpak package no matter what Linux distribution you use. If you do not want to use them, you can add the official repository manually to get it installed:

echo "deb http://pkg.sonobus.net/apt stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/sonobus.list

sudo wget -O /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/sonobus.gpg https://pkg.sonobus.net/apt/keyring.gpg

sudo apt update && sudo apt install sonobus

You can also download it for your preferred platform through its official website.

SonoBus

Closing Thoughts

SonoBus is an impressive audio streaming application with plenty of potential use-cases, but it has its share of issues and may not be the perfect solution for everyone.

For instance, I noticed that the desktop app takes a significant amount of system resources, so that could be a problem for older systems.

Also, the Android app on Play Store is still in early access (beta). It works as expected for my quick test session, but I haven’t used it for a long time – so there could be expected hiccups when relying on it for cross-platform sessions.

In either case, it works quite well with plenty of features for every type of use-case. Do give it a try if you haven’t.

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