SonoBus: An Open Source Peer-to-Peer Audio Streaming App with Cross-Platform Support
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_**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?
![][1]
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
![][2]
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.
![][3]
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][4] or [Flatpak package][5] 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
You can also download it for your preferred platform through its official website.
[SonoBus][6]
### 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.
