Thanks for sharing. 
 

What did you do to resolve the issue last time? 

I didn’t do anything. It was so obvious that the developers had made a mess out of the app. The companies leader had written an apology and said he was committed to getting fixes in place. 
Updates started to come out and slowly the app became more stable. 
It seems a recent app update has come out and appears that with that this slow sluggish time to connect to music services or devices is now being experienced.

Sure sounds like a local network issue. I use the iOS app on both my iPad and iPhone without any issue.

Frequently, when a new version comes out, it can expose a local network issue, which can frequently be resolved by a network refresh. Unplug all Sonos devices from power, then reboot your router. Give it a couple of minutes to reload, then plug back in your Sonos devices to power. Give them a couple of minutes to boot up and reconnect, then test.

If you’re still having issues, I would recommend that you submit a system diagnostic within 10 minutes of experiencing this problem, and call Sonos Support to discuss it. Don’t post the resulting diagnostic number here, they get sensitive about GDPR.

There may be information included in the diagnostic that will help Sonos pinpoint the issue and help you find a solution.

When you speak directly to the Support staff, they have tools at their disposal that will allow them to give you advice specific to your network and Sonos system.

Thanks Bruce. Your response is interesting because I’ve been walking the dog and thinking more about this. The power company had to replace a power pole on our property and our power was out for a few hours. So my thinking has been pretty much what you just outlined. So thank you for validating that. 
I do have to remind myself that Sonos has worked fine for over a week since the power change. Then I brought up the app to start some music for the day and the first thing I noticed was the changes in the app.

Then trying to get a playlist going I just kept getting the cannot connect error. So you can’t ignore a change in an app and a problem with “the system” that came with it.

I’ve worked in IT for many years and have always experienced the development teams making changes to apps, then problems arise and developers go into denial and start pointing figures at the big mysterious network. 
That being said, I am going to go through the reset process because I don’t want to be a networking guy pointing at the big mysterious application either.

Thanks for your reply. Will let you know how this goes!

Coming from a video games background, I thought I ‘knew’ networks fairly well. And certainly parts of it, I did. Sonos works differently than most things, because of its architecture. It ‘stresses’ networks differently than most devices out there, but within true network specs. It’s just more sensitive to disruptions than average, due to its nature of intercommunication.. between the speakers and the outside world, each other, and to the controller device. A minimum of three ‘connections’ to deal with, and that’s just one speaker systems, it gets to be more when you have large number of speakers like I happen to. By comparison, most devices have one or two network connections to deal with, mostly a single connection to a computer. 

Over the years, I’ve assimilated a lot of knowledge in this forum from other members. I try to understand as much as I can, but remain humble in that I don’t know ‘everything’. One of the reasons I tend to throw in that ‘contact Sonos’ bit, they have access to diagnostics, which I don’t, and can, potentially, at least, see things I never considered.

All I can tell you is ‘my’ system works, using the iOS client. I think you’re experiencing IP address issues, but the process I laid out covers a multitude of possibilities, any one of them might potentially be a problem that gets resolved. Fairly high success rate, I think, but I’m not perfect, by any stretch.

Good luck!