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Once again my frustration has reached a peak with this company. There are incessant problems and customer experience seems to be unimportant to the company.

A week ago my SONOS Roam disappears from both the iPhone app and the desktop app, the usual run around begins digging out this and that “How to” article because I forgot exactly what I did two months ago the last time it failed, anyway SONOS don’t care.

Yesterday too I was forced to update the iPhone app (but the desktop app worked fine!). So I upgraded it. Then I found that the desktop app too now had to be updated so I updated that.

Today I see no devices listed in my desktop app and when I restart the desktop app I am told to “Register my products” and must now do this before I can use the app and my devices. I don’t want to stop what I’m doing (I work as a software developer and I’m very very busy) I just wanted to listen to a classical radio internet station.

So I try the iPhone app and that immediately tells me I must finish setting up the Roam (that I was led to believe had been setup yesterday!) before I can use it. Well I don’t want to use the Roam right now, just the already working PLAY units, but NO !!

I cannot, it is forcing me to now install an update for Roam, I don’t want to though, I just wanted to listen to a classical radio internet station.

As an experienced software engineer take it from me, the user experience is crap, the overall software workflows are crap, everything gives me the impression of a codebase that is just bug fix, tweak, forcing users to do this or that because its easier than redesigning or restructuring a convoluted codebase where the systems get into insanely messed up states.

Like a great deal of modern software, it is poor, rushed, under-designed, under-tested, under-specified and the consumer is left to do all the running around, all the fixing, all the unravelling of insanely non-intuitive BS that the SONOS platform has now become.

Users are bombarded with exciting news of “new features” and glitzy claims yet what goes unsaid is the confusing, unfriendly, messed up experience of day to day use and lack of reliability and lack of availability.

That’s right - availability - if I can’t use my system NOW then it’s not available and this is somehow seen by the company as acceptable!

I’ll be dumping this expensive investment as soon as practicable, if you want to keep me as a customer then get your finger out of your %$@ and step up.

I just wanted to listen to a classical radio internet station.

 

 

 

No one forces you to update. Turn off Auto Update. If not, the system checks that all speakers and controllers are running the same version. 
 

Yes, there are some issues with the software. Is yours perfect? Is anyone’s? 

No one forces you to update. Turn off Auto Update. If not, the system checks that all speakers and controllers are running the same version. 
 

Yes, there are some issues with the software. Is yours perfect? Is anyone’s? 

I’m not aware if any auto-update enable/disable feature in the desktop app. The iPhone app does have this and its already disabled, it is also described as:

“Allow your Sonos products to update automatically in the background so you always have the latest features”.

So it was already off.

 

I’m not aware if any auto-update enable/disable feature in the desktop app. The iPhone app does have this and its already disabled, it is also described as:

“Allow your Sonos products to update automatically in the background so you always have the latest features”.

So it was already off.

That’s the speaker ‘firmware’ auto-update feature in the Sonos App that you are actually referring to, it’s not the ‘Sonos App’ auto-update option, which is separate and controlled by the device it’s installed on.

You perhaps need to switch off the ‘App update’ feature instead, aswell as the auto-firmware update.  …that’s assuming you’re looking to switch off updates and maybe intend to do any updates manually instead.

In truth you really need to resolve your network device discovery issues, which at first-glance sound to me like an SSDP multicast/broadcast device ‘discovery’ problem across the various LAN segments, which as a software developer, I’m fairly sure you should perhaps be able to resolve for yourself.

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