The new Sonos app is a horrendous piece of crap! What I don’t understand is why doesn’t Sonos admit it f’d up and give us back the old app. 

Moderator edit: Combined posts

I don’t think you have been playing close attention to these forums.  Have you not seen the huge amount of abuse piled onto those people who are guilty of nothing more than simply not having issues with the app?  Have you not seen the childish ‘fan boi’ and ‘shills’, bandied about -  and those are the mild ones — sometimes followed by abusive PMs.  Feedback can be positive and negative — bugs that only affect some users and not others are harder to track down and in this regard experience from many users, good and bad, is better.

A number of times, I have tried to get some sort of collaboration on here to see if there are any patterns to what makes it work for some and not for many others. But despite my best efforts (asking what wifi setup people are using, what devices, what DNS server they use, etc), nobody ever participates.

My setup works incredibly well - 3-4 second load times and responsive on all activity. I say that not to brag but to say that the app does work perfectly well within certain environments (notwithstanding ongoing missing Queue management, playlist editing, library search etc) - the functionality can work as it does in my household (and in @Ken_Griffiths household it seems). And we are derided for having the audacity to say it works as part of the feedback, and so by association we MUST be Sonos supporters...

So in a (what I am feeling might be pointless and thankless) attempt to try to help get to the route of at least some people’s issues, below is the setup I have and what works for me. It would be fantastic to get a few people engaged with this, to see what setups they have which are not working (or equally that ARE working) that could determine a pattern of something obvious that leads to some people’s resolution while Sonos sorts their sh*t out.

I appreciate that no-one should need to have to put such effort into getting an app/audio system to work, but wouldn’t it be great if a temporary solution was found, for example, for those people not even being able to see their system?

Device: iPhone 14 Plus

App: fully updated at 1 July

Sonos System: fully updated at 1 July

Sonos speakers: Arc, Sub g2, 2 x Symfonisk surround, 8 x Sonos One SL - all on wifi

Streaming: Apple Music, Spotify, BBC Sounds

Technicolor router: wifi off, connected by ethernet to…

...Wifi mesh:

• TP-Link M5 (3 disks)
• wifi on (separated 2.4Ghz & 5Ghz)
• AP mode, not router mode
• Smart DHCP - disabled 

Wifi speed: 1Gbps

Multiple Sonos connected to various mesh disks across the house, by wifi. 

Router info:

• DNS Server: Cloudflare (Primary 1.1.1.1, secondary 1.0.0.1)
• PPPoE
• IPv6 - On
• NAT - On
• MTU - 1500
• DHCP - On
• DynDNS IPv4 - Disabled; HTTPS - On
• DynDNS IPv6 - Disable; HTTPS - On
• DMZ - Disabled
• Firewall - Medium

Others might prefer to just stamp their feet and not bother exploring this, which is fine. I don’t really care if yours works, I’m just looking to propose solutions….

Still unable to access my iTunes library on my Mac even though Sonos committed to a June fix.  Now it is July. Sonos lacks integrity, honesty and has lost any trust I ever had in their commitments and their products. I own a lot of Sonos equipment in my home, 13 speakers and none of it can be used for music since the upgrade to the new Sonos App.  I do not stream music nor do I intend to and have an extensive music library on iTunes that I been building dating back 20 years to ripping CD's, Napster, other music download sites, and significant purchases from Apple.  Suffice it to say, it is tailored and customized to my taste and I have over 175 unique playlists that I cannot play on my Sonos systems and cannot not listen to anymore. This is an example of corporate arrogance from a company that thought they had the cool factor. What they have is a disregard for their customers and are selling their soul to to drive up the stock price for their own personal gain. By the way, Sonos stock has dropped 26% since April, barely two months! Over 30% of reveiws on Best Buy would not recommend the Sonos Ace to a friend. So while all their effort and priority was and continues to be supporting their Ace Headphones, they are not necessarily a resounding success yet. Meanwhile for many of us, we are unable to use our Sonos equipment if our primary source is our music library.  Shame on Sonos.  I have no idea when that capability will return and at this point my confidence and trust in Sonos is gone...

It’s a noble goal Rhonny, but I fear it’s like searching for a needle in a haystack. People use their Sonos systems in different ways and have different equipment for WiFi etc. And on top of that, this place is very noisy, and I suspect many just come in to make a post or two to vent their frustration, but far fewer follow the entire discussion. Myself, I mainly following this thread, since I get notifications.

In any case, for me the new app work reasonably well, except that I cannot add items in my music library to the queue. Then again, I’m not using the app extensively, since I use the Windows app most of the time.

One thing to note is that my setup is quite different from yours:

• App runs on Android 14 on a Motorola G53. (It seemed that the new app worked less on my tablet, where I have the Gold app now.)
• Sonos devices: 2xSonos Five, 2xPlay:3 + Sonos Sub 1Gen, 2xPlay One SL, 2xPlay:1, One Port.
• I have a wired setup, with the Port being connect to one of my WiFI routers.
• The WiFi-Router is an ASUS RT-AX55. I have a mesh with two routers. The router to which the Port is connected, is not the one with the cable to the outside Internet.
• Music library on a NAS from Synology.
• I mainly play music from my library, but use Spotify to listen to new music. Spotify is the only service I have.
• I saw some complaining about not being able to edit the queue. I don’t have that issue - simply because I play albums, and never have any need to edit the queue!

I should also note that I recognise many of the symptoms that people report - but I saw them long before the new app came out.

From what I gather what you’re posting won’t be particularly useful. You would need people posting ping times, lookups and trace routes that sort of thing. 

Sure, but worth a shot? Imagine if there was something obvious… 

As Lennon said: “You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.”

One challenge with ping, traceroute etc is that far from all Sonos users are network techies who know this stuff well. I am a computer professional myself, but my head started to spin towards the end of Rhonny’s post where he started to talk about various router features. But to understand what is going on in some people’s network, you probably need to listen to the traffic and understand it. And that is certainly not in my field of expertise.

The list of router settings was largely a basic list by clicking on each setting area in the router settings and noting what is on or off. It takes some knowledge to get into that backend, so it’s not for the uninitiated - but this is an audio tech forum where I’d imagine plenty of nerds hang out, so whilst I do get that it’s techie stuff, I’m not expecting Joe Public to know how to participate.

Let’s focus less on the “But why” and more on the “Hey, why not”!

I’m in Oz with just a 50mb connection but a single household and can stream 4k no problems. I don’t game so don’t know response times but don’t notice any lag normally. I only have a fairly basic router but use Sonosnet via my playbase connected to it via ethernet. Even though I am in a small block of flats I don’t have any issues with my setup normally. TV and Apple TV is also connected via ethernet so not much happen on my wifi network in terms of data movement. My Ones and sub-mini in my spare room connect fine to my Playbase via wifi.

I don’t understand why you’re using wired SonosNet mode, when you have a far faster WiFi mesh setup in your Home? The Sonos players these days using WiF-5, or 6, and can take advantage of the 5Ghz WiFi band - your would greatly enhance the speed of communication of all your Sonos setup, compared to the 2.4Ghz ‘wired’ mode - I used to only get max.12MB/s on SonosNet - things can move much faster than that on your WiFi mesh signal -you could even ‘steer’ your capable products onto that faster band in your router configuration pages, if necessary. Just try to keep their SNR levels (shown in the App) to - 45dB or more (strong signal) which I do in every case for my Sonos products. The difference that would make might be enough to resolve any issues you have perhaps been seeing.

I would personally never wire a Sonos product to anything, other than the main router, or a switch off that main router, wiring to a mesh Hub, or any separate access point, is often not helpful.

Some of the speakers listed are older ones, which (from my own experience from a couple of years ago) worked better on SonosNet as they do not have recent wifi protocols.

My concern might be where people have a router, and then mesh nodes which might also be running in router mode - so you effectively have two routers competing with DHCP and double NAT (whatever that means), which leads to IP conflict or NAT conflict or similar, where the Sonos speakers are not getting served correctly. Not sure if this applies to @Erland Sommarskog but I’d have just one router, with the mesh running in AP mode as extensions of the router rather than as routers themselves.

Elementary, my dear Watson. I only learnt about the wireless setup of Sonos a few days ago. And, no, I don’t plan to switch to wireless mode. It’s simply not worth the hassle when the remaining lifetime of this system is a just a few days. A bunch of Bluesound devices are arriving tomorrow.

I don’t question that the wireless mode works better, and I would be surprised if some (but not all) of the issues I have seen would be absent if I switched to wireless. But it’s too late to find out now.

I should add load times aren't too bad now. Both my iPad and Android apps think for a few seconds but it's reasonable acceptable now. I mainly looking for functionality to return now.

Wiring my Port into a mesh hub massively improved the reliability of my system a few years ago. Prior to that it was often unusable and very unstable. 

My router is in a room which does not contain a Sonos product so wiring into that is not an option. 

Having spent a lot of time corresponding with Sonos support at that time, apparently I have a lot of WiFi noise which was causing the issues. But yet that noise has no impact on any other non Sonos equipment using the WiFi. So who knows.

But wiring into a mesh hub is not something to be discounted. 

I have to say I am now looking into purchasing other speakers as I have finally had enough of sonas. Years of greatness undone by one new app and several updates have left me frustrated and angry. App has to be opened and closed several times yo get it to work. If decideds to mute speakers at random times. It won't respond and has become an embarrassment when I have people round and can't get it yo work. 

Bring back the old app before we all leave. 

Something else to consider is latency and external routing and congestion. Basic commands like play, pause, menu navigation are being sent to Sonos over the internet and back to your network. How quickly this works or not for you may explain why SonoPhone and 16.1 work well but 80.x.x doesn’t for some people, especially those in certain regions. 


 

….
A user can just bridge their ISP/own-provided router for use with a WiFi mesh setup. I don’t personally have that issue mind, as I use a router in ‘modem’ mode.  The Sonos setup here works fine with the mesh setup in either ‘router’ mode, or ‘bridged AP’ mode - it still works fine too with ‘double NAT’ - so that’s likely not part of the issue here.

I don’t see how any setup will lead to IP conflict unless they setup their Sonos system and controllers stem across two subnets when using ‘double-NAT’ - which is unlikely if they know what they’re doing, but I guess anything is possible, if they don’t…  I’d advise them not to mess in that case and seek help from others, including Sonos Support, or their own ISP support desk.

I personally would not now use SonosNet, even with some older products, particularly if any of my ‘other’ S2 products in a setup were able to use the 5Ghz band (most can), but that’s perhaps just my preference. SonosNet is just too slow, by comparison, to what’s available nowadays.

By the way, as an aside, my router settings are mostly not held on local hardware - it’s nearly all cloud-based in my case. My network security is entirely cloud protected too (in addition to any ISP, or locally based security), but that’s an entirely different story and it’s quite a costly subscription to have that type of protection.

Just to perhaps add something though to your earlier in-depth post, which I entirely applaud by the way, it’s a valiant attempt to help others, is that even something as simple as a VPN client on a mobile device can present some of the issues that users are reporting - also I’ve seen mobile data for the App kick-in in some users cases in preference to the controllers WiFi connection …WiFi calling, Work’s security software and firewall/antivirus software, just to name a few things, can cause problems for some too. It’s a minefield, that’s if you hope to cover “all bases” in an effort to find a common root cause. 

There are of course so many different types of Home network setup, some far more configurable/complicated than others. Some users maybe using standalone WiFi routers (with or without extenders/EoP adapters etc.), or mesh based systems in router mode, or bridged AP mode, whilst others are still using ‘wired’ SonosNet and it’s sometimes compounded by the fact that users either do not want to ‘mess’, or stray away from ‘default’ settings (even though not everything may work optimally out the box), or they perhaps may not feel knowledgeable enough to change things, especially if they think changing a setting may break something else, or reduce network security

It’s then easy (easier) of course to blame other things, like the Sonos App instead. So I do think those that have a working setup with the new App will still ‘always’ find it difficult to persuade those that don’t, that it’s not always the fault of the new App that’s stopping things from working.

I’ve just chosen the route to try to show people that it can and does work well here and tried to persuade users that if their setup isn’t working for them, they may need to look a little closer to Home or at least seek the help of Sonos customer support, as that’s why the Staff are there.
 

NO, THEY ARE NOT!

@Rhonny, here’s an example (above) of what I was referring to in my previous post - I’ve little doubt this users network setup could be made to work fine, as I think their Asus WiFi mesh setup is similar to some other users that have posted in the community and there are obvious network ‘flaws’ mentioned in the users earlier posts, but they are reluctant to change their configuration, plus it’s too difficult to do over forum posts etc. the user has decided to throw money at the problem instead and that’s entirely upto them of course, but I suspect that the same, or similar, issues might continue, even with a different wireless speaker system. 

Anyhow @Rhonny you do face rather an uphill battle in trying to find a common root cause, me thinks, but I still applaud you for trying - getting some users to take notice of any suggestions is another thing completely.

No need to shout . But they are.
 

Did you know you can access your system and control it from anywhere in the world, cause controller commands going through the Sonos cloud is now a thing: play.sonos.com 

Just for the record, I don’t blame the new app for the problems - I think they are inherent in the Sonos system. But some of these could certainly be with SonosNet, so had I learnt about the wireless setup earlier, I would absolutely have tried it. But since I had already thrown the money, it was too late in the game.

One thing that prompted me to try Bluesound is that I would have thrown money anyway. My Play:3 have been misbehaving, and the original plan was to replace them with two Era 300. Yes, I am throwing more money this way, but it also mean that I relieved from things like having log on only to change or view some system settings.

Pull your network cable (while playing from your music library). You can still control your music. And we have said this a few times now.

Did you know you can access your system and control it from anywhere in the world, cause controller commands going through the Sonos cloud is now a thing: play.sonos.com 

But that is not the same thing as the controller app on your phone would be travelling that route.

I don’t know why users have an issue with a cloud based setup anyway - my router is cloud based as are my streaming music services, Netflix, Prime Movies, Disney+ etc.

My Home heating, plugs, lights, cameras and blinds are all controllable remotely through a cloud - it’s not a huge issue, it’s just the way such technology is heading and Sonos are just getting ahead of the game in the audio world. 

I won’t be going into all the ins and outs of my system, but: Draytek router, iPhone 12, reasonable speed fibre connection.  All with fixed / bound IP addresses, IP4 only.  Everything worked for me from day 1.  I did have the creepingly slow and unresponsive volume slider on a couple of Connect:Amps, but the newer amps and speakers worked just fine.  I’d already started to have the regular dropouts on these amps anyway, which was only temporarily fixed by rebooting.  
I had already decided to replace the only Connects anyway.  Expensive to do but they were ancient in terms of anything else connected to my network.

I’m just wondering if ant least some of the issues  encountered  are with Sonos dragging these old Connect devices along into the new app.  It reminds me of my IPhones that eventually become unusable due to the weight of Apple’s OS updates.  Maybe Sonos should draw a line in the sand and make the new app for the newer kit only.