New SONOS App - Feedback

When you got to the Raspberry Pi info, that’s where I echo your sentiments of “Requiring cloud access in order to manage…” in that, IMHO, we should not have to go that far to make a previously simple set-up and interface function at a basic level which, obviously, we enjoyed pre-May 2024. Thank you for the detailed information, Mark. I appreciate it.

Sonos has repeatedly stated in the press and on this very forum that they are not moving to a subscription model.  What else do you expect them to do to stop the spreading of FUD?

The new app has sucked for over a year. Constantly dropping during play.  Awful to navigate.   I have owned sonos for 10 years and the app is pure trash 

What’s FUD?

Never mind. I looked it up.

What did you do with your old Sonos kit out of interest? 

Apologies for the FUD, I’ve been away from the forum for a few months and received no Sonos news during that time.  If that’s what Sonos said then I’ll take them at their word for now. 

We are left puzzling over a peculiar engineering decision that adds unnecessary connectivity requirements and injects round-trip server latency what into should be instantaneous local operations like setting the volume of a speaker.  

I feel lucky that I blocked firmware updates when I did, and I have no incentive to ever update the app at this point.

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Will be selling two Ports, a PLAY:5, a PLAY:1 (all black), plus one white PLAY:1

The two Boosts (long house, thick stone walls), I just binned; almost worthless. The BluOS software is great, I’d forgotten what having a decent multi-speaker system was like!

I noticed the last few times that when I open my app and select a song to play, there is always a delay right in the beginning and start of play. But after that, it seems to straighten itself out and I don’t have much of a delay adjusting the volume or pausing the song. Just in the original start. Now this is my own music sitting right upstairs in my NAS drive. Actually, this last delay to start my song was at least 4 seconds. But then it becomes responsive. 

Flattliner, you mention you are having good response using the BluOS software. So I guess this application is used locally and not going out in the cloud to play locally stored music. I know this might sound like a dumb question, but I just can’t think this through. I don’t want to be going through the Sonos cloud just to play my music locally. I know it’s been stated that Sonos is not going to a subscription model, but I just don’t trust or believe what they say anymore. 

I just remembered that most users have subscription music services, so you have to at least go to those sites when playing your playlists. I am one of the few who play only what’s stored on my NAS drive (with the exception of a couple of songs just to experiment), so I need a reliable music app that would allow me to do this. Thanks.

Hi John. Pretty sure you are correct - the Bluesound software acts like Sonos’ used to i.e. quickly and (presumably) locally; its speed is nicely illustrated by how quickly album art is rendered - almost instantaneous. My local library has ben reborn! I rarely stream music unless trying out new stuff before downloading it and adding to my NAS drive, but Bluesound deals with streaming well too. I haven’t tried the Hi-Res services like TIDAL yet but will probably succumb.

Next test? The latest Bluesound Node supports DIRAC Live room tuning and I cannot resist trying the cheaper version out. Will report back, though I do wonder whether I’m buying magic beans...

I looked back of some of you past remarks, I think I understand that you removed most of your Sonos gear and your BluOS app is controlling other devices (if I have that correct)?  I remember years ago, when I was first introduced to the Bluesound system from my local stereo store, that it worked well and I was impressed. Actually, at that time, I had never heard of Sonos, so I never contemplated using Sonos or never did any research concerning the differences. So, if I understand your setup, you and swapping out your Sonos gear for other devices. Because I think I remember reading where the BluOS app will not control or support Sonos equipment. I don’t know if I have that correct. 

I mentioned yesterday that I had a 4 second delay when bringing up my Sonos app for the first time and playing my first song. Today, no delay and I didn’t change anything. I am running the newest version of both firmware and IOS app. So that’s good. But I have not experienced any “destruction” to my system with the past updates as mentioned in some of these posts. I just never notice any new features, or the bringing back of features that are still missing, like allowing a Save button in the IOS app or still not remembering your place in the music queue, which brings you back to the top of the music list every time you exit the queue. For example, yesterday, I searched for a song on my NAS drive and added it to my Living Room Playlist using my iPad while sitting in the Living Room. But later, accidentally overwrote the entire playlist by playing one song (as a result of the stupid Sonos app), so after recovering from that and finding the song again, I had to go upstairs and wake up my Windows PC, execute the Sonos Windows Controller and save the playlist that way. This is just aggravating and no matter how many times I mention this, Sonos just doesn’t get it. Are they aware of this? Are they ever going to add a Save button to the IOS app? And holding your place in the music playlist?  I know I am using queue and playlist interchangeably. But I’m sure you understand my point. 

Yup - 5 of my zones are now equipped with Bluesound hardware controlled by the BluOS app, which can’t control Sonos devices. That means 99% of my music is playing via Bluesound and only my TV setup (separate room) is still Sonos; that doesn’t matter most of the time as my Sky remote integrates nicely with my TV and Beam 2/Sub (Gen 1)/PLAY:1 x 2 audio hardware.

Last night room tuned my Lounge using DIRAC Live via my Bluesound Node. Bought the “cheap” licence which covers frequencies up to 500 Hz. Not a quick or easy process but very impressed, and the controller allows you to turn the tuning off and on so you can compare its effect on different music. My HiFi now sounds much less boomy than it did; thanks to practical constraints my speakers are close to a wall, either side of an archway. Worth the money IMHO and way more effective than the admittedly free Sonos Trueplay, which made no discernible difference IMHO.

That sounds great. Being retired and covering from brain surgery, I’m just not in a position to replace my existing system. I don’t plan on ever buying any more Sonos equipment, but I’m satisfied with what I already have. I do have a Sonos Connect in the Living Room, which allows me to play all my stored music through my Yamaha separates. And I’ve kept all my CDs, which I know is old technology, but I too am old technology. So when all else fails, I can just resort to sitting in my Living Room and doing it the old fashion way. But I hope in the meantime Sonos gets its act together and gets their app more user friendly and adds these missing features that I have been complaining about for the longest time. I can’t tell you how many times in the past few weeks that, right in the middle if listening to a track, I accidentally hit the song I was playing and it started from the beginning thinking I was going to change the volume, but instead I have to swipe down and bring up (or down) another window to do this. All this swiping. What a poor design. You should just be able to go to your playlist, tap on the song and it should open the Now Playing song window and the volume control should be right there. 

I wish I could have all the time that I’ve spent trying to get my Sonos system to work correctly back. I feel like I could’ve learned a foreign language

In a way, you have learned a foreign language in that one has to type out network paths to add a Music Library now and find out what certain acronyms mean so you can solve the ongoing riddle of why your system isn’t working and said Library is M.I.A.  I’d love it if the apps (iOS and S2) would sniff that out automatically like it used to and, handle all of the issues that we’re being told keep us from connecting as we once did.

I just want to setup my new soundbar.  The app will not allow me to use my tv remote for controlling the soundbar.  All I want the soundbar for is listening to my TV.   Without the ability to control the volume with my remote, this is useless to me.  Guess I need to return it and find a brand that works without an app for something a critical as setup.

Which soundbar?

An optical connection doesn’t have the bandwidth to carry a volume signal, a Sonos soundbar thus must use an IR connection. Often, for newer TVs that have remotes that connect via RF or Bluetooth, there is a process by which you can change the remote to work via IR. Of course, IR being light, it does require a line of sight.

Sonos soundbars that connect via ARC or eARC depend on commands sent by the TV via the CEC system (often called something else by various marketing departments) across the wider bandwidth of an HDMI’s cable. Of course, in order for that to work, CEC needs to be turned on on the TV.

Since you’ve provided zero details about either your soundbar, or your TV, or for that matter, the connection between the two, it is hard to provide a better response.

I am sorry you feel the need to return your device, rather than to get the assistance necessary to get it working for you, but that is a choice. 

It’s the RAY soundbar.  The TV remote is IR.  The APP has a function that is supposed to look for the IR signals for volume.  The problem is the APP does not wait for the button to be pressed before it moves on and says no signal found.  I have confirmation from the support team that this is a known problem but there is not ETA on the fix.  I’m not asking for help unless you know how to revert to the previous version of the app.  Without that, there is nothing we can do but wait for the programmers to fix it.

Made another updating for my software last 2 days after a frightening experience years back… this round this updates went smooth and without any error at all. Well done this software team for this support. Keep it up. 

I’m glad they solved your issues.  Mine has is no ETA.  I have no confidence in these programmers.  Back out the update until you figure out how to code!  That’s what we (I’m a programmer) would do.

And I was just about to update the firmware and apps after skipping the February updates. I must be a masochist. After reading several recent posts, it depends on which issues you’re experiencing if you’re going to get a resolution or continued mayhem. Part of me wants to go for it and another is keeping me from jumping off the cliff.  As one poster wrote, I”m not buying another Sonos product unless my issues are resolved with little to no more additional effort on my own. This is sucking so much it’s ridiculous.

Ok - the app is ‘functioning’ now, but as owners of expensive Audio hardware, you want it more than ‘functioning’. My request to app developers:

1. Don’t get rid of the Windows Sonos app. It still functions quite well, including using the local audio library. Don’t end this app!
2. How about adding vertical scrolling back into the app? Hmmm...we seem to use the app on...phones! Shocking, but true. Vertical scrolling would make sense...thus it is no longer done anymore. Horizontal scrolling is crap. 
3. Splitting out favorites to Sirius XM, Internet Radio, etc, etc, was a DUMB, DUMB idea. One of the benefits of the app, was all the favorites were grouped together, no matter the audio platform. As least have the option to have them together or broken out (with the default put to the sensible one - together).
4. Bring back one-tap playing in the app. WTF is the idea of having a box that is way too large, especially scrolling left to right (remember #2?!) and then you open the box, and have to tap to play it. Umm...again common sense here...if we selected that item, why would we need to open the box to play it? Serious UI problem here. Is that introduced delay there so we won’t notice the app delay when you log our choice / get a kickback to your advertisers? Don’t worry, the app delays are already too numerous to mention.
5. Leave the local Music Library alone. We may need this whenever your app chooses not to communicate with the internet...which seems to be often. Remove any reliance on local music library playing from being impacted by internet draws.

There are so many more complaints, but these are the critical ones that need to be addressed. Another idea - look at how the old app was structured, and rebuild it to look exactly like that! Now you have an idea what your customers might want in an app!

Sincerely,

I cannot believe this app is still so ffffed almost a year later.

Good News… for me anyway.  Willyeckersl posted recently in the “Your Feedback on the new Sonos App” thread and included a link to a Reddit post. This is what he replied to me with:
“I'm seeing on Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/sonos/s/AZzBQ5jz3f  that people are seeing their local library's again after the latest update.   Both on NAS and USB storage.  They were saying to use the scan for new content.”

So, this afternoon, I updated my firmware, desktop controller and, finally, the Sonos mobile app (iOS). I then went back to my updated desktop controller and Updated the Music Library. Then, back to the mobile app where I reset it. Once it found my existing system and launched completely… there, under Your Sources, was my missing Music Library. I tested it quickly and it appears to have been a success. I plan on playing music from that Library over the next few days to see how it holds up.

If this hadn’t work, I was going to reformat the USB SSD drive that held my missing library to ExFat and then load the music back onto it. I’m glad that I didn’t have to.

With all this being said, I’d again like to thank Ken_Griffiths, jgatie, Bruce and others who spent so much time in here trying to get people up and running and, for fielding a lot of grief that they don’t get paid to field. It’s my hope that Sonos won’t again “fix what isn’t broken” and can gain back their street cred.

Brad