SONOS are you reading this? Please put the controller queue function back how it was!

I am in the same boat as Christopher_19. Always used Sonos playlists for preserving anything, the queue is only used for more transitory playing.

unfortunately making us happy doesn't sell speakers in the short term.

I used to be very enthousiastic and promote the system around me as often as I could. Now I tend to avoid giving friends any feedback on it and when they ask, I'm more than cautious...
Recommendation is big sale driver that Sonos is probably underestimating

A new user would know nothing of the old way and so would have no opinion on it. Recommending, or not, a system based upon the current experience of an ever changing user interface seems to be a restricted view. There have been mass threats over previous interface changes.

Sometimes you just need to leave well enough alone!!! The thread discussing the changes while in Beta I thought would have made that pretty clear.

I think you are misunderstanding the purpose of the beta and of this release. It is important to the Sonos vision for users to migrate to the newly announced voice control strategy as soon as it is available. A good way to motivate people to make the switch is to make the current controller less familiar and intuitive so there won't be any reluctance to move on to voice control. The only purpose of the beta was to gauge that the feedback was sufficiently negative to ensure they had accomplished their goal.

It is also important for Sonos to drive as many new sales as possible to the Amazon Echo before Google Home is released even if it means cannibalizing Play1 sales by making the Sonos app too complicated for new users to operate. In the long run the lost customers will be recovered when they are ready to step up to a multi-room Sonos system that can be voice controlled by their existing Echo but if they are lost to Google Home they wouldn't need Sonos to build a voice controlled multi-room system and would be gone forever.

So you see, everything is proceeding exactly according to plan.

Reading that was actually equal parts amusing and thought provoking. Thought provoking because I did stop to consider that this change might in fact be part of a larger strategy with voice control featuring in there. Amusing because seeing it written in this way is quite funny.

Ryan can you confirm on behalf of Sonos??? Are you guys trying to annoy the hell of us for "strategic reasons"???

There is a strategy I believe and that's marketing. Theynfor some reason felt making Sonos more familiar in its operation to the. Stice apps would rive sales and make the Sonos app more familiar to new users. And they probably have some new developers who are used to that method and don't particularly understand what made Sonos great in the first place.

Downside - that method is not particularly well suited in a multi room multi user environment

... and there are users who like the new method. Probably ones that own a couple speakers and use the controller by themselves. Somehow their voice was heard over many others as we just need to better understand the controller and get used to it 😞

As I've been told many times

But to those users that want to disable that the n their own have home it can be easily explained as being in a secure mode to avoid music interruption. If someone wants it in a secure mode it can be their option. I think lack of personalization will eventually become more of a hindrance to Sonos sales vs an asset.

I was sure I had answered this somewhere but I can't find it. What happens is that the end of playing a queue, no matter where those tracks came from, the focus of the player rotates back to the first song so that you can restart what was playing with just the push if a button. The downside, is that if you then go to add an album/track/playlist using Play Now, the focus is still at track 1, so these get added at track 2 and beyond.

We've been sure to pass on the feedback that this can be a negative experience to the team so they know to take a look into.

I keep seeing phrases like "tap to play", and I keep trying to reconcile the intentions of Sonos with the current reality of their software. I have a big problem with the current "insert into stopped queue" functionality, because while it's a small thing, it's everything. I can see the logic in hitting "play" and having your selection inserted into a playing queue, but when the queue is expired, an insert makes little sense, you want a "clear and play" or an "append and play". Depends whether the queue is meant to be a persistent (like Sonos 6.3) or ephemeral thing. The fact that the "play" buttons alternate between "insert" and "clear" on different screens suggests Sonos can't decide on queue lifetime. I can deal with the queue being a fleeting thing and losing the ability to check "what was that song I heard yesterday?". Having to manually force-clear the queue just to get "play now" to work correctly is a pain.

Assuming users weren't really crying out for a "play this followed by the last 17 of 18 tracks I played yesterday" button (which is what Sonos currently gives as a default), then the "insert into stopped queue" bug may be as simple as Sonos not differentiating between an expired queue (played-to-end-flag hit or play position is reset to track 1 0:00) and a paused/stopped queue (pause button hit, play position is one or more tracks/seconds into the queue).

A response from Sonos would be nice. I might go an play with iTunes/Spotify desktop controllers to see if they're as broken, to try and understand where Sonos are coming from.

Then you get two polarised sets of users IMO.
A big complaint is about when people throw parties. Some guests are likely to have Sonos. Which version will they try to use - back to babysitting, as some have called it, your guests.

The current system needs more work on it to iron out some of the wrinkles. Why not seek to improve the current experience rather than being firmly stuck in the, controversial in its own right, past and be positive about direction.

Wouldn't, say, an undo button (for just one movement forward, be of more benefit than toggles.

I honestly don't understand this talk about "polarized groups". That casts an unnecessary negative cloud on a request to customize. I have no issue using the queue in my preferred way and you doing the same. For me to understand your point you need to present the argument for the downside in allowing different use cases. I personally see no concern. SonoPad presented 4 queue management options - I picked one and scarcely think about what the persons may be doing. This would be to create a problem where none really exists. But again please explain what is the real issue with the customization you are seeing.

Please use "different" instead of polarised. That is my point for the downside. You will have two users not understanding what the other is saying because one is old way and the other isn't. Take the party as an oft used example, some of the users will be the old way and some new. Is that confusing? Or will the dreaded babysitting be required for those new users. Toggles require future changes to be compliant with those toggles but at some point they will not be viable, and I can't see Sonos, or any other company, willing to spend a lot of money maintaining toggles for an exceedingly small number of users.

New customers will know no different. Those users arriving in a discussion which is using old terms serves only to confuse, and maybe that would be a polarising force and maybe dilute the help process on this forum.

Sonopad is a paid for third party app that will bend, sway and do pirouettes to keep the money coming in. That the app provides the required control the case for toggles in Sonos is defeated by the existence of an excellent app that will do what you want. And with absolutely no confusion between users - possibly between Sonopad users...

@Alan. Where things are inserted into the queue needs more work. To my mind, this a move forward change that needs supporting.

Exactly. I think I understand what Sonos are trying to do, and I'm generally in favour. Incorporating a queue adds complications over an old-fashioned CD/iTunes-style UI, but Sonos were doing pretty well up to version 6.3 with the context-aware relationship between the play button and the queue. It should be super-easy to just find stuff and play it with the minimum number of button presses and have the queue work in an intuitive manner. But Sonos aren't there yet, and don't seem to be prioritising fixing bugs / UI / UX issues with the core product, which is a multi-room all-your-sources albums/playlists/tracks/whatever music player that "just works".

I cannot understand why older firmwares cannot be provided for download so that we can stop the relentless need to upgrade the software to new functionality we neither need or want and controller hardware that seems to be constantly becoming obsolescent ?

I am going to be a dinosaur and say I would have been happy to remain with the old "blue" controller.

I had a SqueezePlayer system years ago and that went down a similar path to Sonos with constant updates making it less usable and more and more unreliable.

All I want it to do is play the music I owned on CD. I have never asked for anything else.

If you want Sonos to function exactly like a CD player then I'd have thought that was actually easier now isn't it?