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Question

Sonos mobile app is unusable with NAS music shares

  • 2 June 2024
  • 5 replies
  • 130 views

I have been a long-time Sonos user, and this is by far one of the biggest blunders I have seen them make. The first being the whole S1 / S2 / old / new hardware guilt-trip and claiming that we all need to drop our old hardware and buy new. But I’m guessing enough peer pressure from those like me who sunk too much $$$ into our speakers have kept this older hardware continuing to run just fine, against all odds. Who could have guessed.

But this app update… it has basically rendered all my music located on my network storage, unusable. Before you go “oh this was the whole SMBv1 issue blah blah…there’s a fix… blah blah”… yeah, no. I’m an experienced network engineer. My “NAS” has been running on a Windows 2019 server using SMBv2/v3 shares for years without problems. I’ve had SMBv1 disabled for years now.  The problem happened as soon as the app was released not long ago, and I mistakenly trusted Sonos, and updated it on my phone.

What can I do right now?

  • I can play all my music just fine by initiating it from the Sonos Controller application running on my Windows 2019 server. All my speakers are receiving and playing music just fine. This is not an “SMBv1” share issue, again.
  • I can “browse” my network shares just fine within the Sonos Controller application, that were established using the \\server\share notation

What can’t I do right now?

  • My Android app shows my network shares (and other favorites network shares) grayed out. I can’t click on them or select them. I’ve tried deleting/recreating to no avail.
  • I can stream music from online services perfectly fine.
  • That’s about it.
  • The app seems hobbled, crippled… half-baked.  Do the right thing and put the old one back for crying outloud.
  • From what I can tell, it’s definitely an app problem.

Seriously… from one IT guy to another, or to the entire tech staff at Sonos in charge of this stuff. Please pay special attention to making sure existing features aren’t deprecated in the process of rolling out a new application. You guys know how to do QA, it’s your job!  And I’m sure you have pools of alpha/beta testers before any major release. It would be hard to believe none of them caught this… which leads me to believe this update was forced by the higher-ups before the product was even done baking. I don’t buy the whole “oh, we are taking baby steps, and re-releasing these commonly-used features again over the next few months”.  That is BS. What a bad idea that is. Who would even come up with something so ridiculous. No respectable company would do this.  Normal companies would build a new app that already performs all these functions, and adds new functionality on top of this.

I’m really, really disappointed that you, Sonos, could allow something like this to totally cripple the daily use for your huge loyal fanbase to play music, which my family and I (and I’m sure untold many others) have come to rely on for so many years. It truly is unacceptable.

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5 replies

P
Userlevel 1

As someone who is NOT a software expert or network engineer but a Mac user who isn’t afraid to use Terminal (under careful direction and instructions), I couldn’t agree more. When the whole “SMBv1” BS was raised I couldn’t believe it was a sensible response to ordinary consumers’ problems. Very few people even know what SMBv1 is - I don’t.

As I’ve said on other forums, Sonos has screwed up big time and instead of gaslighting its customers by pretending there’s nothing wrong and wheeling out techno-jargon they should own this mistake and tell customers clearly when it will be fixed.

I only use my music library; I don’t use Sonos’ ‘radio’ services; if I wanted to I could just use an internet enabled ‘radio’. I got through on the customer helpline eventually as I couldn’t believe there was no fix and was told it IS “an issue” but will be fixed in June. When I asked why Sonos had effectively disabled its own products I was told “we haven’t, you can use Sonos services”. The operator did at least have the decency to sound embarrassed at repeating the corporate ‘line’ as I just burst out laughing at this preposterous justification.

I shan’t be buying Sonos in future: too dishonest, let alone reliable.

G0atHax0r
Userlevel 4
Badge +3

As someone who is NOT a software expert or network engineer but a Mac user who isn’t afraid to use Terminal (under careful direction and instructions), I couldn’t agree more. When the whole “SMBv1” BS was raised I couldn’t believe it was a sensible response to ordinary consumers’ problems. Very few people even know what SMBv1 is - I don’t.

As I’ve said on other forums, Sonos has screwed up big time and instead of gaslighting its customers by pretending there’s nothing wrong and wheeling out techno-jargon they should own this mistake and tell customers clearly when it will be fixed.

I only use my music library; I don’t use Sonos’ ‘radio’ services; if I wanted to I could just use an internet enabled ‘radio’. I got through on the customer helpline eventually as I couldn’t believe there was no fix and was told it IS “an issue” but will be fixed in June. When I asked why Sonos had effectively disabled its own products I was told “we haven’t, you can use Sonos services”. The operator did at least have the decency to sound embarrassed at repeating the corporate ‘line’ as I just burst out laughing at this preposterous justification.

I shan’t be buying Sonos in future: too dishonest, let alone reliable.

 

Depending on the age of the NAS hardware, it’s typically a big non-issue. Download the latest firmware/software for your NAS, go into your admin console, and ensure SMBv1 is no longer enabled or available for your shares. SMBv1 is just an older protocol that is no longer deemed secure, and many products are moving away from its use. Sonos could have done the right thing by just displaying warnings in their own software/app that SMBv1 is “detected” or still in use, and that it needs to be taken care of, and giving PLENTY of time for this warning to sink in so the average user can figure out what to do.

In my case, I’m not even using SMBv1, and it still doesn’t work. Practically going from working one day, to not working the next due to an app update. Which is why the blame lies solely with Sonos and their poor execution and communication on this.

Definitely looking into alternative speaker systems myself at this point… There seem to be a few out there that are promising, and will definitely be settling for a company who listens to their customers, and ensures their products continue to work as advertised.

 

G

As someone who is NOT a software expert or network engineer but a Mac user who isn’t afraid to use Terminal (under careful direction and instructions), I couldn’t agree more. When the whole “SMBv1” BS was raised I couldn’t believe it was a sensible response to ordinary consumers’ problems. Very few people even know what SMBv1 is - I don’t.

As I’ve said on other forums, Sonos has screwed up big time and instead of gaslighting its customers by pretending there’s nothing wrong and wheeling out techno-jargon they should own this mistake and tell customers clearly when it will be fixed.

I only use my music library; I don’t use Sonos’ ‘radio’ services; if I wanted to I could just use an internet enabled ‘radio’. I got through on the customer helpline eventually as I couldn’t believe there was no fix and was told it IS “an issue” but will be fixed in June. When I asked why Sonos had effectively disabled its own products I was told “we haven’t, you can use Sonos services”. The operator did at least have the decency to sound embarrassed at repeating the corporate ‘line’ as I just burst out laughing at this preposterous justification.

I shan’t be buying Sonos in future: too dishonest, let alone reliable.

 

Depending on the age of the NAS hardware, it’s typically a big non-issue. Download the latest firmware/software for your NAS, go into your admin console, and ensure SMBv1 is no longer enabled or available for your shares. SMBv1 is just an older protocol that is no longer deemed secure, and many products are moving away from its use. Sonos could have done the right thing by just displaying warnings in their own software/app that SMBv1 is “detected” or still in use, and that it needs to be taken care of, and giving PLENTY of time for this warning to sink in so the average user can figure out what to do.

In my case, I’m not even using SMBv1, and it still doesn’t work. Practically going from working one day, to not working the next due to an app update. Which is why the blame lies solely with Sonos and their poor execution and communication on this.

Definitely looking into alternative speaker systems myself at this point… There seem to be a few out there that are promising, and will definitely be settling for a company who listens to their customers, and ensures their products continue to work as advertised.

 

So, do you have a NAS or not? Sonos uses samba/cifs to access file shares.  Most other systems will require you to operate a separate file server to integrate your local music.  Others may offer dnla/upnp file sharing but that implementation varies hugely between brands, and can be just as flaky as any other system. 

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G0atHax0r
Userlevel 4
Badge +3

So, do you have a NAS or not? Sonos uses samba/cifs to access file shares.  Most other systems will require you to operate a separate file server to integrate your local music.  Others may offer dnla/upnp file sharing but that implementation varies hugely between brands, and can be just as flaky as any other system. 

I built my own “NAS” using Windows 2019 Server -- it uses SMB. SMBv1 is turned off by default. I’ve been running my Sonos music shares on here for about 4 years now without issue. I’m also running a Plex media server on another Windows box, which uses dlna, mostly for pics/videos, but some music as well… but like you said, definitely much flakier in that configuration.

G0atHax0r
Userlevel 4
Badge +3

Wow, after diving some more into these threads, I found out there’s this whole “https://play.sonos.com” site that basically cloud-enables your local system. I had no idea…When did consent to this happen?  Articles are right about this… this opens up a huge privacy/security issue for those who are using simple, common or re-used passwords.  There’s ZERO MFA or anything else to help protect the users.

Anyways… I just tried it. After logging into the first time, it basically looks like what the Android app provides in a similar layout. Amazingly enough, the web app was able to see my network music shares just fine. But after playing with it for a little while, it started saying “Your speakers are offline”. Then everything went to hell in a handbasket.  The app wouldn’t display anything but streaming services any longer, and “unable to load content” error messages on the screen. Seems about just as flakey as the mobile app at this point. Logged out/in, same issue. Pointless. So the only way to still have some ability to play music at this point is using the Windows controller software. <sigh>

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