I think I may need to retract my final point around the app icon. I can perhaps see why you chose such an unusual app colour choice. It stands out so much on the users home screen, almost like its out of place which I suppose is actually a good thing from a marketing perspective as it draws your eyes straight to it and your brand is presented loud and clear to the user! I take it back and give you a big for this design choice.....either that or you know some inside info on the upcoming universal iOS/Android design language changes for the future, perhaps we’re moving away from the flat brightly coloured era! 

Anyway, give us dark mode and better Alexa integration as well as perhaps a quick meeting with Spotify to iron out the small browsing restrictions and I recon you will get a 10/10 from the majority of your community. 

Keep up the good work Sonos!

I can forgive them using the colour of steatorrhoea (unfortunate) for the icon, they just need to sort out the iPad app so the album art isn’t 2/3rd its size on the previous version…

Interesting…..

Underwhelming.

The app has actually lost functionality. Streaming Deezer, I could go to the menu of a song or album, then a further menu, then explore the artist. Not now. The second menu has gone.

It still uses a grid to display albums. Why not have the option of stacking vertically? Sooo much scrolling required when compared to other apps.

Album artwork still take a second or so to render. Annoying - still / again.

LastFM scrobbles are duplicated now, with the name of the speaker prefixed to the artist name on one of the scrobbles.

Also now, whenever I play a new album I have to choose which room to hear it in? It doesn’t default to the last played any more.

Never really been a fan of the Sonos app, but the new one has not really improved on much.

Contrary to others, I do think it looks a little bit nicer than the S1. But all subjective. Really, we just want it to function well.

The S2 app works exactly as it used in older versions to for my large Audible Book Collection, in other words, I still cannot sort or search the collection - fairly useless if the collection is more than a hundred books - it takes several minutes to scroll manually down the book list to try to find a book.  The book is still presented in an unsorted and ungrouped list/layout of book covers. 

This issue is totally with the Audible implementation, sorting of other large lists and collections works fine.

I have provided a diagnostic number for support - I am not confident it will ever get fixed.  The folks at Audible just refer me to the Apple Audible App - which works well enough for most purposes.  But the Sonos is claimed to support Audible books - it does not to any useful extent in large book colllections.  My previous five (5) submission did not generate a single response.

Other than this - the sole reason I bought Sonos a couple of years back - S2 works.

Unfortunately, Sonos has to rely on the data that is given them by the folks at Audible. Sonos has not access to the code running on the Audible servers. So if Audible chooses not to integrate the full API that Sonos has written for the purpose, there really isn’t much Sonos can do about it, other than be petulant and remove Audible from the Sonos experience. 

One would think it might be a simple coding problem to not separate the old hardware users on a separate app. The app could recognize the old equipment and apply different rules to it.

But it seems Sonos is intent on forcing a lesser experience on the legacy owners, plenty of whom own multiple units new & old, and notably who helped build this company up by their enthusiasm over the years.

How would that work for people that are running slit systems S1 and S2?  As well, it would also mean that as S2 gets new features, S1 would have to be retested to verify nothing broke.  With separate apps, there is no chance of that.

if it can be done in separate apps, it can be done in a single app...the old stuff just gets sandboxed. Sonos engineers will be doing the work either way working on both apps.

At the end of the day, the app is just delivering music to the speakers. The old hardware can handle that just fine. Sharing between legacy & new hardware is exactly the kind of thing software is good at.

Thanks 

Wrong.  I have a split system.  When I want to control my S2 speakers, I use that app.  For S1, the S1 app.  I do not want to have to open the app and then chose which system I want to control.  And again, if control of both systems was available in the same app, then every update to Sonos on S2 would require testing to make sure S1 still works.  This is particularly true if S1 is getting the updated experience you’re saying that you would want.

The app does not deliver music to the speakers.  It’s a controller only.  The devices communicate directly with streaming services and each other.  Software has been keeping legacy and new hardware working together for a long time now, But hardware can only go so far in keeping up with software and functionality improvements.  If you don’t care for the functionality improvements that go beyond what your legacy hardware can handle, then an S1 system is your better option.

I do care & I want both. Software has the ability to distinguish and make it happen.

I seriously doubt you WANT two separate apps to control the hardware that you bought on the premise that it worked as a system, together or in parts, as determined by the single app on your device.

The legacy speakers are still capable of streaming a feed, however that happens. That’s what they do. They may not be able to take voice instructions or order me a magazine subscriptions or listen to a family argument over which video to watch to determine how to sell stuff to me; but they can still stream a feed. And the “controller” can help manage the way in which it does that. If SONOS wanted to.

Are you complaining about the split of S1 and S2 systems, or about the need to use 2 separate apps for the 2 separate systems?   

The introduction of S2 has nothing to do with voice control, which will be operating the same as it currently does in S1.  No Sonos can’t use the controller to manage communication between devices.   Since it’s inception, the controller has never been involved with audio playback, and was not even required to be present for the speakers to operate even. 

I am not happy that there are now two apps. SONOS was founded on the orchestrating multiple units simply on a single app.

I really don’t care to go into the weeds on how the unit delivers sound; that is irrelevant. My hyperbole doesn’t deserve pedantic scrutiny. The simple fact is that SONOS can manage the two systems but has chosen not to. The evidence of that is that they are producing two apps and have dedicated teams to supporting both. That same effort could be spent making the apparent distinction seamless and invisible to us as users.

(I suppose it is entirely possible that SONOS isn’t actually managing the S1 app in an earnest way and is just going to let it die on the vine; in which case, that would add insult to injury.)

So you would be ok with 2 separate systems that don’t communicate with each other as long as you can control them from the same app.

Your claim was that software could make make it all work the way you think it should.  I don’t see how you can confidently make that claim without some understanding of how Sonos works.  First I’ve heard of Sonos having dedicated support staffs for the different systems.  Not sure where you got that information from, but anyway...I don’t see how support for 2 systems is equivalent in effort to combining two systems to work on a single app.

Sonos was very clear about their intentions for S1.  It will not receive any functionality updates, only bug fix and securty updates within the limits of the hardware.

1. Get’s in the weeds about how Sonos should be able to keep legacy and modern devices working together.
2. Is corrected about how the weeds work.
3. States that they don’t want to get into the weeds. 

Damn, is the pandemic over?  Because I swear this exchange means I’m right back in a meeting at work!

My S1 now says  it is incompatible with my system, forces me to upgrade to S2 and the S2 app won’t get past the Terms of Use screen. I am so fed up with SONOS. First they stop supporting direct play of my Applemusic library on all of my Apple devices, now this?  A wonderful product has  been just destroyed with the worst software rollouts ever. Who’s running this company now? Now I get to spend dozens of hours trying to fix this POS system. I have a dozen devices and I’ll bet I will be forced to set them all back up again individually. 

I discovered that the only way S2 would load onto my devices was to download it, scroll to the terms of use screen, then get out and log into SONOS on my browser, then go back to the S2 app and wait….I have no idea why this seemed to work because it didn’t the last three trys. Why doesn’t SONOS tell you that you have to log into your online SONOS account first???

That’s strange and it definitely wasn’t my experience. Having initially upgraded all devices to S1, I chose to switch off my old legacy devices and then updated my remaining powered on devices to S2.

I then reset my S1 App and old legacy devices and set those up on an entirely separate household and both systems are working fine. I have left both on the same subnet with a Boost operating as the root bridge for my S2 household ...and a wired device to run my S1 household on SonosNet aswell. I did not have to login online using my browser just both Apps required my account credentials for product registration purposes.

One helpful thing I would like to now see is the online account ‘system tab’ reflect the households I have and to show which devices are in each created household.

Unfortunately...or fortunately...I have no desire to learn code or how to set up complicated systems. I bought SONOS originally because it was very simple to set up. Sadly, as they lard up the software it has become nothing I would want to attempt as a new user. I still miss being able to play my Apple music library directly…..the original sin. The free Google Music sucks. 

Just subscribe to Apple‘s iTunes Match and you can play your Apple Music Library through the Apple Music service built into the Sonos app. It maybe £/$/€25 per year (annual payment), but it’s a small price to pay to access your iTunes library from virtually any device whilst at home or on the go. I have thousands of ‘ripped’ tracks that are accessible using that method. They’re also playable on any Airplay device too using the Apple Music App.

I don’t understand - all music I have purchased via Apple is available in itunes (and thus part of my Sonos Music Library), and also that same music is available through the “Apple Music” service tied into Sonos.  So it is all there to be played.  Alternatively, if you are looking to play via the Apple Music app itself (and not while using the Sonos app), you can send it via Airplay to Sonos speakers (assuming yours are the Airplay Sonos capable speakers).

The right hand line of letters on Albums is not responding. I can only view those under A and B

@Ken_Griffiths  can you do this without an Apple Music Subscription. ie just Apple Match? I’m trying this and when trying to add Apple Music the flow from Sonos S2 app is asking me to subscribe to Apple Music. I get message:

You are not an

Apple Music

Subscriber

But I do have an Apple Match subscription that you describe above.