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Ive just updated to the new S2 app and wanted to share some of my thoughts and hope to hear other peoples opinions since updating. 
 

Positives:

  1. Sound quality seems to of improved following the update, I’ve tested home cinema and music and there seems to be an improvement in clarity, seems richer. I don’t know if this is my ears playing tricks on me but I’m as happy as ever with the excellent sound quality. 
  2. App opening, search and general usability/navigation seems faster.
  3. Room groups is a good feature and welcomed although I would love to see this working with Alexa so I can summon a group change via voice! Is this coming? 


Not so Positives:

  1. The update process is very cumbersome and should be completely automated, instead your community is left faffing about trying to work out what order to update things. I was stuck being told my system wasn’t compatible for s2 for some time with no clear instruction of what to do to update! 
  2. All the hype and the chance to reinvent the UI and excite their loyal community and the app is practically the same with only minor tweaks...we were all so excited for a new and shiny Sonos app! 
  3. The new colour scheme is hard on the eyes, why grey with a white menu bar? It all just blends together and looks so dated!
  4. No Dark mode….seriously? Give users the option, I assume you feel this will mess with your new colour scheme, personally I think it’s just lazy...design something that works light and dark. The now playing screen is better and clearer with the black menu bar and a coloured background drawn from the album art.
  5. The new mini now playing bar looks messy. When you are scrolling through albums they can be seen either side of the mini now playing bar now you have this new floating look and it just looks too busy, especially with the light grey dark grey white colour scheme, it all just blends together.
  6. Still no Spotify genre browsing - many of your Spotify community customers want the ability to browse Spotify genres back and were hoping for this functionality restored with this update. Instead when browsing Spotify through your app we are presented with our most listened to genres but with no options to browse all genres unless you exit your app and browse directly though the Spotify app. This has made music discovery from within your app pretty much obsolescent!
  7. What is with the new icon colour??? Very strange colour choice, and the colour isn’t replicated anywhere within your new app colour scheme other than the splash screen? This just doesn’t make sense? I would of thought you would at least inject it here and there within your app to keep some consistency in your design language….baffled? 

Hopefully this is the first update of many and more tweaking will come over the coming months based on your users feedback but I won’t hold my breath based on previous major updates. 

@craigski, iTunes Match is not supported, you’d need an Apple Music subscription; it’s worth the money, in my opinion.

@craigski, iTunes Match is not supported, you’d need an Apple Music subscription; it’s worth the money, in my opinion.

Thanks for confirming my understanding, I (wrongly) got excited with Ken’s comments above.

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.

@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.

I have an Apple Music account 

 

#7.

I literally would not care about the upgrade except for the baby crap brown orange color they chose. Honestly why do companies think that these jarring changes are acceptable? Leave the S1 and S2 icon both black. If you’ve come this far you know exactly what it is you have.

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.

@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.

I don’t know, as I use both of the Apple services and not really tried one without the other (however see below). It seems like it should work reading this article ... https://www.imore.com/itunes-match

You may need to check with Apple Support. In the past when my own subscription to Apple Music has expired and lapsed I’m fairly sure that the iTunes Match service continued in my case and that I still had access on my mobile devices to music that I had uploaded through iTunes on my PC, but can’t say if that is also the case with the service that Apple provide through the Sonos App. 

Just to clarify, I have both an Apple Music (Annual Subscription - £99) and their iTunes Match (Annual subscription £21.99) and currently see all my uploaded music through the Sonos App Apple service, but I’m not sure if one service works without the other.
 

I do know that the cheap iTunes Match subscription is required to see your own uploaded music on other devices, but you may need to check with Apple to see if it works without the Apple Music service, although as I mentioned earlier, I’m sure in the past that when I’ve let my Apple Music subscription lapse, that I’ve still had access to my uploaded music on my devices in the past, but that was a few years ago, so not sure what the position is these days.

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.

Fully agree with remark about legacy owners. I shall shun Sonos products from now on.

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