Can anybody suggest me an alternative to Sonos?

Yes. Your alternative is to show a little patience and wait a couple weeks.  They already fixed a lot of issues with the latest updates.  What makes you think they won’t fix the rest in a few weeks or so?

And I realize people experience the new app differently.  But for me it loads way faster, I don’t need to add a new device, so no issues there, and my 4 ones, Roam, and Port are always there. And access to my local library albums now works with the last fixes.  

I have one of my Ones hardwired.  I think that makes a lot of difference in happiness with Sonos both before and after the new app.  If you can hardwire just one of your devices the whole thing seems to work better. 

I’ve been a loyal customer for years.  I assume a fix for the various issues is forthcoming.  Why do you assume it is not?  And local library access now works for me.  Have you made sure to do all the latest updates and fixes, and followed the instructions for those still getting library errors?

I realized after the initial update when I lost local library access, that Apple Music has all your stuff from your iTunes library (perhaps because I share the default music folder on my windows PC, which includes “iTunes Media”).  So have you tried the Apple Music service via Sonos to access your local iTunes library?  That worked for me as a work around.  All my local library albums and playlists in iTunes could be accessed that way and played in Sonos. 

 

I’ve hit the Verified button by mistake and, as for everything made by F***** Sonos there is no option to UNDO.

It’s smarter to hunt for a new device, which was my question in the first place!

Any suggestions????

Anyone try reloading their phone from a backup from before the update? Just something to try.. I personally wait for Peter Pee to review any Sonos update after the sub mess a year or so ago….

Hold up. They changed the SMB requirements. Your library missing is probably this. What NAS? You should contact support, they should be able to walk you through the adjustment. Worst case you need to buy a new NAS 😬

marcos51, izi0, 

first off, it is only natural that people are pissed off at this whole app debacle and looking for alternatives. (I see the same few provocateurs/ trolls trying to minimize the screwup, and attitude towards its customers by Sonos. I think they enjoy tweaking people. PAY THEM NO MIND, “be patient” or “Pretend this is not a massive screwup” are not really strategies!)  

There are a lot of alternatives to Sonos, and more coming on line all the time. Some cheaper, some more expensive, all more reliable. All produced by companies that are unlikely to declare war on its customer base (repeatedly) like Sonos. However I’ll give you one idea that has worked very well for me while waiting for a new system to arrive. I have been using Roon and it has been fabulous. It found my speakers and local library immediately. It has alot of nice features and makes playing my music easy. I am going to stay with Roon without the Sonos and be happy. Cost is fine. Additionally Roon sells software, so its pretty unlikely they would ever release something that disables your system. There are lots of Roon ready and Roon tested streamers available. You can look on their website. Best advice, ignore the eejits, find a great system that has more secure software than Sonos and move on and forget Sonos. I think its pretty obvious to anyone that investing in equipment now made by Sonos and being hostage to the whims of a distrustful company is pretty silly. 

@izi0 with so many of us unhappy this is a great place for a discussion like this.

Because making decisions like this in haste often leads to regret my planned approach is:

• Short term - accept that things are lest than perfect with Sonos which is an understatement. I am managing to limp along as is mainly by ignoring the messages that tell me my system is no more and launching the app multiple times until it works. I also have work around like using an alarm for my sleep timer at night.
• Medium term - I will look at options. Yamaha will be high on my list as I have a number of their guitars and other musical equipment and they are a brand I trust. I will also continue to see how the app evolves to help determine when, not if, I will move away from Sonos. The disdain they have shown us is reprehensible. But there is a reason that I have 13 Sonos speakers across 5 rooms and it works. What I won’t be doing is upgrading a pair of surrounds, Play:1 to Era 100, and a Play:3 to Era 300. I planned to do this because of how good the Era 100s are as surrounds in a room that I just set up.
• Long term - the simple fact is that my Sonos system does what I want and sounds good. Sure there are ways that I could improve it but I was really happy with the Play:1 surrounds before I heard the Era 100. My guess is that I have a good 5 to 10 years left with the speakers that I have so as long as Sonos don’t do anything else stupid, and assuming the app gets fixed, I will just enjoy what I have. If an individual speaker fails then I’ll probably look at eBay for a replacement. My current assumption is that I would need to replace everything at once when I do but that does not factor in the way that my circumstances will change.

If I had a smaller setup, or if multi room was not important to me, I would probably have already purchased something else because this has disrupted my music listening experience. 

And do keep in mind that selling our speakers does not impact Sonos because they already have our money for the speakers that we have. What hurts them is not adding speakers, not upgrading speakers and not buying the new headphones.

Audirvana definitely deserves a look for those with a ‘desktop’ setup. Audirvana is a beautiful and high-audio-quality player that excels with local library music (as well as lossless streaming music). It is primarily useful driving speakers directly from your Windows/Mac machine, though it does support UpNP/DLNA/Chromecast devices. And there is a ‘remote’ mobile app.

And it wouldn’t capture any firmware updates to the Sonos devices either - A non starter I suspect.

I’m running the 16.2 firmware and the Android 16.1 app works great.