What kind of “torture”? More detail please.

What’s tortuous? It seems to go pretty smoothly for me - albeit only a relatively small 8-speaker setup. It seems a bit slow sometimes but that’s just a subjective statement: I’ve never bothered to time an update session. And it’s certainly not “chaotic”.

No torture here, I have twelve Sonos devices and a solid local network.

I just leave it to update overnight when it wants to. It removes the controller dependency, which can help with a larger household. Controllers are then simply updated adhoc as used, assuming they haven’t already been auto-updated by the OS.

IP addresses are reserved. 

I haven’t had an update or power fail issue since setting static IP addresses for my Sonos.

Look at your router’s DHCP page and it should guide you through the process.

Power down all Sonos, reboot the router, power up your Sonos.

Ratty, how do I set updates to automatic?

https://support.sonos.com/en-gb/article/update-your-sonos-speakers#:~:text=for%20Updates.-,Scheduling%20updates,-To%20schedule%20when

Thanks ratty.   I set the updates to automatic and will hope for an end to my suffering.