For shame, Sonos

  • 20 January 2023
  • 7 replies
  • 174 views

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For shame, Sonos.

For shame, Sonos.  How many years have you been leaking memory on macOS?  Do your developers not know about freeing allocated memory?  Any plans for making the controller not hoard memory on my machines?


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Userlevel 7
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Hi @MushyMiddle 

All of the speakers you own that are currently online are S2 compatible, but are running S1. They are also in a separate system from your S1-only products, so I see no reason for you not to upgrade this system to S2 software.

Of the offline units, your two Play:3s are also S2 compatible.

As for your 3 Bridges, we no longer recommend you use them anyway. Any speaker connected to ethernet will do just as good a job, if not better - a Play:3, for example. The Bridge was designed because WiFi at the time was not up to the task. Times have changed, and we’d much prefer you use WiFi than a Bridge. The Boost still has advantages, however.

That leaves one device - an offline device - as the only device holding you back from using S2. If you use the two Play:3s together with the Connect (I’m thinking for a turntable), you could leave them separate, as they are now (but still update the rest to S2), or get 30% - as I already mentioned - off a replacement Port and combine every device into one system. If you can name any other company that gives you 30% off a brand new product (or set of products) just because you bought from them previously (even 10 years ago or more), I would honestly love to know their name.

The 15% discounts are for owning Play;1s - they are compatible with S2, otherwise they’d each get you 30% off too.

If you don’t want to spend more money, I completely understand. You can still use your Connect just as you did when you bought it, you just can’t group it with S2 products for synched playback - that’s the only restriction if you do upgrade the rest to S2. Of course, you couldn’t do this anyway as they were configured as a different system from the rest.

If you want your Connect (and the Play:3s) to work with the rest of your system, you can still do that as long as you don’t update to S2. So, you would have exactly what it was you paid for, operating exactly as it ever did but even with your newer products none of which are S2-only - I really don’t understand your argument. 

Honestly, I think the majority of the irritation you feel is a result of misunderstanding your options.

Please do note that if you do update your One SL (Garage) to S2, it will not run S1 ever again.

I hope this helps.

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“...deprecated software for discontinued devices...”

If I have just *one* S1 device in my network, I cannot use the S2 app. I have probably 3-4 S1 devices (a couple more not in use, currently), and 5-6 S2 devices.  I could throw away over a thousand dollars worth of perfectly working S1 devices, but that seems daft.

Your so-called upgrade program isn’t really worth it, so I’m stuck with S1 in my network until they all die.  A 15% discount on S2 devices is barely better than what I can get from Amazon, factoring-in my 5% Prime card benefit and any other discounts available (a total of 10% or so).  Not exactly incentive to throw away working devices and paying for new ones.

Sonos chose to do things this way.  What *I* would have done is to stabilize the support of S1, and keep them in the same app.  Then, I would have only one app to support.  Somehow, third-party controllers manage to do it in one app - can’t your developers figure that out?  Or, more likely, this is a choice by your marketing department.

Free the memory!

Userlevel 7
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Hi @MushyMiddle 

To be clear, the Windows and macOS Sonos apps were significantly reduced in functionality sometime after smartphones came out (you can no longer configure Sonos systems as could be done before, only control playback and add Music Library and custom radio stations), and work on them was largely stopped in favour of the more convenient smartphones. Sometime after that, the apps and firmware were split into S1 and S2 in order to provide increased functionality for newer, more capable devices. This means that S1 is mostly static now, due to the limited CPU and RAM resources of the older products. Occasional bug fixes are still published, but these mostly now relate to changes in music service interactions. At no point has functionality on S1 been reduced. 

As a developer, how often do you work on depreciated software for discontinued devices?

We promise to provide software support for our devices for at least 5 years after their production ends, and we have provided software updates for our original products for around 12 years. Those original products gained significant features and abilities long after they were sold, and continue to operate without loss of functionality to this day.

We take all feedback seriously - the good and the bad. Thank you! I'm sorry you feel you have been let down by the behaviour of the app, I was just trying to be clear that you should not expect a change. There may be one, however - I just don’t know.

There is, however, a simple workaround for the issue you are reporting - close and reopen the app. Doing so will not result in audio interruptions or alteration of the queue.

I hope this helps.

 

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“...unlikely to ever change.”

As I said, for shame.  I will never upgrade to all-S2-compatible equipment with that attitude from Sonos.

Out here in the real world, we have more commitment to our customers. I’m a developer.  I do know how to free memory.

BTW, I cam confirm, this only happens while content is playing.

I suppose I could just never play anything, and the problem won’t recur.

Well done, Sonos.  You are ripe for competition.

Userlevel 7
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Hi @MushyMiddle 

Thanks!

If you keep the app open all day, and play music all day, then it may be likely that what you are seeing is a result of song artwork being cached. This would indeed make the memory usage only increase when something is actually playing.

For your information, the S1 desktop app is now unlikely to ever change.

The macOS kernel’s memory manager will relegate such data to a page file (virtual memory on disk) should other processes require RAM, so this is unlikely to significantly impact the performance of your computer, and this action won’t significantly affect the Sonos app either.

I hope this helps.

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MacBook Air M1, MacBook Air M2, MacBook Pro 16, maybe MacBook Pro (2013).  It happens on all of them, across multiple OS’s (Ventura, back to at least Mojave).  I generally keep the controller open, and it seems to consume around 512MB/day - it’s up from 2.29GB to 2.79GB since I posted that, some 5 hours ago.

This is not a new problem, and has previously been reported by several people on this forum, with no response from Sonos.

I have a *feeling* that it only happens when music is playing - I mostly listen to Sirius XM, all day, so I suppose it could be related to that.  During the holiday season I mostly listened to ripped CDs, and it’s possible that the problem went away during that period.  Can’t recall for sure.

Userlevel 7
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Hi @MushyMiddle 

Thanks for your post!

I have a couple of questions for you, if you don’t mind: What’s your Mac’s model information? Also, how long had the Sonos app been open for when you saw this?

Thanks!

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