@Schlumpf . It was a Firmware only update.
Ross.

Hi @rosswells127 

It was already high on my list - I’m only having two problems with my Sonos system, and this is one of them. As much as I’d like the pay packet, I am not a particularly big fish in the Sonos pond.

I do get your meaning, however - but, for whatever reason, this particular issue was not fixed with this particular update - not that we ever said it would be. I’d like to explain to you why that is, but I just don’t have that information.

An app update was also scheduled for yesterday - one that looks quite significant, from what I have seen - but it has been postponed for a couple of days. I do not expect it to fix this issue, to be clear.

Thanks @Corry P , I sincerely appreciate your comments and efforts.
I too only have a couple of outstanding issues. I think a lot of people with local Music Libraries will be a lot happier once this one is fixed.

Ross.

I’ll be slightly less fed up. Happy is pushing it. Queue editing is also long overdue. Months just for basic function to be restored is nothing to be happy about. 

I’ll be relieved when they sort out the UI (esp. on a tablet) to allow easy use of the system again. 

Happy would be if they sort all of that out before the discounts in the run up to Xmas and they allow upgrade discounts to apply to sale prices by way of apology to existing customers… hint, hint… 

It’s worse than that!  Sonos has screwed up my desktop music library beyond belief.  I have sometimes more than 10 copies of an album.  Many have no cover. Most are incomplete or empty.  I have gone back to my master ITunes library and it’s fine, however updating the Sonos library doesn’t work. The software SUCKS!  It only makes it worse! In some cases, it has tried to create albums with only one song when there were multiple artists on the album.  This is crazy.  Sonos created a disaster and WE have now gone months and not Sonos has not fixed it or addressed the issues. Who has time to wait 45 minutes for customer service only to be told there’s not a current fix available?

Mike Clinton

I am taking steps to migrate to a different system. This will leave two sound bars as orphans. But I will be able to listen to my library in the living room and on the patio. I will also repeat this tale of woe to all who will listen. 

What system if you can say?

Extremely frustrating that compilation albums from the local library are still completely messed up here. 

It’s hard for me to understand how testing didn’t spot this prior to release - and how long it’s been known about without any resolution. Surely the fix simply cannot be that difficult, this aspect worked fine for many years before it was broken.

Can we please get an ETA and some info on how this is being tracked to resolution? Patience isn’t inexhaustible here and I do note that my Naim system is quite capable of playing a compilation album without problem. 
 

I think that their Firmware programmer (they probably only have 1 left) must be on holiday. 
Ross.

They’re partying with the tester …. 

 What tester???

Installed 80.09.05 iOS app update released 9/19. Opened iOS app, made my way to System Updates, was told to update the system, and did so. Made my way to Manage Music Library, deleted NAS library, then added it back in, to force complete re-indexing. Went and did other stuff for a while (15,000 tracks). No change in the mis-handling of compilation albums. 

I am personally running out of patience with this one….

Sonos, you broke music library compilations with the 16.3 firmware update released in July.
How long are we going to have to wait for you to have compilation albums treated the way they were back in ALL previous versions of your Firmware < 16.3 ??????

AAAARRRRGGGHHHH...

Ross.
 

All my listening is via my local library (other family members use streaming) and it’s been so painful using folders view as I have a graphic memory of each album cover and not album / artist name. Only played 2-3 albums since July on Sonos.

I am pretty much at the end of my Sonos journey having been here since 2005! 

I don’t think Sonos realise just how crippled they’ve made local library use, or that it’s the more complex users that are the ones more likely to recommend Sonos to other people. 

Sure, most people who own Sonos these days may well be single speaker or TV soundbar setups, but that doesn’t give you carte blanche to ride rough shod over those who are more likely to have been with Sonos from the start when it was all about the local library, queues and playlists. 

It is a real kick in the privates to your more longstanding customers.

Sonos has a history of throwing current users under the bus in search of new revenue. The “pause/play” button was originally a “mute” button that made it trivial to mute a single speaker of a group without needing an app. Sonos decided they needed an easy way to pause playback as you walked out the door, as it were, so they repurposed the mute button into a pause button with the advice to lower the speaker volume to zero when you needed to mute. Which did not then flag the speaker as muted, so if the group volume was increased, the volume on the pseudo-muted speaker became non-zero. 

This is the second and final time I will be burned by Sonos.

Sorry I didn't see Thresher's question to me until now. NAD 'S Bluos is the prime candidate. My audio consultant is getting a sample unit for me to try. I think their firm may move to NAD for distributed audio. Sonos failures are very out of step with the results these folks provide. 

I think there were already so many points on the to do list when the compilation cover bug came up. But in the meantime there were some updates and fixes. So I suppose the compilation bug now is much higher on the list and will get a fix soon. 
Might be a long time for those who don’t use any streaming services but just the library. Speaking for myself there is still plenty of music I enjoy on my Sonos system.

FYI: BluOS doesn’t and never will support SMB1 in case that is important to you. I investigated this a while back and had confirmation from their customer support

Heads up. I switched FROM Blue TO Sonos because of they way they broke the UI on their controllers. I’m not sure you’ll be any happier (this was some time back mind). Current Sonos system state is WAY worse than the complaints I had with Blue though. I wouldn’t care if they removed ALL streaming services from the system. I need my local library because, contrary to what the general public may think, steaming services do not contain all the world’s music.

I currently have navidrome installed on a Linux server and am using the Supersonic client on Windows and Linux and Symfonium on Android and it’s awesome. But… of course I can’t use my Sonos speakers with it.

Just FYI, an update from Nick Millington, Chief Innovation Officer at Sonos re this issue.
Note the last paragraph.

Here is my understanding of this issue:

 - At first there were ID3 tags that allowed users to input ONE Artist, Album, and Track Title field per MP3 file.  This was problematic for compilation albums because the artist had to be set to something like “Various Artists” in order to get the tracks on the album to all appear together when browsing by Artist>Album, which in turn “lost” the “true” artist name for the Now Playing UI of media players like iTunes and Sonos.

 - Later on, the popular media players at the time, Windows Media Player and iTunes, each introduced different solutions to this problem.  Windows Media Player introduced the concept of “Album Artist” and “Contributing Artists”.  Album Artist was similar to what was referred to as “File Under” at a record store - the headline artist for the album.  (example: Daft Punk - Get Lucky).  Contributing Artists would name other artists.  (example: Pharell Williams). iTunes introduced a different solution - a simple “flag” that declared the track part of a “compilation” album.  This would have the effect of grouping all such albums under a “faux” artist called Compilations while preserving the individual tracks’ artist fields.  

 - Because the two systems are somewhat different and incompatible, Sonos has a setting that determines which system shall be used to organize the music library when building the music index.

 - If one has a music library that contains albums using the “compilations” system, but Sonos is not configured to respect it, the net effect is that the compilation albums are “split up” into a series of identically named albums each filed under their respective track artists.  Same for the “Album Artists” system.

 - Something went wrong in this area - for example, the setting is somehow being forgotten or not respected. Assuming I am correctly understanding your issue, our resident experts have informed me a fix is coming with a player software update in a few weeks.

NM.

Ross.

It’s good to know that it’s still being looked into. Yes it is possible to get round the bug by using the Folders option but it’s a real pain.

Thanks for the update.

Anthony

Uh huh… would this be the same resident experts that broke it and then shipped the broken version in the first place?

A few weeks? Wonder if that is Sonos weeks or real world weeks. Maybe it will be Sonos’ Christmas gift for local library owners assuming Sonos weeks land before the end of the year.

This is absolutely astonishing!

I am running S1 and S2 on the same set of files (library) at the same time. The S1 firmware creates a perfect readout of the library. The S2 firmware, up until the update three or so weeks ago, also gave a perfect readout.  The latest S2 firmware has made the library to all intents and purposes unusable.

The coding was there for years in the S1 and the perfectly functional versions of the S2 firmware. You surely don't have to be a Chief Innovation Officer to be able to transfer the grouping concepts of the earlier versions into the courageous new one and have somebody write the relevant code. 

I can't help feeling that Nick Millington, or whoever fed him this stuff, simply doesn't understand what the users of the system put into their tags and how they expect to see the output of the indexing system.

This is just a smoke screen put up by people who have no understanding of how the Sonos system was developed over many years and are out of their depth. It's not rocket science,  Nick, and needing "a few weeks" to put this aspect of the courageous new app back to what it has been for years is just pathetic.

I don't care when you fix this, Nick, as I'm back on S1, but I feel sorry for those who can't switch back to using the new code which you and your Innovation honchos have been responsible for. It's terrible!

It’s poor isn’t it. 

They broke something really basic in indexing (on the speaker) that has worked for years and we get treated to some patronising history of meta data tagging.

If it’s something as simple as forgetting to respect an option, why hasn’t it been remedied quickly and WTF do they use as any kind of regression test? Various regressions seem to indicate they have very bad rigour here. 

Mid July this started are here we are closing in on mid October….