I think a lot of people are doing this. My Roam refused to play this morning, switched to SonoPhone and played the playlist right away. (Not affiliated just a user)

Been using it since the app failure.  Doesn’t solve every problem, but it has many of the missing SONOS features.

WHY do I have to pay for a product to fix problems SONOS introduced with a forced update??  I agree SonoPhone is much superior to the mess of SONOS ap

In despair at the new Sonos app, I am now using an alternative app to control my Sonos system - the app is called sonophone.  It works and is reliable. I can control my entire Sonos system again and it’s a dream.  

Were you having issues with the Sonos App then? If so, what were they and did you discuss the matter with Sonos Support Staff? I find the new Sonos App works okay on my iPhone (example attached).

I was having major issues with the new Sonos app. It is unresponsive and unreliable. Volume control, pause control, room control to name a few. I did discuss this with Sonos but they seemed to be in denial. If you read the feedback on here and many other sites, I think you’ll find that you are in the minority. 

I have the new Sonos app on my iPhone.  The new layout is an improvement.  My major problems were:

that the volume control didn’t work, especially for the two speakers which I have linked together.

that the volume would reset itself randomly.

that the overall responsiveness was so slow that I didn’t know if a command had been recognised or not.

As a result, turning on the radio in the kitchen & dining room took 5 minutes instead of a second or two (and my wife was not impressed!)

When I visited the Sonos community, I realised that I was not alone so I didn’t call Sonos support.

It’s a shame because some functions, such as adding new speakers, have become much better in recent years.  SonoPhone is a cheap solution whilst Sonos sorts the app out.  
 

I agree, after months of frustration with the new Sonos app it’s a relief to now be able to control my music again. With the sonophone app. 

I would still have personally called Sonos Support, because some of the things you mention might have been quickly resolved by moving a device, say with a low SNR level to a more suitable spot, or switching the band, or channel used, to a more suitable fixed non-overlapping channel, with 20MHz channel-width. Those are things which quickly spring to mind as possibilities that might cause the issues you describe.

Or it could be an intermittent mDNS discovery issue by the controller - Sonos Staff have the tools that can sometimes help to pin-point the cause and let you quickly rectify things often with some simple step-by-step changes.

Also these things may not fix themselves, although on other occasions, a simple reboot of a product and/or router, or a router setting change (IGMP proxy etc;) might quickly resolve the issue for you.

@Iain Cardiff,

Just to add that the Sonos App works fine for our Home setup. No issues seen with volume control, simply by moving some devices over to the faster 5Ghz band in some cases and setting up all with decent SNR levels (45dB and above) and ensuring all was working well with mDNS ‘device discovery’ over the LAN subnet - the App has been fine, in fact in some areas we found it performed quicker than some 3rd party Apps - so it may still be worth speaking to Sonos Support about the issues you were seeing.

Here is the link to contact Sonos Support (if required)…

 https://support.sonos.com/s/contact

I for one do not have a clue what you’re talking about (5Ghz, SNR, MDNS ???).  We just want an app that works. Since the May update I, and many others have not been able to control our Sonos systems.  We are frustrated!

With the sonophone app we can enjoy our music again and more importantly control it!

We want an app that works, we don’t want the CEO acknowledging that “too many of you have experienced significant problems with our new app” and that “since launch we have found a number of issues”.

We want an app that works so while Sonos attempt to fix their app with updates let’s use the sonophone app.  It’s fast and reliable and lets us control and enjoy our music again.

I contacted Sonos support, they confirmed that their app was problematic and advised that their updates would rectify the issues. Let’s all use the sonophone app while we wait!

Thank you @Ken_Griffiths for your response.  I used to work in computing so I understand what you’re saying.  Once upon a time I enjoyed the expense and the inconvenience of fiddling with technology but now I just want a consumer product to work today like it did yesterday.  SonoPhone allows my Sonos kit to do just that.  

I appreciate yourself and others may not understand some of the terms mentioned, but you don’t actually need to understand them - that’s where the Sonos Staff come in.

I was simply suggesting to @Iain Cardiff the possible causes of the type of issues seen and they might be an easy fix - that’s for the Sonos Staff to help look into the matter and perhaps give guidance.

In your own case @Thomas_129, it sounds like there were issues the Staff could not resolve and perhaps the Sonos engineers maybe able to fix them with future updates, but in Iain’s case it could quite easily turn out to be a different outcome. Nothing ventured, nothing gained etc. that’s why I was suggesting that user could still go onto contact Sonos Support.

If you want to outline your network and Sonos setup and what you did before switching to SonoPhone, I will be happy to try to contribute any suggestions here too to perhaps assist you. If nothing else, if you then do go onto call Sonos Support, you can refer them to any posts here and the things you’ve tried so far, as that perhaps may assist the Support Staff too and save you call-time and going over the same ground twice. If using managed switches too - just briefly outline any STP settings.

I do have to go out for a few hours, but will happily return to this thread later, or tomorrow, to try to assist if you want to go down that route.. and there are plenty of other users here in the community too who might want to contribute, especially as you have knowledge of these things too, it might easy to do if you can perhaps provide the detail.

I have reported the problems to Sonos, many others have too.  Yet still we have to wait months for “updates”, for a solution so that we can use our systems  (see the timetable of updates in the CEO letter). 

Of course the Sonos engineers and Patrick Spence,  Sonos CEO are very well aware of all the problems we’re experiencing.  Read the letter from the CEO - they are very aware of the problems - and are very apologetic. 

Do you think they are not aware of these threads, the feedback, the negative reviews. Do you think no-one has reported the issues? Of course they have.  

Please stop making excuses for Sonos incompetence. If your system is working perfectly, that’s great.  In the meantime we’ll use the excellent sonophone app. 

When it comes to device discovery issues specifically, it is clear that Support haven’t really got a clue (they are actually suggesting to many that they factory reset their devices!), which also implies that Sonos engineering still don’t have a full grip of what is going on. Its been almost three months..

I have the benefit of using a PC and a bunch of and networking tools with multiple apps I can try (many of which I wrote myself), and even I can’t tell what the hell is going on until recently.

My wife’s complaining (she only uses her iPhone) has got to the point that I have made some progress as to the cause of the problems on my personal network, and I’ve been experimenting with some solutions. I’ll be sharing some of my discoveries soon on an update of my LinkedIn post.

Of course I have no idea as to the problems on anyone else’s network, and I have some sympathy for Sonos engineering in this regard. What they really need is a tcpdump from a customer router, or, at minimum, a NetMon/Wireshark scan from a problematic system. However there are major technical and PII barriers to them getting such information from customer systems.

Don’t you think that a public US company trading on NASDEQ with a market capitalisation of approx. $1.65 billion and approx. 15.3 million worldwide customers could rectify a knowingly flawed product (the app) faster, more efficiently than this?

They have known for 3 months that there are major issues with the new app.  They have known for 3 months that it was flawed.  They know that customers are frustrated, even angry.  The negative feedback is piling up.

Releasing such a flawed product and then not to rectify the issue fast enough is surely damaging the brand if not corporate suicide.  Sonos share prices have dropped in the last 3 years, what does the future hold for Sonos?

It's a shame Sonophone isn't available for Android too. They would make a killing at the moment..

Would he though? One of the perceived issues with the Android app market is it is too easy to avoid paying for apps. I am not an Android person, but I know how to download an apk.