problems with new Sonos app

Terrible!

That’s just one word to describe it. Many times it just doesn’t find my system. Skipping songs, pausing, everything takes a lot of time. I’ve checked this forum and people are complaining, but then I check reddit, like this thread, and it seems like a lot doesn’t even end up on this forum. And Sonos giving out press releases like this one saying how everything is rosy, that’s so s***** from a company I’ve been with for around 10 years already.

Moderator Note: Modified in accordance with the Community Code of Conduct.

And once again, nothing working, Arc not recognized, green light never changes to white, other Five speakers not recognized, rebooted router, did factory resets...this is getting fargin’ old, on second of working on this bad product sh*t - no solution working like in the past, now listening to simple desktop pc speakers and tv speakers, with several thousand dollars of Sonos crap sitting idle….

After taking more than an hour to get everything working again, now the Arc and Woofer do not stay connected - especially if I switch between playing music and watching tv - never had this before - I GUESS THIS IS THE CLEVER WAY OF MAKING YOU PURCHASE THE UPGRADED ARC - NOT!

And once again, everything not connecting again - so back to doing resets on everything - I am going to keep posting here everytime this crap happens so that perhaps folks stop buying these turd speakers….

Having just retired, I’ve just started listening to music again no being in the office.

Wow, why is it so hard?  Using my iPad, it seems to randomly replace your queue when trying to add songs, sometimes plays the album when you just want a single song from it.

Switches and replaces queues when you want to add a song to the bottom.

Adjusting volume, the window keeps closing etc.  quite a few other issues and I’ve only been going with it for an hour so far.

Can I use the old app somehow, that was great, I figured after seeing comments for 6 months, it would all be sorted by now.

Absolutely agree. Sonos used to be the best. Now it honestly sucks. The delay is so bad now first of all, takes 3-4 seconds or not at all to fast forward, pause, change volume anything. Also constantly having to “re authorize” services. Total crap. If this doesn’t get fixed soon I am selling all of it. The. Getting the new Apple system that is coming out. Volume controls are the worst, not being able to remove old rooms, mine now goes loud then quiet, then loud then totally unresponsive to control with blasting music so I have to go and unplug the entire group of speakers. Worst. Sonos is not even responding to any concerns or questions at all. Guessing they must have sold to a new shit owner or something. How does an amazing system go from great to complete garbage so quickly. 🤔 wonder if it has anything to do with society’s woke policies much…..just a thought. 

Wow! I just had 55 minutes of playing music on my Sonus devices without a speaker dropping off or a pause in the music...now back to the same crapola...fix the app, Sonus

Who built this new app/ecosystem and who vetted them? Who’s stupid idea was this? This new Sonos experience is terrible and incredibly frustrating. Please fix it ASAP! I want incredibly simple menu, no bling, no ads, no suggestions, no sonos radio, no multiple swipe up screens, No album covers. There are like a hundred different menus for a SPEAKER!! Show me my music sources and my speakers. Play, stop, skip, pause that’s it. I bought sonos to listen to music not to look at your app. Sonos is a speaker company not an app company. I used to be a big advocate for Sonos. I would tell people all about it every time anyone came over. I cannot in good faith recommend sonos to anyone until you fix this pile of garbage.  

@Jwdub Yup, I now invite people over who are considering buying speakers to show them how great the sound quality is - for 10 minutes before dropping off - debating whether to salvage my investment by hooking things up via ugly ethernet cables, but I bet that does not solve the whole problem

That’s clearly not an issue connected to the new Sonos App. The App is a controller of their Sonos devices and not a music ‘player’. Once music playback is started by the Sonos App, then you can actually close the App, shut down the mobile device and the speakers should continue playing. So you likely’ either have a hardware issue, or there is a network connection issue between the audio source and your playing speaker(s). I would start with taking a look at the local network setup. See this Sonos support link for some initial advice:

https://support.sonos.com/en-us/article/reduce-wireless-interference

If the issues persist however, then it maybe best to reproduce the issue(s) seen and then immediately submit a Sonos system diagnostic report from within the Sonos App, note it’s reference and contact/chat with Sonos Support Staff via this LINK and see what the Staff can perhaps suggest to help you to resolve the matter.

Thank you Ken_Griffiths, but I have spent, since August, over 10 hours on several phone calls with Sonos tech support, have submitted diagnostics, have reset routers, have made sure the router is recognized, blah, blah, blah, and, as was done in a response to me a few weeks ago, there is a tendency for Sonos Loyalists to blame the user, their respective router set up, etc., and have been once called stupid - I have had computers and related equipment since the late 70’s, and will wait until after Xmas to dump my system and speakers and move back to Bose...look at all the posts in the forums, we all cannot be idiots or not have engaged with Sonos tech support in useless efforts….my first Sonos was acquired about 10 years ago, problems have only surfaced since the new app, so I guess I must have inadvertently changed my setup in my sleep to have things not work well anymore...

Sounds like Ken is a Sonos employee. This has nothing to do with anything other than Sonos’s new updates or app tweaks. I have had Sonos for ever since the beginning and it has been great for me  I have new equipment too. No mini sub and roam speakers etc. the system is crap now. I hate it. I use  the tv for music now and a sound bar that’s how bad it has gotten so don’t you dare try to say it is a network problem or anything other than Sonos itself. I have at least 10-15 people that I know going through the same thing. 

Moderator edit: Sonos staff are clearly marked as such.

I have a legal background (but, I hate lawyers), but I will have to say, for a clever one if you are out there, there are the elements of a class action here….totally destroyed value of product

My post was not intended to offend (sorry if you took it that way) but what you describe is certainly not Sonos App related - it must be something ‘coincidental’ that’s stopping the speakers playing. I’d at the very least set aside your thoughts about it being App-related and look closer at the matter ‘more likely’ lying elsewhere.

I started music playing on a group of Sonos speakers this morning and they’ve played nearly all day without stopping and I’ve not opened the App at all since earlier on.

If you still think it’s App related then I think you’re looking in the wrong place - my thoughts are to change your WiFi settings - as examples, maybe try…

• Setting a different non-overlapping 2.4Ghz channel on your local router
• Set the channel-width for the 2.4Ghz band to 20 MHz only.
• If using multiple WiFi access points, then blacklist Sonos so they all use the routers WiFi AP only.
• Reserve the Sonos IP addresses in the routers DHCP reservation table.
• If using SonosNet (not recommended these days) then switch to using the routers WiFi instead and where devices allow, get them to use the faster 5Ghz band, but ensure in any event, that your device SNR levels shown in the Sonos App are 45dB or higher. If you have to use SonosNet for any reason, such as the router not supporting the proxying of some Sonos IP addresses via primary devices, then at the very least ensure the SonosNet channel is not the same as the chosen router WiFi channel.

I’d start with those few suggestions and see if that might resolve your playback issues. 

I agree, I have spent thousands of dollars on Sonos and now I basically can’t use it at all. Really pisses me off. 

@Ken_Griffiths - No, you were not the one acting in an insulting manner, so no need to apologize.  It is not a playback issue, it is the system dropping off components (and yes, I tossed the Sonos Boost to the side a while ago) - oddly this may be a result of focusing on mobile device apps instead of base operating systems, i.e., I get better results, albeit limited, if I DELETE the app from my mobile device and just use it off the desktop PC (and high-end, Alienware R11, Killer Bluetooth, 1 Gig service), and best of all, when all this started to happen, I moved everything into one room so that connectivity by WiFi would not even be the hint of an isssue.  If I feel like I have to play tech support, will fool around with some of things you have suggested (and have tried some of them in the past).  Let me state it this way, there are times where the mobile app tries to tell me I have nothing connected whereas the desktop lets me control things.  So if it works on the Desktop, and works badly from a mobile device, I believe Occam’s Razor is applicable.

Perhaps you can take the lead then with your ‘legal background’ anyway and begin with this link as your starting point…

https://www.sonos.com/en-us/legal/terms-of-use

At the very least, without using lawyers, perhaps let us know how the arbitration and the informal dispute resolution steps go for you.

Support this Post and let's wake up Sonos together

https://en.community.sonos.com/general-feedback-and-conversation-229090/a-plea-for-openness-sonos-let-s-build-a-better-future-together-6923515

That’s of course a completely different matter from the music playback stopping mid-flow, the thoughts here are that anyone with the type of issue you describe ‘perhaps’ could have a multicast ‘device discovery’ issue across their network that’s preventing the controller device from communicating with their Sonos speakers. See attached re: SSDP/mDNS.

Such communication failure can occur across networks that use WiFi extenders, EoP adapters, or if managed switches are misconfigured. It can also happen if some settings on a local router are incorrect, or there’s software running on the mobile device that is getting in the way of the multicast communication, such as security software, VPN client, firewall, site blockers etc.

I’d perhaps investigate further in the areas mentioned and if still no luck, then it maybe best to reproduce the issue(s) seen and then immediately submit a Sonos system diagnostic report from within the Sonos App, note it’s reference and contact/chat with Sonos Support Staff via this LINK and see what the Staff can perhaps suggest to help you to resolve the matter.

In Europe, it is now possible to sue companies like Sonos due to new legislation requiring them to provide functional software. The advertised features must work properly and deliver what they promise.

​@Ken_Griffiths One last thought, and then I shall give this a rest.

A legitimate argument can be made that by negligently releasing the app update that messed things up (and there is enough out there that staff at Sonos opposed the release as “premature”), that the modification to the product caused by the app rendered the product to be different than the product originally covered by the Terms of Service thereby creating a basis to set aside the dispute resolution procedures in the Terms of Service.  While the argument most likely would not prevail in the USA, it will in Europe, and at a minimum, Sonos will have to allocate resources to defeat the argument - and yes, that gets all of us nowhere, but no speakers that work, nowhere sounds fine to me.

This is kinda funny 🤣 

This is 100% nothing to do with anything network / wifi related. Sonos themselves came out with a massive apology not that long ago telling everyone that it IS the app and they are working on a fix. That being said this “fix” was well over 6 months ago and it has gotten worse. So Ken don’t worry about what you are saying just understand that when you talk like an owner of the product and not a user it’s gunna get called out. I don’t deal in hurt feelings or anything I just deal in getting this rectified, if people get upset that’s their right to be offended haha. Anyway. No one can tell me that this is anything more than a Sonos app issue. It is software related and it needs to be fixed. I don’t have a solution all I can do is bring this forward to get enough people barking about it so they actually make it a priority fix now. Not down the road. We expect to hear something from an official person that actually says they work for Sonos vs a Sonos employee in customers clothing. Sorry Ken if it looks and walks like a duck….

The only thing I’m missing is queue saving features and some playlist management, but that’s in the pipeline - I can’t think of anything else I need personally, for how I use my Sonos Setup - I have Amazon, Apple, Plex, Sonos Radio, Podcasts, local NAS SMBv2/3 Shared library and plenty of other things besides the working Sonos App, including…

• Airplay 2 (useful for grouping speakers too)
• Direct Control (PlexAmp/Spotify/Amazon Apps/iBroadcast/Emby)
• Bluetooth Audio
• UPnP/DLNA
• Alexa Voice Services (useful for grouping speakers too)
• Google Voice Services 
• Sonos Voice Control (useful for grouping speakers too)
• TV Apps (YouTube/Chromecast/Plex)
• Line-In audio
• 3rd Party Apps (Soro/SonoPhone/Orto etc.) (useful for grouping speakers too)

I appreciate though that some users are having device discovery issues and in some cases LAN/WAN issues too, but otherwise there’s still plenty of options, mentioned above, to help keep the music playing, even without the Sonos App, which is a ‘remote’ anyway, rather than an audio ‘player’ in its own right.

Chromecast? Google Assistant? Amazon Alexa? Are you sure you're in the right forum and actually using a Sonos product? Where are these features supposed to be?

If you check the forum, you'll find plenty of threads from users complaining about Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant not working properly.

And just to clarify, Chromecast isn’t even a feature of Sonos. What’s going on here?