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Want to get the dinosaurs back on side, Sonos? A suggestion

  • 29 May 2024
  • 2 replies
  • 53 views

Let's face it, Sonos is going to continue to focus primarily on the streaming market, which it has clearly decided is its future. Most of the people who have been posting on all these threads about the horrors of the Black App masquerading as S2 appear to be the dinosaurs such as me who rely on their local Music Libraries as their content source.

My own situation is that my Library is on a NAS, I have the latest firmware on my components, Android V16.1 on three controllers and V80.01.7 on the fourth and finally a Win 10 PC also running V16 .  Updates are blocked and I have the executables to restore V16 stashed away in case they get through.

My system is stable and my controllers all run fine within their limitations, which are well known.  While I abhor the way V80 was launched in such a deprecated state, I can see some logic behind the new UI, which is clearly set in stone.  I am prepared to live with it as long as Sonos keep their promises about reinstating the functionalities they have dumped. 

Sonos know exactly what those functionalities are; they are all there already in V16! V16 is not perfect and there are plenty of suggestions here as to how it might be improved but they are relatively minor tweaks.

I know you're reading this at Sonos, because you keep telling us you do, so how about this suggestion?

Take this mess as your opportunity to put in a final determined effort to make the local library-related functionality really market-leading.  It was in the early days of the system and almost was in V16. Make it so you can be proud of it. 

Put it out there to make us dinosaurs happy and get us off your backs; we might even go back to promoting your product if you make us proud if it too.  

Lock it down and forget about it, and fork off along the streaming path. 

You did it for S1.  How about doing the same for S2?

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2 replies

Bumper

When you say market leading functionality for local libraries what are you envisioning? 

J
Userlevel 5
Badge +4

When you say market leading functionality for local libraries what are you envisioning? 

Just go back to what was present in V16 - fast and effective search enabling intuitive queue management which seamlessly integrated material from internal and external sources. Compromised accessibility and management of the library itself is a major current issue which clearly has to be solved, but the functionality is what the user can do with the data. 

It starts with tag search and goes right through to how tracks are injected into the queue and how queues can be edited and saved as playlists.  

That was what I bought into Sonos for many years ago; my conviction that it was the market leader was what led me to buy into it in the first place and, as far as I can tell, it has remained there or thereabouts ever since. It worked very well and I enjoyed using it until V80 crippled it.

That's what is now glaringly missing; Sonos know exactly how that core functionality was structured - any Sonos user from before May with a library knows it - and can surely reinstate it.

I have a number of tweaks I would like to see in areas such as the ability to search on Contributing Artists, improvements in the way Artists are linked to Albums through the "Show All Songs On The Album" controls, which have never worked properly, etc.  They are just tweaks, but their inclusion would make the whole user experience just that bit better. 

Without the absolutely fundamental primary search/queue capability being restored this sort of tweaking is just putting lipstick on a pig, though.

Speaking of which, and slightly off subject, the new UI is incredibly boring and drab without album art. It looks so much better when streaming material brings a bit of colour with it. Please, please give ours back to us.

But sort the pig out before fretting about the lipstick. 

 

 

 

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