Frustrated with Sonos – Seeking Reliable Alternatives

Apple is doing some cool stuff called HOMEPOD … 😁

I think a letter from the CEO admitting to “significant problems” with the new app is testament enough that there are significant problems. 

I also refer you to this recent thread:

“We moderators of the community - @Corry P, @Jamie A & @Sotiris C. - wanted to take an opportunity to explain some of what is currently happening on the community.

First of all, we value all the feedback you are providing about the new Sonos App. We hear you. Feedback is coming in fast and thick, however - for understandable reasons - and to be frank, we are having trouble just keeping up with it all”. 

I’m pleased your system is working fine. But read the masses of negative feedback on here, the App Store site and other sites.  There is a major problem with the Sonos app update. You are clearly here to argue with me, no need to engage in that. So I’ll wish you well and I now close this conversation. 

I have just downloaded sonophone app.  It is already playing more than one song in a playlist which is a winner! It does drop out momentarily but continues to play in other rooms then re-establishes.  The Wi-Fi is good throughout the house so maybe just teething issues, already surpassing the S2 app by a long chalk.

Audio dropouts are not anything to do with the Sonos App, or third party Apps either. So likely not ‘teething’ issues but more likely a local network or a WAN issue. The Sonos App and others mentioned are not music ‘players’, they are ‘remote’ (controller) Apps only - you can start music playback from such Apps and close the App and even power off the mobile device and the music will continue to play - if it doesn’t, then the issues lie elsewhere and certainly it’s not the Apps fault if the audio is interrupted, or stops. So you need to look elsewhere to resolve those type of issues.

I’ve experiencing my own significant frustrations with the new app, and even more frustrating is that everyone that I’ve recommended Sonos systems to have also reported various levels of functional degradation or downright non-functioning systems specifically tied to the app rollout. This is systemic, but made worse by the fact that there are golden setups that seem to work just fine. There was a testing gap in the rollout, leading to overconfidence in the release, along with what is likely a slew of bugs that are tricky race conditions between the controller and firmware, which only manifest with certain combinations of gear versions.

Pointing out that your system works just fine is great… it means that you are lucky enough to have a system that fell into their testing matrix. Chiding people for not contacting support seems strange to me, especially if you browse through these forums and see the number of people who report not getting satisfying results after contacting support. There’s a reason the CEO just posted an apology letter with a clear timeline of planned fixes acknowledging that many customers are being impacted by issues that are clearly due to uncaught bugs in their software.

Sonophone seems to work pretty well for me, and also at my friend’s house. I experience heavy volume control latency (sometimes up to 30 seconds), random ungrouping of speakers, stream halts, etc, when using the new Sonos controller app. When using Sonophone, or when making my own exploratory http requests against their unpublished APIs running on individual speakers / groups, I do not experience any of these issues. This indicates to me, as pointed out above, that there be race conditions there, at the very least, and that those races are specifically tied to the controller app’s interactions with their onboard APIs, leading to things like states getting out of sync.

Sorry I don’t understand the reply here, as my post shown is a reply to ‘audio dropouts’ on Sonos speakers - I can’t see how that has anything to do with the Sonos App, which is a ‘remote’ control App. It’s not a player.

As stated, a user could start a playlist playing on their speakers and then fully close the App, or even switch off their mobile device and the music playlist should continue playing.

I can only add it’s what happens in my case here, and it’s the same for other members of our family and friends at their Homes too. In fact I spent last Saturday at my daughters house and their Sonos speakers were playing all afternoon at their BBQ and they didn’t stop playing for all the time we were there.

Re the CEO posting - read his statements from a few days ago in the investor call that admits to this being a massive disruption to the typical Sonos user experience. And to having to now throw millions of dollars in an effort to fix things, as well as pushing out release of new products until this is fixed.

This is a CEO mea culpa as big relatively as ones by Boeing. It was not as dramatic because Sonos crashes don’t kill hundreds of people. But he may be close to being thrown out.

I don't know if this CEO confession to analysts/investors is a consolation to suffering users. 

PS: Some of his words, copy paste of relevant parts from the call - With the app, however, my push for speed backfired. The app situation has become a headwind to existing product sales, and we believe our focus needs to be addressing the app ahead of everything else. We expect these investments will come at a cost in the range of $20 million to $30 million in the short term but are necessary to right the ship for the long term. Of all the reasons that could have taken us off track, knowing that it is because we failed our customers and partners is perhaps the most painful.

There is no doubt now as to whether the posters here are just the sick in a hospital that make it seem like all in the world are sick. There are plenty of Sonos sick users out there in the real world as well, going by such a CEO mea culpa in an investor call.

‘Denial’ is not a river in Egypt.

And there is no denying the May 7 release of the new Sonos app has been a fiasco. Certainly there are users like Ken_Griffiths who seem to have been substantially unaffected. The fact remains there has been a firestorm of customer dissatisfaction that will cost the company tens of millions of dollars to resolve; that will delay release of new Sonos products; and that has tanked Sonos’ publicly traded stock, which was around $19 a share in March 2024 and is now trading below $12.

The full extent of the damage to the Sonos brand remains to be seen. In the meantime, most of us have resigned ourselves to limited and erratic performance of our Sonos systems using the Sonos app; many of us have resorted to 3rd party apps to retrieve our saved content; and many have vowed to find other alternatives for music playback and home theatre. 

It’s impossible to deny the magnitude of the problem when the CEO publicly falls on his sword as Mr. Spence did during the recent call with investors. We’re not just imagining things; the problem is not our fault. This is a system-wide failure.

And it does no good to keep posting screenshots that purport to show everything is just hunky dory. For countless numbers of us, it definitely is not hunky dory… and spending still more hours fiddling with our home networks and standing in line to reach Sonos support — which is overwhelmed and mostly incapable of resolving our issues — is not a viable answer.

All good points, that other frequent posters that keep defending Sonos would do well to read. None of this justifies a class action lawsuit of course, but this Sonos CEO led FUBAR Sonos is big. And it is for real, not just something limited to those that post here.

@Bumper : are you still here?!

@castalla ?!

@Toolio ? 

This reminds me of how Apple/Sculley kicked Jobs out and the marketers took over Apple and took it downhill till Jobs came back and put things back on track. I have no idea if Macfarlane left in a similar way, but this is looking like that Apple story. We know that Sonos copies Apple in many things including product design and packaging, but they did not have to copy Apple in every other way:-).