The New Sonos App and Future Feature Updates

Ok, now I think I see what the issue still is:

• A: when the Now Playing screen is whole display size, when I tap on the speaker icon on the left, it only mutes all. It does not bring up the individual volume controls. It does bring them up in the 16.1 app. I was expecting it to be available also in this screen.
   
• B: when the now playing component is small in the bottom of the screen I can tap on the speaker icon. It mutes and also brings up the volume control for the individual grouped speakers. I can mute individual speaker in this screen. 

It probably is a firmware issue if it works for others also in scenario A. For me it looks that it’s only been implemented in the small Home Screen component.  

Yes, that’s how I see it at the moment too - it's probably ‘by design’ for the time being, but I would like to see the option to mute individual rooms on the "Output Selector/Room Grouping Screen” aswell.

Agree. That screen was where I was also at first looking for them. But I now see that the 16.1 app also does not have them there. The radio buttons are on the left in the 16.1 whereas they are on the right in the latest app. 
 

The bigger icon on the left in the latest app seems to be an indicator of the type of device the room is. If that icon is always the same then I’d change that into a mute functionality. I don’t have a soundbar so not sure if the icon looks different depending on the device. 

Yes, it’s the same icon for a soundbar too. 👍

Against my better judgement I updated to this new version.   The volume controls are improved (are they going to put the EQ back onto that screen?).  I tested out my main issue, I.e. the speakers dropping in and out when tracks change and when rooms are added. Adding 1 room at a time, 3 rooms worked together including when I changed tracks.  However, when I added a 4th room it all fell apart - silence, then one room resumed then dropped out, then another room came back on but missing out every other beat. It sounded like a pneumatic drill.  I started again and only one room played until it too dropped out.   So it’s great to have better volume controls but what good is that if the system at best seems to play only every other note!!!

What you’re describing is not a Sonos App issue - the App itself is only a ‘remote’ control. It is not a ‘player’ - I can group 10 rooms and play audio to all and close my Sonos App and even power off the mobile device and the playing audio continues without the App. If your speakers are not doing that then it’s more likely a local network issue, rather than anything App-related.

And it could be a speaker firmware issue as that is also being updated along with the app… the only thing that probably hasn’t changed for most people *is* the network. Your continual assertion that the app works and it’s everyone else’s network that’s at fault is pretty tiresome. 

16.3 speaker code completely messes up the indexing of any album where the artist and album artist don’t match, so compilations are totally unusable now… no doubt that’s a network issue too? 

I’m glad your limited use case is working for you, but please stop trying to dismiss other people’s issues as network all the time. The app and firmware are far from perfect. 

@Ian_S,
If the Sonos speakers are dropping out - it most certainly is not the Sonos App and the firmware remains solid for my setup, so that definitely infers there’s a network issue involved somewhere in the mix, whether that is the LAN or the WAN connection, I can’t say. However that’s definitely the places I would start to look at first and there’s plenty of advice in the community here and within the Sonos support pages to help a user investigate those sort of issues - whether you find the posts tiresome, or not, the facts speak for themselves and ignoring them is unlikely going to resolve the issue.

Here are s few Sonos links to perhaps help get @BRJ started…

• https://support.sonos.com/en-us/article/reduce-wireless-interference
• https://support.sonos.com/en-us/article/music-service-audio-stops-or-skips
• https://support.sonos.com/en-us/article/understanding-the-network-details-section-in-the-sonos-app

Just because some function works for you, does not mean that the code is perfect or will work the same  for everyone else. It’s a really flawed assertion. The new app exercises new code in the firmware on the speakers. Sonos have chosen to use this different path so it’s up to them to get it working in the same scenarios (beyond just yours, and a few others) where the old code paths still function. We know they still function as the act of switching to a 3rd party controller which doesn’t use the new code, will suddenly cause broken systems to function again. (Barring the stuff that can only be done from the Sonos app.) 

If the networks of so many people were truly broken, 3rd party controllers would also be broken and wouldn’t work either. 

If someone has changed their network and has issues, then fine, they should investigate, but when the only changes come from Sonos and stuff stops working, but comes back to life when controlled the old way, I think it’s a much safer bet to assume it’s the new Sonos code in the app AND speakers that is at fault. And if that new code has exposed much worse support for mDNS than uPnP in a lot of people’s home networks, then maybe they made a bad decision in going down that route with the new app and firmware. 

People didn’t ask Sonos to re-write their code. People bought something that worked and now doesn’t as a result purely of Sonos changing something. Sonos need to fix it and not expect people to tear their home networks apart to suit Sonos.