For those of you who hate having to use the sonos app, here's a useful alternative

Merry met!  And fortuitous you just posted this.

Yes, yes & yes.  Spent thousands on Sonos equipment only to find how much their software sucks.  First it was just unintuitive UI, then they got rid of play from “this device” (android phone), but figured work-around with network drive.  Now S2 and that's gone as well. I’ve gone on windows and enabled SMB2, but not sure what to do from there.  Can’t find anything in the new S2 app about connecting to network.

Seems like every time I just want to put on some music there is some issue, and I have to spend hours trying to get it to work.  Spent 30 minutes waiting for Chat support today, then ran out of time before I could get any solution.  When I came back, I tried phone support: “Your expected wait is 150 minutes”.  Of course it closed before I could get anyone on the line...

Am definitely going to do the trial on this Air Music. 

Will it allow me to play music from any phone music app (I use Poweramp) to my sonos connect, etc...so I can play it on [normal] speakers connected to Sonos amps?  I have one Sonos beam, but rarely use it...

Yes. It will capture all sound going to your phones speaker, and send it through the AirPlay protocol.

It actually works!

A bit scary though, as it has to have full access, and warns that the app can see everything (including passwords)….  Does that not concern you?

Yes. That is concerning, i forgot it need that. But it does record everything, and we then just have to hope it will not report back to the mother ship.

Why can Sonos not withdraw the awful new app and put the old one back?  Or have it as an alternative as they did with classic view??

These people have a pretty serious track record of making bad choices.  I spoke to someone on voice support (hour wait), and we kept coming back to “That doesn’t work yet…. They’re working on it…  Might be in June release...”

I think our best hope is that their mismanagement will drive the company into the ground, and perhaps it‘ll be bought out / taken over by another company that knows how to write software.

Or just use Air Music app.

Regarding this, I wrote to Air Music, and this was their reply:

AirMusic does not collect any sensitive data! This dialog about password/screen-recording etc. is a generic dialog of the Android-system and re-used by it also if just the audio is recorded.

AirMusic records and transmits your internal audio in real-time - nothing is stored and the screen-content isn't even recorded.

I am developing AirMusic as a single developer in my spare time since 2012 (previously called AirAudio) and I don't have any interest in any of your data - nothing is collected, nothing is shared with any other platform from my side.

Only in case of an app-crash, it might be possible that crash-logs are sent to Google's servers, but they do not contain any sensitive data, just information about your used Android-version/hardware/etc.

So in short: You can be sure that absolutely no private/personal/sensitive data is collected or transmitted - just the audio and just to your selected speakers :-)

No sonos less headache

I decided to leave the sonos app a while ago and just use AirPlay, then I returned when I heard about S2. Life was fine again. Then they trashed S2. The new “official” Sonos app is rotten to the core. I figure I’ll sell off my Sonos gear now and go with a different choice.

if Sonos makes it possible to return to S2, I’ll reconsider.. at this moment, however, I’m inclined to head for the exit. 

I too had thought about changing, but I have so much invested in Sonos hardware; won’t be able to recoup most of it… 

But moreover, I could not really find anything that seemed to be rated better.  If you find another system that works [a lot] better overall, please post your findings here.