Contributor I

Answered

Sonos has become so terrible

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
May 30, 2023
26 replies
6941 views

I’m close to just binning my Sonos speakers. What is going on at this company, that everything has become so terrible?

So recently all my music services became inaccessible on the app, except Bandcamp and Soundcloud. Apple Music, Amazon music, Sirius XM, Pandora, would all fail to load. This has been going on for a while, and reauthorizing did nothing. So I decided to reset my speaker, uninstall and reinstall the app, and try start over. Except after entering my email in the app, I get ‘Something went wrong. Make sure your mobile device is connected to the internet and try again’. It is connected to the internet (and I tried from both ipad and iphone). So now my speaker is just a useless block.

Some years back I used to eulogize Sonos and Synology as the two companies that make tech that made my life both better and simpler; Sonos has really fallen from grace since then.

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Best answer by AjTrek1

OK. So something that’s on your phone makes the Sonos app not connect to music services. How would Sonos know what’s causing this?

You are so right….

It's amazing how many people don’t understand that while a VPN on a personal device “spoofs” the IP address to protect them while on-line that same tech can cause problems for streaming servers. Those servers are often matching the “original” IP address as another means of account verification. If a person signs up for service in the US and the VPN spoofs the address as if its in China...well therein lies the problem.

Show previous replies

J

Just want to hearmymusic

Lyricist I

I am finally tapping out on Sonos. I come from software/hardware world and the user experience from this platform is as bad as it gets. Of course there are specific local system setup/configurations that can be a challenge, and not every scenario can be anticipated and test cases created… however, this platform has had historical issues from day 1. I stopped using my play 3’s 2 years ago because of the unstable nature… works fine one day… doesn’t work the next… every system update creates multiple new hurdles that require customer/technical support to resolve…

i just tried to resurrect the system… had one of two speakers working(actually on the system, and playing music through S2app), and cannot, no matter how many times I factory reset the other speaker, have it discovered. I created an etireely new account, a new system, and the speaker that was connected, no longer will connect either. I can see them through the network… no special configurations and VPN off… it’s been the same from the beginning… very poor user experience, poor documentation, who in the heck is in charge of testing and quality(should be fired). After spending two hours this morning with same results (nothing playing, no connections, etc.), I am out. Won’t even sell them, they go in the trash… wouldn’t feel right passing this platform to anyone else. The point is, It shouldn’t be this hard to play music over a network… this isn’t rocket science!

N

nik9669a

Senior Virtuoso

I am finally tapping out on Sonos. I come from software/hardware world and the user experience from this platform is as bad as it gets. Of course there are specific local system setup/configurations that can be a challenge, and not every scenario can be anticipated and test cases created… however, this platform has had historical issues from day 1. I stopped using my play 3’s 2 years ago because of the unstable nature… works fine one day… doesn’t work the next… every system update creates multiple new hurdles that require customer/technical support to resolve…

i just tried to resurrect the system… had one of two speakers working(actually on the system, and playing music through S2app), and cannot, no matter how many times I factory reset the other speaker, have it discovered. I created an etireely new account, a new system, and the speaker that was connected, no longer will connect either. I can see them through the network… no special configurations and VPN off… it’s been the same from the beginning… very poor user experience, poor documentation, who in the heck is in charge of testing and quality(should be fired). After spending two hours this morning with same results (nothing playing, no connections, etc.), I am out. Won’t even sell them, they go in the trash… wouldn’t feel right passing this platform to anyone else. The point is, It shouldn’t be this hard to play music over a network… this isn’t rocket science!

And yet so many of us have resolved their network issues and as a result we have stable, reliable systems.

Still, you seem to be resolute. Bye-bye.

J

Just want to hearmymusic

Lyricist I

And yet so many still have the same issues. Truly wish it wasn’t this way…. I make my post to hopefully make an impact with the Sonos product and engineering teams.

jgatie

And yet so many still have the same issues. Truly wish it wasn’t this way…. I make my post to hopefully make an impact with the Sonos product and engineering teams.

Or you could just fix your network.

AjTrek1

@Just want to hearmymusic

I don’t come from a professional software/hardware world which I assume you were trying to convey for credibility.

I have a nine (9) rooms of Sonos comprising a total of thirty-two (32) units. I have an Asus Ai Mesh network consisting of three (3) Asus ZenWiFi Pro ET12’s with Ethernet Backhaul.

I can play all nine rooms simultaneously for 30 minutes with no drops. Please don’t misunderstand me thinking that after 30 minutes the system fails. I only ran that as a test to see if my network would handle the stress of Sonos along with other WiFi dependent devices. Let’s be honest who needs nine rooms playing at the same time.

Sonos cannot be treated the same as a cell phone that will connect to a main node or satellite without missing a beat. It’s one device that doesn’t need to sync with other devices on a network as does Sonos.

Did you ever think to run a diagnostic and contact Sonos tech support for advice? If not I strongly recommend you do so.

All said and done…good luck to find a comparable system to Sonos that offers the same versatility. Yes, there are a few wireless systems with similar capabilities to Sonos but again they don’t offer the versatility and integration as Sonos. If you find and test such a system please let the community know. Heck… your research may cause some Sonos users to jump ship. Although I seriously doubt it.

Bottomline IMO it’s your network, faulty Sonos unit or maybe both. My money is on your network as the culprit.

Happy New Year!

Together Everyone Achieves More = T.E.A.M.

buzz

Grand Maestro

In diagnostic mode once you’ve decided that a problem must be [...] or cannot be [...], you are likely to be blindsided. You should play the percentages and for the problems described, the percentages suggest exploring local network issues first.

This Community can be much like a hospital where it seems that “everyone” is sick, but if you look out the window, the world is pretty much business as usual. Pandemic? Maybe. We have suggestions that can vaccinate your system from common illnesses.

One can never rule out hardware issues, but the overall SONOS failure rate is very low. Out of millions of units in the field a few dozen or even a few hundred failures collected in one place can look ominous, but it is actually a very low failure rate. But it’s always a tragedy when MY unit fails.

That said, there are a few cases where hardware failure should be assumed until proven otherwise. The BRIDGE is now at end of life and should be removed from a system before attempting further troubleshooting because BRIDGE failure can cause intermittent, hard to describe local network issues. Always play the percentages.

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