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fxsmeets
Contributor I
December 11, 2023

Why is Sonos App so bad and why won't Sonos fix the problems?

  • December 11, 2023
  • 28 replies
  • 19671 views

I have raised this issue multiple times. Numerous users have also raised the issue. The Sonos App is clumsy, complicated, counterintuitive to use. Most importantly, IT DOES NOT WORK. It keep losing connection. I want Sonos support to stop telling me that it is because of my devices or my Wifi set-up. It is not. It is because the Sonos App is badly coded, full of bugs and quite frankly the worst I have tried of all music app, by a long shot. The hardware is fantastic. The software is simply shameful. Sonos. PLEASE FIX IT.

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    28 replies

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    John B
    January 17, 2024

    Power without control is a no brainer. The app is atrocious. Why? 99 times out of 100 sonos playlists are invisible, the lag before before connecting is now a constant, and is getting worse. In the UK we have the horizon scandal, where Fujitsu and Royal Mail doubled down on the lie, that the horizon system installed was bug free and any fault lay with the poor submasters. Sound familiar? 

     

     

    What nonsense.  Sorry to shout at you , but THE SONOS APP IS JUST A REMOTE CONTROL.  If just sends commands.  If there is lagging, it HAS to be you network.  It CANNOT be the app.  Your choices are:

    1. Continue to believe ill informed rubbish
    2. Allow some of the helpful and knowledgeable users on this forum to help you resolve your problems

    Do you want to humour us by providing a detailed description of your network set up?

      jgatie
      jgatie
      January 17, 2024

      What nonsense.  Sorry to shout at you , but THE SONOA APP IS JUST A REMOTE CONTROL.  If just sends commands.  If there is lagging, it HAS to be you network.  It CANNOT be the app.  Your choices are:

      1. Continue to believe ill informed rubbish
      2. Allow some of the helpful and knowledgeable users on this forum to help you resolve your problems

      Do you want to humour us by providing a detailed description of your network set up?

       

      Yes, it is akin to putting a big wall between your TV and your infra-red remote, and blaming the TV/remote manufacturer because the remote doesn’t work. 

        Clothears66
        Lyricist II
        January 18, 2024

        Hells teeth!!!!!!!

        As a matter of interest, I have tried leaving the Sotify app open over the last couple of days and find that when I switch my phone on, the living room (Sonos) immediately appears in the list of devices.

        Hopefully its all systems go now.

        I also wear a garlic necklace!!!!

        Defeated User
        Lyricist I
        January 23, 2024

        I have raised this issue multiple times. Numerous users have also raised the issue. The Sonos App is clumsy, complicated, counterintuitive to use. Most importantly, IT DOES NOT WORK. It keep losing connection. I want Sonos support to stop telling me that it is because of my devices or my Wifi set-up. It is not. It is because the Sonos App is badly coded, full of bugs and quite frankly the worst I have tried of all music app, by a long shot. The hardware is fantastic. The software is simply shameful. Sonos. PLEASE FIX IT.

        Exactly 😂

          Ken_Griffiths
          Ken_Griffiths
          January 23, 2024

          I have raised this issue multiple times. Numerous users have also raised the issue. The Sonos App is clumsy, complicated, counterintuitive to use. Most importantly, IT DOES NOT WORK. It keep losing connection. I want Sonos support to stop telling me that it is because of my devices or my Wifi set-up. It is not. It is because the Sonos App is badly coded, full of bugs and quite frankly the worst I have tried of all music app, by a long shot. The hardware is fantastic. The software is simply shameful. Sonos. PLEASE FIX IT.

          Exactly 😂

          Or perhaps not…

          The discovery of the Sonos products by the Sonos controller App is a slightly complex area to explore, but briefly… 

          SSDP (the UPnP simple service discovery protocol) is used to initially discover the Sonos players and is done via multicasting via UDP to 239.255.255.250:1900 and, for good measure, broadcasting to 255.255.255.255:1900. 

          Both the Sonos players and controllers must share the same network subnet. However if the Sonos devices are connecting to multiple access points, the recommendations (from myself) are that they be set to the same WiFi channel and channel-width. This is for optimum performance particularly in groups and for some reason with some (not all) mesh-based WiFi systems, it appears some will work okay with Sonos, but others may not, particularly if the satellites/AP’s are perhaps auto-selecting their own WiFi channels. I’ve seen some people report issues with Google ‘nest’ mesh WiFi, for example, although others will occasionally say it works for their ‘small’ Sonos setup.

          What is certainly not supported though by Sonos, are wireless range extenders, as some can mangle device MAC addresses and EoP (powerline) adapters.. so if you are using those type of wireless access points, to extend the wireless network coverage, then that may cause such intermittent device discovery issues by the Sonos Controller App.

          Just to add aswell, it can sometimes be Apps/software running on the mobile device that interfere with ‘device discovery’ Examples to perhaps consider are…

          • VPN Client 
          • Firewall software
          • Antivirus software
          • WiFi Calling/Dial assist
          • Private network address (MAC address spoofing)
          • Mobile data enabled for the Sonos App  
            JHT2
            Lyricist I
            January 24, 2024

            Well I have the same frustrations with Sonos. It got to the stage that I just switched them off for 6 months. Now I'm back trying to use them. I thought that it was magically working, but today it can't find one of my speakers.

            The problem is that it requires too much knowledge about how to set up your WiFi. I just want to be able to play music. I'm back to using a Bluetooth speaker, it doesn't sound as good, but it just works.

            I have a play5 and a connect, both connected to the router rather than to the TP link powerlines that I have. It works sometimes, then whilst playing the app (on android) loses one or both of the speakers. I can keep playing from the music queue.

              Ken_Griffiths
              Ken_Griffiths
              January 24, 2024

              @JHT2,

              Your entire system is likely not using your WiFi if you have not disabled the adapters on your wired Sonos devices. So the user/system doesn’t need to know anything about how to setup using your WiFi, with some exceptions and those are related to portable devices and the new Era products, which are not listed in your community profile. Also you need to heed the Sonos system requirements, as powerline adapters are not supported by Sonos. See here: 

              https://support.sonos.com/en-us/article/sonos-system-requirements

              It’s likely your network setup/adapters that are giving rise to your Sonos system issues. I suspect the setup is giving rise to multicast broadcast ‘device discovery’ problems… a solution might be to blacklist the Sonos MAC addresses and the controller MAC addresses and prevent them from using the powerline segment of your LAN and see if that perhaps resolves things for you.

               

                nik9669a
                Senior Virtuoso
                February 10, 2024

                A sample of 90 users from the thousands of Sonos owners, @Dodders 

                Check out the Bose ratings on the same website: 97% of 386 reviewers rate them 1or 2 star. 

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