Question

Rubbish new update, what do others think ?

  • 10 September 2016
  • 82 replies
  • 4347 views

Userlevel 2
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Hi there, I'm not really one to complain because my sonos equipment is the best I've ever brought. But I must say. I've just done the new update and I think it's a load of rubbish! I don't want my playlist clearing when I want to play another, I'd like to clear it myself thank you please! What do others think? Please take this on board, thank you .

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82 replies

Userlevel 3
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I think it is horrible. It is oriented toward the instant play to the point that creating playlists is a PAIN. And if you err before you save it, you will lose it all. And you can ERR by not putting your finger exactly where it wants it, because the sensitivity is not how I would have liked it and CLEAR your playlist. What genius there thought that up? Really?? Coupled with the edge alphabet nearly encroaching on the main screen - stinks. Worst Sonos experience in 3 years. 😞
Userlevel 3
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I was a software developer myself for over 20 years in UNIX and Windows amongst other theatres. Everything was meant to be intuitive to users, and bombproof. I was a UI specialist. This "upgrade" (which I don't seem to be able to roll back) is none of that. The more I try to use it, the more I hate it. The steps to try to add songs to a playlist have increased, and the only way I think I could confidently build a playlist is with a PC - not a smartphone. I have more room to work and less chance to err.

Select artist. Select album. Be sure you select the TOP HALF of the icon if you are doing playlist. Select song... but select the "..." if you are working on a playlist or you may get the dreaded dialogue warning you that if your finger drifts a couple of millimeters to the left you will lose any changes to the playlist you have been constructing. You will NOT get another warning - all gone. Harkens back to 1986 MS-DOS word processor with no autosave feature for changes. Even MS-DOS had "Delete xxx? Are you sure?" You get the thinnest warning of that here and the greatest potential of missing the mark with your smartphone finger touch I have ever observed. It will cut you no slack.

I won't be building/modifying any playlists on a phone until this is rectified.
Userlevel 1
The new playlist behavior is horrible! Unless I am missing something it's a hugh step backward in user friendliness. Please, let me turn this off!
Userlevel 1
The playlist is a disaster! Please give users a choice how the playlist should behave.
Sonos is still the best, but the update does not work for me.
Please fix it!!!
Userlevel 3
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Tap to Play

"Tap a song on your phone or tablet, it starts instantly. No need to select Play Now or Play Next. Controlling your Sonos from a computer? Double click to play."......

Then it clears the que and not only puts in the song you selected but also every other song in the list. if you want to play just that 1 song, then you have to press the dots and select play now etc. you should call it tap to destroy playlist or just tap tap tap. this new "feature" is a huge step backward for Sonos. You have taken one of the most intuitive apps and created more steps to play a song, and I now spend even more time on the phone explaining to my clients how to add songs to the que without destroying their playlist! One of the best things about Sonos was the fact that even the most technically challenged among us could easily and quickly learn how to use it with little or no instruction, until now.

in the past few days I have now received 6 calls from clients and they all start with the same sentence, " I just did the Sonos update and now my playlists keep getting replaced every time i select a song....."

This update did add some great features, the play album, play all, shuffle all options are great! But if you are going to have a feature called tap to play, it should be just that. You search, you find, you tap, it plays! It simply adds the song (and ONLY that song) to the que and begins to play. Simple and intuitive as Sonos has always been!!!!
Userlevel 2
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There are also some bugs as well. Getting a lot of queue 1002 errors when trying to use the new functionality.
I am holding off from upgrading as the feedback is not good for those of us that love the non-destructive queue function.

I agree with Johnkfitz and if Sonos want to implement one tap play then it should be just that - play it right there in the queue. It should not destroy the queue and therefore no warning message would be required.

I dont really play full albums so the fact that it will start playing songs that I have not selected is bizzare and an awful feature. It would have been better if Sonos made this one of the options, e.g Play Album From Here. Give us the choice and don't force us to put music into the queue that we have not selected.

I hope Sonos see sense but I fear that the queue feature that made Sonos stand out from the rest of the crowd is going to be pushed aside for an iTunes/Spotify experience.
There are also some bugs as well. Getting a lot of queue 1002 errors when trying to use the new functionality.

That's just network issues that are often exposed by the full reboots the update process requires. You need to do a full network restart.
Userlevel 2
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There are also some bugs as well. Getting a lot of queue 1002 errors when trying to use the new functionality.

That's just network issues that are often exposed by the full reboots the update process requires. You need to do a full network restart.


You may be right, but every sonos device and all other devices on my network have preassigned ip addresses.
Userlevel 3
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I think they should have preserved the existing UI and added a mode switch to enter a parallel UI that performs instant "Play Now" gratification. Wouldn't have been that difficult and wouldn't have needed to affect any playlist.
There are also some bugs as well. Getting a lot of queue 1002 errors when trying to use the new functionality.

That's just network issues that are often exposed by the full reboots the update process requires. You need to do a full network restart.


You may be right, but every sonos device and all other devices on my network have preassigned ip addresses.


So? It's still a network issue and not a bug.
Userlevel 3
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All - terribly sorry, but if this is Sonos today, I am out. 3 Play 1's, 2 Connects and a Boost - modest, but over 5000 tunes in the library. I can't work with it as it is. It just blows my mind. I can't build a playlist anymore without excruciating efforts. Sonos - you have stabbed your faithful in the back with your "update". Was all this to get new business? Sounds like marketing got the upper hand of R&D.
Userlevel 2
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There are also some bugs as well. Getting a lot of queue 1002 errors when trying to use the new functionality.

That's just network issues that are often exposed by the full reboots the update process requires. You need to do a full network restart.


You may be right, but every sonos device and all other devices on my network have preassigned ip addresses.


So? It's still a network issue and not a bug.


And you know this how? Several others reporting the same issue after 6.4. Only thing that has changed on my system. Been rock solid for a few years. I'm betting there's bugs in 6.4 causing this.
Userlevel 3
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Thanks to all, will update reviews on all my purchase sites. 🙂
Userlevel 3
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The silly thing about it all is that in OOP the app would not have grown much in size to provide for both pathways. If they had a proper perspective, they could have had it all for both sorts of potential clients. Apparently, they were lacking somewhere. My reviews forward are negative, since Sonos took a useful product I had purchased at a substantial cost in good faith and diminished the value of the product to me in a substantial way.
There are also some bugs as well. Getting a lot of queue 1002 errors when trying to use the new functionality.

That's just network issues that are often exposed by the full reboots the update process requires. You need to do a full network restart.


You may be right, but every sonos device and all other devices on my network have preassigned ip addresses.


So? It's still a network issue and not a bug.


And you know this how? Several others reporting the same issue after 6.4. Only thing that has changed on my system. Been rock solid for a few years. I'm betting there's bugs in 6.4 causing this.


I know this because we get the same bug reports after every update release and it's ALWAYS network issues uncovered by the reboots but hey what do I know, I've only been here for 8 years or more...
@seob: did you try a full network reboot?

@The LHC: if all IP addresses have been preassigned, what are the potential network issues remaining that could cause this?
Userlevel 5
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Not only is the new update for "play now" functionality a step back, but it's inconsistent. Losing the queue history and overwriting every time you start playing is a change we can probably deal with, but the actual behaviour when you play an album is:
1. On iOS, overwrite entire queue with new album
2. On Windows desktop, insert album into queue (typically at position 2) so your queue looks like "last album played track one, new album added, last album played tracks 2-9"
3. On old Sonos CR200 controller, add new album to end of queue (as before)

Oh, and there's the scary error messages... did anyone actually design or test this?

The queue "just worked" and was great. If you're going to de-emphasise or outright kill it, at least make up your mind, Sonos.
Userlevel 4
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Not only is the new update for "play now" functionality a step back, but it's inconsistent. Losing the queue history and overwriting every time you start playing is a change we can probably deal with, but the actual behaviour when you play an album is:
1. On iOS, overwrite entire queue with new album
2. On Windows desktop, insert album into queue (typically at position 2) so your queue looks like "last album played track one, new album added, last album played tracks 2-9"
3. On old Sonos CR200 controller, add new album to end of queue (as before)

Oh, and there's the scary error messages... did anyone actually design or test this?

The queue "just worked" and was great. If you're going to de-emphasise or outright kill it, at least make up your mind, Sonos.
Userlevel 4
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Sonos what the actual hell have you done? You've totally ruined the control app with this nonsense. Did you even test this pathetic backward step before destroying the user experience for your customers?

Every time you click on a song to play it, it deletes your entire queue (that I did want and spent ages building full of my favourite tracks) and replacing it with the entire album or playlist (which I don't want!). There was the Play All function for occasions when you wanted to add a whole album to your queue. Wanting to play one song does not equate to wanting to play the whole album and delete every bloody song from your queue without warning.

This is worse than annoying. It is unfit for purpose and in this one move, you have annihilated all the enjoyment from your products. I've been using Sonos for several years, I have loved it. I've spent over a grand on your kit, and encouraged many friends to join the Sonos community because your products worked, were intuitive and flexible. I currently regret that. No one in their right mind would want to buy a product that behaves like this current shower of sh@t.

THERE WAS NOTHING WRONG WITH HOW IT WAS. PLEASE ALLOW ME TO PUT IT BACK IMMEDIATELY.

You've taken the best feature of Sonos, which worked perfectly, thing which made me invest a lot of money in several Sonos units for around my home and utterly ruined it. It is currently unusable.

If you want to avoid this experience destroying farce people, do not whatever you do, install the upgrade to version 6.4. Stick with 6.3.2 where everything worked as it should.

PLEASE CAN SOMEONE FROM SONOS REPLY TO THIS URGENTLY AND HELP ME PUT THIS BACK TO HOW IT USED TO BE WHEN IT WORKED AND RESTORE THE FUNCTIONALITY THAT I PAID FOR...
Userlevel 5
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Did you even test this pathetic backward step before destroying the user experience for your customers?

.


User695950 you can be assured that this update was tested and previewed in Beta testing. I participated in it myself and when I experienced it I communicated my strong feelings against this update through the official Beta channels. I had communicated that for the 1st time a Sonos change had seemed completely unintuitive and has actually materially deteriorated my user experience.

There has been a thread among community users that discuss it at length. What you would find there are many for and many against. But my perspective is that the ones who like it were not necessarily grossly unhappy with the previous queuing concept. However, those against it are strongly against and also for the 1st time I am actually seeing a few making dire comments about how it ultimately altered their feeling for the product and that they will have trouble recommending. I am certainly not in that space. I still think the products are great and I can work around it. But I remain unhappy with the change. I think for myself and many others the previous system worked perfectly. There are a few changes that allow quicker actions eg play all and shuffle- I like those.

See the thread discussing the Beta below.

https://en.community.sonos.com/announcements-228985/sonos-version-64-now-public-beta-6738453
Userlevel 5
Badge +10
Chucked a few albums onto the Sonos today. I understand why "play now" might now default to "insert into queue" when you're playing music (use case: "play this song then go back to what you were playing"), but the desktop app's implementation for playing when the music is stopped is weird - it inserts into queue, not at the start (somewhat logical) or end (previous behaviour), plays what you asked it to, then continues to play something you were listening to minutes/hours/days ago. And given the insert position of likely track 2 of a playlist/album... I can't replicate this on the iPad, because the "play all" button only seems to do a queue-replace-and-play-now. So for a system where a key selling point is "it just works on all your devices", this kind of inconsistency over something as simple as "playing music" does not bode well...
Queue Destruction! Don't update your Sonos! Select a track and get ready for the entire artist catalog of 200 songs to kill your meticulously built queue. Hopefully the skilled employees of Sonos are listening- pun intended!!! Help!!!!
Userlevel 7
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Queue Destruction! Don't update your Sonos! Select a track and get ready for the entire artist catalog of 200 songs to kill your meticulously built queue. Hopefully the skilled employees of Sonos are listening- pun intended!!! Help!!!!

What do you want help on? Writing puns?
Userlevel 2
Badge +2
@seob: did you try a full network reboot?

@The LHC: if all IP addresses have been preassigned, what are the potential network issues remaining that could cause this?


Yes I did a full network reboot. Still having a few dropouts. It may be network issues due to the update, but I think there was something different about this one. Never had these dropouts before after an update, and I've been using Sonos for several years as well. So even if it is "just network issue" they were caused by the Sonos update.