SONOS are you reading this? Please put the controller queue function back how it was!

  • 12 September 2016
  • 353 replies
  • 15976 views

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I've downloaded version 6.4 of the app. What a mistake. To anyone who is about to do it, DON'T DO IT IF YOU LIKE YOUR QUEUE.

Sonos please put it back how it was. This new app is so awful I am considering selling my entire Sonos rig (6 pieces!) and walking away from you, after what was until this week, many happy years.

Touching on a track because I want to play it, or add it to the queue (the queue that I DID WANT), does not mean I want to delete the whole queue and replace it with the entire album (which I DON'T WANT) which the newly added track comes from.

If I wanted to delete my queue, I would delete it. If I wanted to add the whole album, I would add it using the play all function.

You've just taken something intuitive and user friendly which worked so well and turned it into a worse than hateful mess.

PLEASE UNDO THIS AWFUL, HORRIBLE CHANGE.

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353 replies

I can confirm that the intent was to make playing music easier and perhaps more familiar for those used to some of the most popular music playing software out there.

Based on your comment it seems you think your customers are a bunch of facking idiots who can't use two systems or include a checkbox to include a choice between the two? FFS Sonos, you are "Better Than This." Better together failure.
Userlevel 7
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I can confirm that the intent was to make playing music easier and perhaps more familiar for those used to some of the most popular music playing software out there.

Based on your comment it seems you think your customers are a bunch of facking idiots who can't use two systems or include a checkbox to include a choice between the two? FFS Sonos, you are "Better Than This." Better together failure.


My apologies if that's what you got out of my comment. It absolutely wasn't my intent, or that of the development team.
Userlevel 3
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I hear McDonald's is still popular. This might be the Sonos Big Mac attack. I hope In And Out and Five Guys don't start serving Quarter Pounder clones.
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I can confirm that the intent was to make playing music easier and perhaps more familiar for those used to some of the most popular music playing software out there.

Very interesting to here that confirmed by a Sonos rep as many have suspected that the company may have been trying to align with the queuing approach of some other popular suspects. I am a bit put off by that because I do find it inconsistent with the "You are better than this" message. Sonos was "better than that" and decided to join the crowd. It was one of the areas that I thought Sonos was a step above.

For example I still cannot understand how a one tap on a song could warrant adding an entire album including songs before the one I tapped. Don't get me wrong there are things I like. I like the ability to tap on the play button on a playlist or album tile and it starts immediately. I would prefer if it just added it to the end of the queue and started playing immediately however.
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When I bought into Sonos, I bought the lot - hardware and software, both presumably because I had expectations out of reviews etc out of past experience. It's like, for example, I read about a Mac and wanted a Mac, bought it, and down the road somewhere they changed the UI to Windows. And the best they can say is that they wanted to make the hardware easier to use for the masses by running a simple system. It is a company that sold a product that relies on software and now they are strangling my usage of it by their marketeers.

Yeah, I read the simplistic reviews offering ballyhoo for the Great Sonos upgrade and that will make marketing heads fatter. But the Great Sonos is selling whoppers at the expense of a substantial and loyal customer base that they hung out to dry in favor of $$$. That's all it really is, and if you read any hooey from Sonos reps or reviews that deny this, it is just spin trying to avoid the facts of what has happened to thousands of loyal buyers/supporters. They sold the fan base that MADE them able to have the $$$ to do this down the river, Shame on the greed. It will surely come around.

And all of us sit here typing on their website wanting them to throw us a bone. Sad, eh?
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But wait - there's more. There are some of the faithful that have supported Sonos by recommending the systems and installing them for customers in good faith. The customers buy expectations and the the rug is yanked out from under them, and they don't call Sonos (a lot are actually non-techie types). That puts the professional installers out on a limb as well. Sonos is protected legally in the most part from mice print, but again they have perhaps alienated a substantial portion of business.

So, we should all understand from what Sonos reps have said that 6.4 is good for the Sonos world? I think that in the long run it will be their demise.
Userlevel 5
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I cannot understand why older firmwares cannot be provided for download so that we can stop the relentless need to upgrade the software to new functionality we neither need or want and controller hardware that seems to be constantly becoming obsolescent ?

I am going to be a dinosaur and say I would have been happy to remain with the old "blue" controller.

I had a SqueezePlayer system years ago and that went down a similar path to Sonos with constant updates making it less usable and more and more unreliable.

All I want it to do is play the music I owned on CD. I have never asked for anything else.
If you want Sonos to function exactly like a CD player then I'd have thought that was actually easier now isn't it?
Userlevel 5
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If you want Sonos to function exactly like a CD player then I'd have thought that was actually easier now isn't it?

What I meant was that I, like many others ripped our music collections to a NAS from CD and bought Sonos because it was the best system for playing tracks or whole albums reliably without the need for constantly changing discs, but the I'm sure you knew that and were just being flippant.

All I want to do is to play tracks in the order I set them in and be able to add tracks whenever the mood takes me - exactly what Sonos used to do.

If I could have my old firmware I could still do just that even with my new PLAY1S AND 5S. I could also still use my CR100s, iPAD1 and fourth generation iPOD Touch.

SONOS could continue whatever path it wished to go down but I would not be compelled to follow.

After all not of us want to shout at our speakers to make them play the next track. If I start shouting out "Alexa do this or do that" the wife will think she had been replaced.
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Just want to chime in here that wiping out the queue is ridiculous. One of the perks of Sonos software has been its ability to centralize music sources both from an indexing and search perspective, but also from this queue. (New release idea: Let us make playlists from the central Sonos index!)
The Sonos queue history has saved my butt many times when needing a track ID and the title wasn't available elsewhere (e.g., Spotify or Soundcloud play history). Please bring this back!!!!
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Also, one other travesty I just noticed..... Apologies if this has been mentioned already elsewhere....

If I start a Spotify playlist from my iPhone on Sonos, and then open my Mac laptop to work and flip to my desktop app controller, the queue is not on the Mac. I can't see what's next. I have to use my iPhone to manage the queue.

I thought the point of Sonos was seamless management across devices.....(and users)

ARGH
Trinity,

I'm not seeing the same. Granted I have a PC, but I can't see where such basic functionality could make it past beta. You should probably submit a diagnostic.
If you want Sonos to function exactly like a CD player then I'd have thought that was actually easier now isn't it?

What I meant was that I, like many others ripped our music collections to a NAS from CD and bought Sonos because it was the best system for playing tracks or whole albums reliably without the need for constantly changing discs, but the I'm sure you knew that and were just being flippant.


No, I was being completely serious. A CD player plays one album at a time, either from start to finish or shuffled. Either option seems to be a one click option now from the album menu from what little I've looked at the system since the update.

Incidentally does anyone know what the recent 6.4.1 update added/changed?
Userlevel 7
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Looks like some minor bug fixes with .1. It seems they fixed the arrow icons to right of search works now. Previously it didn't respond to click properly.
Userlevel 3
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6.4.1 cleaned up the msgbox queue warnings a little bit. Haven't found much else so far, but quite honestly I have been using the PC controller far more than the iOS since 6.4.
PLEASE put back the old queue system! This is horrible
Userlevel 5
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Yeah, I have to agree that the new methodology just does not make sense. Far too easy to replace the existing queue by mistake and no way to undo that action.
Amazing you have to go outside of Sonos for this:

http://www.apkmirror.com/apk/sonos-inc/sonos/

(No doubt there are other sites..)
And where can you get release notes for android controller app 6.4.1? In the mean time, I'll keep spending lots of time trying to find it.

For a minute (er... nanosecond), I thought this "replace queue" was regressed. Nope.
Userlevel 7
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And where can you get release notes for android controller app 6.4.1?

I believe the release notes for 6.4.1 are "Bug Fixes". It was a very minor app update that fixed a few issues that'd been identified. No big changes from the previous version. Figure 6.4 is the main release, and any 6.4.x version is basically the same software with a few service packs or additional fixes. You will even have players at 6.4 with controllers on 6.4.1 as they're the same "release".
So the advice is, if you like the queue function and are on v6.3 then do not upgrade to 6.4 or 6.4.1.

Interestingly I have auto updates switched off and get non stop messages when I open the Sonos app to upgrade. Only when they release a fix to roll back will I upgrade.
Userlevel 5
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Great new selection features. Of course, everyone does save their queues. Don't they. They do read the relase notes - don't they as they warned you about the queue. Everyone reads the screens presented ro,you at first use after the update. Don't they.

Great changes making selection easier. It's different. Just learn the new, and superior, way.
Userlevel 2
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I can confirm that the intent was to make playing music easier and perhaps more familiar for those used to some of the most popular music playing software out there.

Very interesting to here that confirmed by a Sonos rep as many have suspected that the company may have been trying to align with the queuing approach of some other popular suspects. I am a bit put off by that because I do find it inconsistent with the "You are better than this" message. Sonos was "better than that" and decided to join the crowd. It was one of the areas that I thought Sonos was a step above.

For example I still cannot understand how a one tap on a song could warrant adding an entire album including songs before the one I tapped. Don't get me wrong there are things I like. I like the ability to tap on the play button on a playlist or album tile and it starts immediately. I would prefer if it just added it to the end of the queue and started playing immediately however.


I am an old time Sonos user from close to the start of the company, I think, who has periodically added new hardware over the years. The last piece was a Playbar maybe 2 years ago. I bought, and stayed with Sonos due to the bulletproof integration between Zones, and top tier software. Generally when something changes that I do not like, I learn the new method over time. This seems a little different. It is perhaps reflective of why Sonos has issues at times with every release. Unlike the user Burt wrote above, I dislike the tap to play a song feature when I am viewing the Queue. I like to keep the queue open, and tap the active song which used to pause it. Then I could tap it to start playback again. It took a 2 step process for me, and created many steps. Also easy to accidently tap a song thus starting it over from the beginning.

I will work around the issues, but would be far less likely to recommend Sonos to a friend without qualifications. Somebody starting from scratch might be able to get what they need for far less money. Sonos perhaps is trying to please too many market segments.
Userlevel 1
I have been a user of Sonos since the very beginning, and have 14 base units in 3 houses and have passed the bug onto several friends. I have lived through the highs and lows of updates over the years. I use the system heavily. When my buds come over for parties we all add to the playlist on our phones and enjoy an incredible jukebox experience unavailable on any other platform.

End then this update came along. I can't imagine in what world anybody would find it a useful feature to kill the playlist constantly. Even scrolling through albums you can easily unintentionally replace your entire playlist with some random album. Not enough to just budge in and play the song immediately, but to replace the playlist, and even plug the entire album in place? I am without words, ok maybe a few words.

Please fix this. Can I suggest if someone at Sonos really wants to keep this feature, make it a choice in settings to choose "kill playlist" feature as an option but don't force it on the user. My last party was a gong show with everyone yelling "what the hell did you do" at each other thinking we're all killing each others playlists.

Having said that, this feature aside, I love the work you guys at Sonos have done over the years.
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What about this? Just make the 6.3 release available to us with no tech support or updates Would that work for now? I think so. What says the multitude?
Jeez, you can even get Windows 10 with downgrade options to Windows 7. Surely Sonos can do that little bit.