Wishlist for Sonos Controller Improvements


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So on the old ask forum wishlist items would get lost. Thought I would post a topic where people could vote their biggest wish for controller software improvements.

Wishlist Items for Controller


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Userlevel 7
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Shame I can't select all of them (except leave it alone) !!!!
Need a multi-select poll
Userlevel 7
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haha - yea it would be nice to select multiple. But it is nice to pick a favorite.
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Why don't you give your top 10 list here - in priority order.

Mine from highest priority to lowest

1) Party Mode
2) Show New Music
3) Save Backup settings/favorites
4) Better Equalizer
5) Casting from Native apps (Google Casting)
6) Easier Pairing/unpairing Sub
7) Improve alarm
😎 Improve layout (specifically tablet landscape)
9) Full Mode on Playbar when watching TV
10) "Add From Here" to queue
Integration with Rovi would be my #1. I listen to a huge variety of music, and make extensive use of allmusic.com and other similar sites. Would be great to have the information and reviews they provide integrated into Sonos' already great search function.
I listen to a huge variety of music, and make extensive use of allmusic.com and other similar sites. Would be great to have the information and reviews they provide integrated into Sonos' already great search function.
Yes please, and Wikipedia.
So on the old ask forum wishlist items would get lost.

I didn't like the Ask forum, but I don't think that the wishlist items got lost over there. There was a separate Ideas section, and ideas were ranked by popularity, and you could re sequence them by newness, or Sonos response. You could see which items that you had voted upon.

It is this new forum which causes them to get lost, and I presume that is by design, ie. that Sonos prefers it that way.

If they are real about customer engagement, they should resurrect, and improve upon that facility IMO.

A good initiative though Chris. 😃
1. Allow browsing and queuing from a DLNA server .. to overcome the current lame browsing experience given by limitations in the Sonos UI
2. Populate the track and album info facilities with information from sources such as Wikipedia, and or AllMusic.com, and or Last.fm
3. When searching by artist, the results should include albums from the composite artists index
4. Add non-cached tag information into the track info facility; eg. Date released, Composer, Date ripped, Lyrics, etc ... hint: I added the info into the track tags because it is important to me
5. Play|queue from here facility ... or give the mobile controllers a multi-track selection facility
6. Display the composer tag on the Now Playing screen
7. Allow for a Genre->Composer->Album index, ie. additional to the Genre->Artist->Album index which you have
8. Allow for a Composer->Genre->Album index, ie. additional to the Composer->Album index which you have
Userlevel 5
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More control over volume sleep and alarm fade in fade out, custom fade time and duration, more graceful fades with dynamic and smaller volume changes.

Lowest volume level (1 tap) on the controller is OK in the night to start sleeping , but there is no fade out, the music is cut abruptly.

Camillo
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Expanding on Camillo - I would like a fade in / fade out on all music changes. Such as your listening to a song and you go in controller and pick a new song. It would be great when you chose the new song instead of the one playing abruptly stopping it would fade into the new song!!! Same deal then when queue is finished - if set to fade just fade out (custom length of time).
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Better ability to handle casting from native applications is an interesting one. I use AirAudio on my Nexus 5, which sees the Sonos as a sort of UPnP device and allows streaming of whatever audio is currently playing on the phone (I guess on a per-room basis, though I only have one room in my Sonos).

It looks like this: http://s9.postimg.org/w0jhxse7z/Screenshot_2015_09_06_11_20_08.png

It also pops up a notification as soon as I walk in my house and connect to WiFi, asking if I want to start streaming whatever I was listening to while I was out to Sonos, which is damn awesome.

Now this works by some very low level audio routing changes in the OS so it needs root access. There are a couple of other apps on the Play Store do the same thing and which all need root as well, so how possible it would be to get the Sonos controller app to do something similar without root I don't know.

One alternative would be for Sonos supported apps (Spotify, Soundcloud etc) to have Sonos Controller as a 'share to' option in Android (and whatever the iOS equivalent is), so you could fire your currently playing Soundcloud playlist from your phone to the Sonos Controller and it would load the same playlist, at the same point in the same track. Rather than actually sharing the audio I guess this would just need to send a bunch of XML with the track URLs / GUIDs and current playback time stamp to instruct the Sonos system what to play.
Userlevel 7
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bump
Userlevel 5
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I've been asking to be able to limit certain controlers to certain zones for years, along with many many others. It's insane that they don't deliver on this. Should be 3 days of programming, tops.
Userlevel 7
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I've been asking to be able to limit certain controlers to certain zones for years, along with many many others. It's insane that they don't deliver on this. Should be 3 days of programming, tops.

There are SO MANY controller side changes that could be made but aren't. Most controller functions are not limited by the hardware constraints of older sonos components so there is really no reason not to make such changes. Many are simple 'macros' of existing functions. The mantra to 'keep things simple' can be maintained for those that want it by adding a number of potential functions into 'optional settings'. Users are much more used to such things these days - take you average new car - makes sonos looks like a childs toy in comparison to the tech you find in there and thats not a good thing to me ! I like features and clever, useful, time-saving functions - many are missing in sonos.
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Option to sort by year on recent thread. Similar to poll question - show new music (expanded to order by year)
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On the Roku remotes (the higher end one), an end-user can plug in headphones directly to the remote to enjoy private listening (to whatever the Roku is broadcasting). Link: http://www.businessinsider.com/this-tv-remote-from-roku-has-a-feature-i-need-on-my-tv-remote-now-2013-3?IR=T&

Since the Sonos already allow us to use iOS (& Android?) devices as controllers, I don't see why Sonos is unable to implement this feature as well...unless the Sonos mobile controller software has no access to the data of the media playback?
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The sonos remotes don't actually ever see the music. It doesn't stream to them. Only those songs stored in the device which you can play to device anyhow.
On the other hand this feature could easily be added to a custom dedicated remote which is what ROKU has done. Sonos could introduce a remote that has a headphone jack and acts as a zone player. It would also be a good opportunity to provide some hard buttons and a drop-in charger.
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On the other hand this feature could easily be added to a custom dedicated remote which is what ROKU has done. Sonos could introduce a remote that has a headphone jack and acts as a zone player. It would also be a good opportunity to provide some hard buttons and a drop-in charger.

What if they build the sonos bridge into such a device?! (I know remote controls're often battery-powered but still...)
Userlevel 7
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Bump - recent request again for Stereo sound toggle to use to go to full mode when listening to music via toslink on Playbar.
I'd like to see a way to manually or automatically mute the system from your smart phone when a phone call comes in. So that you can do it before you answer the call. I'm not sure of the software adjustments needed to do that, but it would be so handy.
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Bumping again - - - hopefully with 6.0 and Trueplay out of the way ... some of those new developers can take a crack at some of the long standing wishlist items!!
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So far Party Mode (my personal favorite) and Casting (which fingers crossed Google Chromecast Audio is coming) are in the lead!
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Just a small UI detail, but I'd like to swipe the room drop down (iOS app) left/right to quickly switch between rooms, since I only got a Play:5 and a Playbar. Would speed up things when I launch the app into the wrong room when I just want to pause the other room.

iPhone 6S specific: It would be nice to Force Touch the Sonos app and via the menu choose which room to launch the app into.
Userlevel 7
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Just a small UI detail, but I'd like to swipe the room drop down (iOS app) left/right to quickly switch between rooms, since I only got a Play:5 and a Playbar. Would speed up things when I launch the app into the wrong room when I just want to pause the other room.

iPhone 6S specific: It would be nice to Force Touch the Sonos app and via the menu choose which room to launch the app into.


I agree. Also, when the room dropdown is not shown I would love it if you could swipe left and right between tracks rather than using the track navigation buttons.This seems the standard among many music applications
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I like that force touch idea.