I will add for those for who the ease of music play at a moment’s notice has become a part of their life such that being denied that for even small periods is a real hardship.

In that boat, I would buy something like the latest Echo Dot and get the music going while Sonos gets its act together.

I have a Dot that has a clock as well, in my bathroom. Very listenable. Does it sound as good as my Sonos kit - of course not! Does it sound better than my Sonos, if Sonos keeps stuttering and stopping, assuming it even starts? Of course it does, way better.

The brain can get used to any sonic signature in time and allow the music to be heard and enjoyed; the brain can never get used to music stuttering and stopping, no matter how long you give it to do so. Even if in between the stutters music sounds much better than on the cheaper speaker.

Eliminating the smallest stutters is why I ran wires to every Sonos zone.

But I find that I get the same enjoyment from music from the Dot in my shower, as I do from my high end set up driven by Echo+Sonos, in the living room. As long as both are playing stutter free and don’t throw a tantrum when commanded to play music.

Hey @Kumar welcome back!

Not quite back, just a touch and go. This is still a crazy place

Also an update to my posts above and a question. My Echo+Sonos zones continue to all work flawlessly as any modern day music system ought to, once properly set up. Although I don’t how long people can keep waiting for their music system to do so, and hence my comment above about S1 hardware still being excellent starts to look flawed as Sonos drags its feet on letting those that can, move back to S1.

The question is to the new app - does it need internet to work even for NAS play? Even if that is to just initiate the play, it seems like a bad bad idea, because with this, Sonos has taken away local control from users and and also ceded it’s control over it’s products to public service infrastructure service providers. As we know, internet service isn’t just about speeds seen on Speedtest…

But Sonos pulled the plug on Alexa in India that because they did not see the business case for investing in the in-country server infrastructure needed to make voice control latency free. I did not like this call, but could not question it either on business or tech grounds; from both angles, Sonos made the right call. And it was a blessing for me, because this led me to Echo devices and made the move away from Sonos at the time of the s1/s2 chaos to be painless. And of course, this allowed me to be immune to the May 2024 s*** show that still rolls on.

On that, here is the question: Why did the same latency concern for the India Alexa integration not factor into the Sonos decision to change over to a web based app? For every user, as opposed to only the ones in India, where the plug was pulled on it for the right reasons of latency?

Just to sell headphones?

Bizarre.

Unless, as is possible, I am missing something, being a user of just S1.

Moderator Note: Modified in accordance with the Community Code of Conduct.

There was a user who posted that in their conversation with support about terrible lagging in the app, Sonos support told them that this is a known issue with users in Asia. Which is really interesting given your prior experience. 
 

I’ve got local library to work without internet but it’s not a great experience. Sometimes the library link doesn’t load. Just disappears. 

How does a web app get the local library to start playing without the internet?

On the lag -Amazon sees India as potentially its biggest customer in future and has invested more than 10 billion dollars in India including in local server infrastructure. So has Spotify, that also prices its service for what the market can bear, to build volumes - I pay USD 2 a month for my Spotify family premium subscription. Both offer products and services that just work in India, out of the “box”.

Sonos is not even a rounding off error in India compared to the big boys. Sonos fans, whose default position is to blame everyone else, point fingers at Amazon when any Indian user asks about Alexa integration in India. As often is the case they are wrong.

But this lack of local presence is going to kill whatever is left of Sonos in India because the web app just won’t work with the low latency needed for what is after all just a remote control. Which is ok because there isn't much to kill; I am not bothered because I am sitting pretty with S1/Echo controlled Sonos.

The question is how is this going to play out in other parts of the world, where reducing latency may be out of Sonos hands? Haven’t seen any discussion on this anywhere here…

Moderator Note: Modified in accordance with the Community Code of Conduct.

Resurfacing here to say the part of my two posts that have been modified explain in detail the basis for what I have said in both, based on my past experiences with Sonos Inc. 

See you in September when I will drop in here again, after taking a look at how the Sonos stock price is doing.