Interested in class action against sonos?

It depends what you need from a replacement.

Currently, Roon brings its own set of issues and headaches and is of little help with a whole home integrated music and home theater solution or wide choice of streaming services. I had considered it in the past for local music only, but the owner push that made it an always on internet cloud dependant service even for local music playback meant it was a non-starter.

In the future it may be an option depending what Samsung/Harman have in store for it. I expect the previous Roon staff setting direction and pushing for cloud will jump ship as soon as their contract lets them as they have already been told to undo some of their previously cloud focused decisions and fix the neglected code. 

I just like to lister to music. High end expensive equipment for me is a waste of money. There is always some background noise. Backyard? birds, plains, cars, wind. Kitchen? stove exhaust, clanking of pots and pans.  Game room? pinball machines, pool table. Office? clicking clock, computer keyboard. Dining room? conversations with friends and family. Most of the time you can’t tell a $200 speaker from a $2000 one. I will spend more for a product that lasts. A system that lasts 20 years is a better investment than one that lasts only 5. I was fortunate that I have an older phone that didn’t update the app so I am running version 16.1 I lost my local library but that’s it. Everything else still works. My work around was simply to connect the line out from my computer to the amp. Not the best solution but it works. And I will continue to bitch, complain and whine to anyone who will listen for the two reasons I stated above. Unfortunately I have to much invested in my system to rip it out and replace it. Does anyone remember Bubble Yum? They almost went bankrupt because someone started a rumor that there were spider eggs in it! Class action law suit? Hell yea!!!!! When the 70 year old owner’s 25 year old wife leaves him because she now has to share there private jet and 75 foot yacht with another family maybe he will get the hint. (I have no idea how old the Ceo. or his wife is before the groups trolls' take me literally).

Yes big time they con people 

Who in right mind would buy system that don't work I despise Sonos con artists 

1 Sonos Arc is $1,499 AUD.

2 Sonos Fives come to $1,798 AUD.

That’s a basic two room, three speaker setup at over $3k. 

Out of curiosity - what system did you end up buying?

I have never been “happy” with the Sonos app, the previous version was clunky - but at least it worked. Given the sound quality and price I was thinking that I’d expand my system with an amp and some Fives that would at least let me plug in a turntable and a DAP so I could choose music without the app.

But the latest app, the lack of support available and the companies public response to the widespread and completely valid criticism has made me think I would prefer to avoid buying anything new from them ever again. 

FWIW the main issue I’ve been having is that the new app simply never loads about 30% of the music I ask it to play. The same music works fine in the native apps for the relevant services, and when I am able to tell my voice activated speakers what to play it also loads fine - it just won’t load in the app. All in all its very frustrating guessing which albums will work and which won’t - or having to try and coax my Google assistant into understanding what I’m asking of it. 

Check out section 13 of the EULA - you have already agreed to arbitration led by the lawyers of the other parties choice in almost every EULA you’ve signed or clicked in the last several years. You probably have the same arrangement with your employer, whether you know it or not.  :)

I’ve moved to Yamaha MusicCast. For my main home theater setup I already had a Yamaha A6A that my Port was plugged into, but the only time I used the Port was to group with another room. Day to day I was using the MusicCast app or alternative control app and never used Sonos in that room.

My needs from my setup are:

• International Internet radio streaming
• Qobuz streaming
• Local music playback, a mix of music and concert videos
• Occasional airplay streaming
• Physical wireless play/pause and volume control ( I use the Ikea Zigbee wireless volume controllers )
• To be able to use local sources without an internet connection
• For everything to work even if the manufacturer abandons or messes up the app.

The Sonos Amps I replaced with V4A AVRs. A big downside is size, the AVRs are huge compared to the Sonos Amp, but unfortunately Yamaha have discontinued the small streaming amps in the uk. I considered their network receivers, but at £450 vs £600-700+ it didn’t make much sense paying the extra.

For the streaming speakers I went with the MusicCast 50s. 2 analogue + 1 digital input as well as the inbuilt streaming and all the main controls on the device as well as in the app.

There were trade offs, but also unplanned benefits.

The two obvious trade offs are size vs the Sonos Amp and Qobuz in the MusicCast app isn’t gapless so live concert recordings and albums that don’t have silence between tracks aren’t seamless. The Qobuz issue is solved by using any other upnp control app that streams Qobuz, or AirPlay from Qobuz instead of the MusicCast app.

Unplanned benefits were a usb-c → hdmi cable means plugging in my tablet or laptop in the rooms with the AVRs is a breeze. The Amp only has an Arc input and I use a 24” monitor rather than a TV with one of them, so now have more flexibility with audio/video in that room.

The huge sub wooofer volume differences between music playback and video playback I had with the Amp are gone. With the Amp a nice sub volume for music streaming was way over the top when video streaming.

I no longer need to convert my digital download purchases from Qobuz for local playback. My subscription means the HiRes versions are usually the cheapest to buy, but Sonos restrict Flac playback to 24bit 48Khz, so I’d usually have to downsample my purchases after downloading them to playback with Sonos.

The biggest benefit for me is while these are MusicCast enabled devices, they are not locked into the Yamaha app as the only way to use and control them and don’t require internet access. The MusicCast side can be ignored and just use them as a multi-room powered speaker/Avr with a separate dap or sources plugged in. While never directly released, the device MusicCast api specs documents are on the internet so anyone can create an app or integration which can control the device settings, playback and multiroom linking. The availability of the api spec and integrations meant I was able to connect my physical wireless volume controllers up to each device myself. Yes, it was more involved than opening the Ikea app and assigning them to a Sonos speaker, but I didn’t have to rely on other companies keeping apps working to do it.

There are many features I’m not using, such as Avr and receiver zones can be turned into rooms in the app. So the 4 zones of my A6A can be made 4 controllable zones in the app. Playback of files from my tablet/phone. Potentially I could dump all my local music on my phone/tablet and get rid of my nas.

The setup works for me and importantly I have confidence that as long as my hardware works, it doesn’t really matter what happens to the app or the continued support of it. 

They told us we need to upgrade our equipment because legacy products will not get updates and now we get updates that are destroying listening experience that’s criminal

Although I am not a lawyer, her in the UK I believe there is a principle of “reasonableness” which the Courts apply to a number of matters, including Ts & Cs.  If that’s true, then I should think it quite possible that a class action might be viable here.  I for one would be potentially interested.