No not every one, just ‘quite a few of the matters reported’ as I was so careful to mention.

For example, the Zombie Zones.  They don’t play, but they show up in the player as playing. They have an active IP address that I can see from the Desktop controller Help/About....  I can Ping them and they respond to the ping.  Just no sound.  I remove them from the group.  I re-add to the group - Voila!  Music now playing.

I get that some network problems can be esoteric, but this seems like something other than a network issue.  These are wired Ports.  No WIFI.  All the SONOS components have fixed IP addresses assigned by the router.  This problem started about 3 weeks ago after the last Firmware update.

My network jacks are wired to a Netgear 16-port Switch.  That switch is connected to a Netgear Orbi 960 Router which is connected to an XFI XB7 Gateway.  Max LAN speeds are 1000 because it’s a 1GB switch.  Max WAN Speed is 2000/240 because that’s where my XFI plans tops out.  Typical WIFI connections get 300-600/200 depending on the device and location.  There are many other WIFI IoT devices on the LAN including Apple TVs, Hue Lights, NEST Cams, Ecobee Thermostats, etc.  The only devices displaying obvious erratic behavior are the SONOS components.

Maybe the Zombie Zones are a network problem.  Iif they are, I have no idea where to start to solve it.  And no idea what led to it.  I have never, in the past 10 years plus, experienced the Zombie Zone issue until now.  Doesn’t mean it’s not the network, but the timing is suspicious.  It would be easy to verify if I could roll-back to a known working version of the system, but…

Happy to entertain any possible solutions.

More on topic, many of you would apparently be surprised at what sort of Class Action suits have merit.

In your posts @stevepow, you have mentioned the audio dropouts and I explained the App is not a player, but merely a remote - you could close the App and power off the controller device and it should not have any effect on the audio playing. So that alone (for me at least), infers an issue between the speaker and the audio source. You can rule out the App in that instance as it’s irrelevant to the problem. The fact you’re seeing zombie zones is likely only confirming the earlier mentioned network issue.

My personal first suggestion is quite a simple one - power off your Sonos devices and reboot the router and fully close the Sonos controller App, then when the internet is back online bring your Sonos products back online one at a time, letting each one connect and settle before moving onto the next device.

If any devices are wired back to the router then start with those first. Then add back the nearest and the next-nearest device etc; until all are back online and see if that resolves the zombie zone Issue and test to see if the audio started via the new Sonos app, then works for you.

Which is why we have all been careful not to say any such thing.

@sigh .  interesting you should mention mesh WiFi networks and SonosNet.  But if wiring more than one speaker causes network loops then that is (almost) unequivocally a router / networking issue, as it means the router (or maybe a switch0 is not STP-enabled.  Until Sonos finds a way of defying the laws of networking physics, there are going to be problems until the network configuration is corrected.

SonosNet seems doomed to me, which I write with a heavy heart.  Using SonosNet has often been a solution to some of the potential networking  issues we have discussed.  Newer Sonos speakers such as the ERA300 have no Ethernet port and cannot connect to SonosNet..  Sonos are giving up a useful tool and are more vulnerable to the infinite variety of peculiarities that router manufacturers seem to come up with, IMO.

Not so sure about the ‘we have all’ bit at all.  I’ve not jumped to any conclusions, unlike some. 

Consensus over the past page or so suggest that there are now enough other things at play to mean the logical process and troubleshooting of the fairly recent past can no longer be taken for granted.

These kinds of misleading and baseless statements help no-one - and only antagonise things even more.

It’s not a case of jumping to a conclusion. It’s often mentioned as a place to begin the trouble-shooting and if it’s not the local, or wider, area network, then other things can also be suggested, like disabling a VPN client on the controller, or switching off the ‘mobile data connection’ for the Sonos App, or reserving IP addresses etc. and contacting Sonos Support, just as a few examples.

The suggestions have to flow from somewhere and past experience shows that starting with a users network is as good as any place to begin the fault finding.

It’s certainly better than doing nothing and just claiming it’s the new Sonos App that is at fault, without considering the ‘usual’ troubleshooting things to begin with.

I’ve been monitoring this thread and I know some comments are in reference to what I have said. That’s fine as everyone has their own opinion and I stand by mine.

Hold on to your seats because I’m going to ruffle quite a few feathers with my next comment….

IMO the premise for this thread regarding a class action suit is sheer lunacy! Furthermore the number of people buying into it boggles the mind. Is Sonos that important to your life that you feel so betrayed?

In truth..Sonos did release the new app prematurely. However Sonos did supply a reason as to why which was to accommodate the release of the Ace and Swap feature with the Arc. I’d guess other products as well that are in the pipeline possibly planed for 2024. However…In the end the app was broken…so be it.

Lets’ talk about the reality of it all. I’m using the same app on my iPhone 15 ProMax and not experiencing the end-of-the-world problems being talked about in this thread. Everything that was supposedly broken in the app is working on my end. I don’t use Music Libraries so I can’t comment on that. 

Granted I’m not using my Sonos every minute of the day and every feature that was supposedly broken in the new release. If I were I’d probably be able to point to everything that was not working and raise a complaint. So I guess I’m lucky in that respect or either the Sonos gods have my system in a protective bubble. Not!

To close I’ll leave you with this question….

If I’m able to use my Sonos in every way that people in this thread are saying they can’t (excepting music libraries) then what might be the other reason/component causing so much user experience pain????

@Ken_Griffiths , you're completely missing my point. I'm not saying there's anything at all wrong with you trying to help and following your troubleshooting process.

Although you did feel there wasn't enough information to go on to decide otherwise, it seems most at least now feel one can't say ALL the bugs discussed here can be traced to network issues and most have been careful not to say so. The point being made is that to still insist they ALL are (not you!) doesn't help because we don't and can't know - in fact, in some cases we know there are bugs not related to local network.

I’m sorry to come off like a complete idiot that has no idea how SONOS works.  My bad. I have had SONOS for over a decade. I know what the controller software does. And I won’t give you a resume, but I know my way around computer networks.

I described a very specific issue where I know with certainty the device is on the network with a valid IP address.  It stops playing while other Ports, all wired, in the group continue to play.  All I have to do to get it to resume playing with the rest of the grouped speakers is remove it from the group and re-add it to the group using the app/controller. No network intervention required.

If the device was not connected to the network, I would neither be able to remove it from or add it back to the group and it would not show up in the controller at all.  Pull one your devices off the network and tell me if you see it in the Controller.  You will not, and you won’t be able to “ping” it either.  That’s why I call them zombies.  I see them in the Controller, I can ping them, I see them if I run an IP scan on my network. But suddenly no audio.  They are not on mute, and the line out volume is “fixed” (or so says the controller app - but where’d that setting go?  Oh, there it is! In the S2 app on my iPad that hasn’t been hi-jacked/updated.   I digress, this is not about the lame controller app - it’s about a Class Action suit that got also hi-jacked into all sorts of other rants including Zombie players...)

I'm not going to assume what technical expertise you may or may not have, but I’m not buying “network issue”.  And I have to believe you didn’t read what I said as I never implied this was a controller app issue, even though there are plenty of those too.

My hypothesis is that it is indeed NOT the CONTROLLER that keeps a group of SONOS components playing together in Sync.  You as much as said that too.  If you shut down the controller, obviously the music still continues to play from all players in sync.  Or it should and it always has for me until recently.

So, what is keeping those players in sync and playing together? If not the Controller software, then what?  You are correct that it is not the Controller app, but what do you think it is?  Where do you think the brains are?  How do you think a controller on your Desktop knows what the controller on your Phone told the Sonos devices to do?  Do you think the controllers talk to each other, or something else is going on. Spoiler: The controllers do not talk to each other.

What do you think will happen if you have a wired group playing in sync and you pull the network cable from one for a few seconds and then plug it back in?  Have you tried it? For that one device it is a fairly catastrophic network event - the network is gone.  Seems like it would be a possible way to force a network error bad enough to create a Zombie, right?

Well no.  What happens is:

1. it fails over to WIFI with brief interruption in the playback.
2. if WIFI is disabled for the Port and the network is unplugged long enough for playback to stop as the buffer runs out, the Port IP address can no longer be pinged, obviously, and the Port vanishes from the controller and the group.  No Zombie.  More interestingly, when plugged it back into the network after a minute or so, it automatically rejoins the group and begins playing again.

That’s how robust the group playback is when things are working normally even with substantial network interruptions.  So, what is causing the Zombies?  Why now after all these years? I have done quite a bit of troubleshooting beyond simply re-booting the entire network and repowering all 12 SONOS components.

It may well be a network problem. I don’t know. I know it’s not a simple network problem even though the network is relatively simple for these devices: they don’t use Wi-Fi, they don’t use the router once they get their assigned and reserved IP addresses, they don’t use the internet gateway, they simply communicate through the switch they are all plugged into. I could shut the network down, other than that switch, and they’d happily keep playing music from my local library.

I’ve run out of things to try.  I’ve done the simple things and beyond.  If / when support ever comes back up for air, I’ll run a diagnostic for them and maybe they’ll know what to do - if there’s anything to do - or can get the problem into the queue to be fixed.

What doesn’t help is people coming here and trying to gaslight others into thinking, no, the app is fine, it's you and your ridiculous clinging to some missing feature(s…...) that don’t matter to the enlightened and that you shouldn’t care about either.  Or no, the firmware is fine, it’s you and your network and your neighbor's network and Elon Musk’s satellites, the northern lights, northern exposure, silicon-covid, or whatever other random thing.

You’re not lucky, you’re just a simpler case user. 

All I do is listen to music from my music library - 90% of the time. So, for me, your case is not at all “in every way that people” etc., etc. When you stream your music library to 3 or 4 sync’d Ports wired to a network 10-12 hours a day, then we can compare notes.

There are quite a few issues I have read about on here too that I have not experienced. I write it down mostly to me avoiding the new app as much as possible.  There are also many issues I read about that involve features, services, and setups, that I don’t use and products that I don’t own.  But that doesn’t make them invalid just because they don’t fit my use case.  I’m really glad I have not run into the setup problems others have - my system was already set up. I assume they are legit problems since the release notes say some have been addressed.  I doubt they are trying to fix imaginary problems, do you? 
 

As you rightly say @stevepow its not the App, at least you have accepted that and the class action mentioned here is centred on that App being the issue. It seems in your case it isn’t. I suspect you will perhaps be better off speaking with Sonos Support later and describing to them your network & system setup in detail, which I think you said had been upgraded in recent times and provide them with a diagnostic report and go forward from there.

That is exactly the view point that led to the IT Industry meme about developers claiming ‘works on my machine’ when a user reports an issue or a deployment breaks production.

I already gave you explanations for why two of the items potentially wouldn’t be a user network issues. Please explain how they are?

A month ago, which is the date of the post you quoted, even Sonos wouldn't try and claim the empty Manage Networks was a user issue, nevermind a user network issue.

They acknowledged in their first list of future development that WiFi settings were missing, with a planned date of mid-June to add it back.

It has only been in the 1st July release that Sonos added the ability to change the Sonosnet channel back to the Android app, as per their own release notes. For iOS it was added 17th June, so I’m sure Sonos would been keen to understand how a month ago you had a fully working manage networks section in your app when it didn’t exist and how it being missing would be a user network issue?

Some of the items mentioned in this list have been addressed and improved by Sonos making application updates, it is visible in their release notes. So please explain why you believe the users network is the cause of all their problems including functionality that Sonos had removed and not added back to the app at the date the issues were listed?

Whatever!

Whine, whine, whine, wah, wah, wah. I guess it’s true…misery “does” love company!

So do yourselves a favor …File Your Lawsuit…however, I seriously doubt it bring the Sonos gods down from Mount Olympus!

 PS…I’m done for today. I have a 4th of July celebration to attend. Maybe you should find another diversion outside of Sonos and this thread. Have a good day !

I can only agree with @AjTrek1 .  This thread has become worse than pointless.  None of us knows for sure what the causes of the various problems are.  So I suggest we all just shut up and wait and see how things pan out.  Maybe see you back here in three months to check how things have progressed (if they have)?  That can include an update on how the class action is going.

My final suggestion for amyone experiencing problems of missing zones, dropouts etc would be:

(i) Power off your network and all Sonos devices. Then power up the network followed by Sonos

(ii) If that does not help, submit a system diagnostic when things are not working properly and call Sonos Support to work through any issues revealed.

This is just a suggestion and it certainly won’t solve all problems.  But I think it is worth trying for some sorts of issue.  If it doesn’t help anyone, then I apologise for wasting your time.

See you back here in October?

In my own use-case the only difference I’m seeing is the Sonos ‘remote’ App has changed - but my existing Sonos hardware has continued to work the same as before the early May update - that includes products either standalone, or grouped, whether they’re fixed or portable.

Hardware-wise nothing appears to have changed and I play to my products (grouped and ungrouped) in a variety of ways,.. via the App, using Airplay, line-in (four different audio sources), Bluetooth, TV audio, and/or direct control. Also I’ve not encountered any changes with Alexa, or SVC voice control.

In fact I’m personally convinced if I were ever to be given the S2 App back, that things would likely work exactly as before the App was switched.

There seems to have been far more App ‘remote’ controller updates than there have been firmware updates and my thoughts are that very little has changed in terms of the Sonos firmware and was perhaps more geared around catering for the new Roam 2 and Ace Headphones being added to an existing Sonos system.

In my own use case my hardware continues to work as well. I had some issues with my Roam and updates but they eventually worked after a sonos app update, can’t remember which one.

But the new app is buggy AF, constant “Something Went Wrong”, lagging, crashes, volume changes taking 30 seconds to apply. Music Library link disappearing, music services not loading properly.

But switching over to Sonophone or the desktop app when I have issues and it just works, perfectly every time. Airplay also works. No lag, no issues with services, no something went wrong messages. Sonophone, the desktop app and Airplay work perfect when the Sonos app bugs out.

That’s helpful @Bumper and seems to infer/agree with my own thoughts that the hardware products themselves and their own network connections haven’t altered at all - I know my family and friends and others here, have not had issues network-wise since the App was switched/updated and so if I see users saying their speakers are dropping off the LAN and the such like, or their music somewhat inexplicably stops playing, then I continue to suspect that would likely to have been the case too even without the new controller App, or recent updates.

It’s why I think some users ‘likely’ have a local (network) issue rather than anything the recent updates have caused. Albeit some updates can lead to multiple product reboots and cause IP conflicts with some DHCP servers in some cases. 

I guess the fact that the existing SonoPad/Phone controller Apps still work okay for you shows that perhaps very little (if anything) has changed on the speakers themselves.

I don’t know that very little has changed on the speakers. The new web app seems to indicate a lot may have changed  

The new app sucks and some people’s systems are incredibly unreliable 2 months later. That you and another poster have amazing systems and I can play music on 3rd party app that uses the old control commands does’t prove or disprove anything other than Sonos has screwed up massively and there’s no end in sight. As John says maybe by October. 

Hi @Bumper, you may recall that the v16.2 firmware ‘fixed’ the alarms-cannot-be-edited snafu with the very first release of the new mobile apps. Upgrading the mobile app to the second release was not enough, the v16.2 firmware was required to get the return of alarm editing. That was the first time the new “Sonos server in the middle” architecture was evident. All of this was later confirmed by Sonos in the ill-fated AMA.

I had alarms showing in the 80.0.0 release but it was removed the next day - then it was away for a while and when it came back some had the wrong time/timezone (or daylight saving) issue - that was then fixed. That’s my recollection of the early alarm issue. That said I don’t use the feature anyway as I find it easier to set alarms on Sonos via Alexa.

@stevepow .  Although I have now opted out of the general discussion of this thread, there are some details that interest me (sad geek), and as you say, you have a very particular and specific problem.

If I understand you correctly, you have the old app on one device and the new app on another device?  If so, it is highly likely (I do not say certain) that one of those apps is not fully compatible with the system firmware.  I am therefore not at all surprised that you are seeing different behaviour from the two apps, and it isn’t obvious to me how the results should be interpreted.

Also, it is likely that your unwired speaker has not in the past been connecting to your network via your WiFi, but to SonosNet.  Again, I am not sure what might have happened to this arrangement in the world of the new app, but first, would you please let me know what type of speaker / player this is?

I, among many other apparently, am completely frustrated with the new app. It’s illogical and, more importantly, it does not allow me to connect to my iTunes library.

Now, the interesting thing to me is…if I sign up for Apple Music, which it wants me to do, the app may work! Well, I am one who has a few thousand CD’s that I have curated into many playlists using iTunes’ free platform. I am able to play music through all other speaker systems, but not through my Sonos speakers…I wonder why? Did Sonos enter into an agreement with Apple to force Sonos users to only use Apple Music? Now that’s a lawsuit!

Moderator edit: No, we didn’t

I’ve given them a bit of time to resolve the issues and/or at least provide a response of “we’re working on it” for long enough.  I’m definitely interested in figuring out how to get back some of the thousands I’ve spent on their products.