I’m interested in a community view before I spend potentially hours on support.
I used to be a big fan, but it seems to me that Sonos app has gone from best in class to one of my worst app experiences. Some details:
Five speakers, four Play 1 and one Sonos Beam
System always says it is up to date. Currently S2 build 80.14
Generally takes 10+ seconds for any response (finding the system, play, pause, etc.) which is an eternity when the phone is ringing and you have music blasting.
Randomly connects and disconnects speakers, sometimes refusing to change music. My Beam, for example, will only play Handel’s Messiah this morning, I guess because I played it three months ago??? I cannot get it to play what I have going on other speakers. It is like my dedicated Messia speaker.
Sonos used to ask me what speakers I wanted to play on before starting play. Now it starts play, then I can add and drop speakers. This again might sound like a trivial difference, but not to the guests in your guestroom who get blasted out of bed before I can turn off their speaker (with the 10 second play/pause lag).
Sonos voice is remarkably unreliable, sometimes responding, sometimes not, even when I am speaking directly to it from 3 feet away. Sometimes it answers “Yes” or “Good choice” and then doesn’t play the music. It then goes into what I call Pout Mode where it won’t respond for a couple of hours.
I read that Sonos fixed many of their problems, but this generally seems like an unworkable system and I appear to be using their latest app. Last time I called tech support, I spent over an hour with a tech who could not diagnose my issues (but agreed he could see them happening from his end). He then escalated to an elite support level who scheduled an appointment...a month out!!! I was travelling and could not make the appointment.
So before I go through that frustration again, is there hope or has this software truly become worthless crap?
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Since your previous support issue was never resolved, I would see if the ticket is still open, or can be re-opened, and get another appointment scheduled.
You state “Sonos used to ask me what speakers I wanted to play on before starting play. Now it starts play, then I can add and drop speakers.” Not sure I follow this. When I start the app, the speakers are silent. I swipe the speaker selector up (on the bottom of the screen) and choose a speaker. Then I choose what to play. No need to wake the guests. What are you doing differently?
No, working off iPhone app, when I search on music, I get two options, a play button and the … (the options under … are either “play now” or “Save to Sonos Favorites.”) There is a small window that allows me to manage the current playing selection (Pause, skip, etc.), but not the new music. I can only play or not play. Yes, once I hit play, I can then access the speaker selection option, but the guests are awake by that time :-(
I mean, maybe there’s a way to do it, but it’s so entirely unintuitive as to be what I would have classified as a bug in my former high tech life.
Hi @pspdx
Sorry you’re have issues with your Sonos. Here are my thoughts….
You wrote:
Generally takes 10+ seconds for any response (finding the system, play, pause, etc.) which is an eternity when the phone is ringing and you have music blasting.
Randomly connects and disconnects speakers, sometimes refusing to change music. My Beam, for example, will only play Handel’s Messiah this morning, I guess because I played it three months ago??? I cannot get it to play what I have going on other speakers. It is like my dedicated Messia speaker.
Those issues are network related so we need more information regarding your network. Is it a:
Router/Modem
Router/Modem with range extenders
Mesh consisting of a main router and satilites
Brand(s)/Model(s)
You wrote:
Sonos used to ask me what speakers I wanted to play on before starting play. Now it starts play, then I can add and drop speakers. This again might sound like a trivial difference, but not to the guests in your guestroom who get blasted out of bed before I can turn off their speaker (with the 10 second play/pause lag).
I’m with @106rallye on this one; not sure what you’re referring to 🤔
You Wrote
Sonos voice is remarkably unreliable, sometimes responding, sometimes not, even when I am speaking directly to it from 3 feet away. Sometimes it answers “Yes” or “Good choice” and then doesn’t play the music. It then goes into what I call Pout Mode where it won’t respond for a couple of hours.
SVC is a very specific voice assistant. One must be precise as it cannot handle commands with the same nuances as Alexa or Google voice
Regarding speakers. if the app shows as below with just a single Room/Zone along then only that speaker will play. Continue to next picture….
If the App shows the Room/Zone plus “X” number; then the Room/Zone is Grouped to one or more other rooms/zones and will send audio to those areas as well. You will not have time un-Group the other rooms/zones (with guests) after pressing play to avoid waking them. You’ll need to un-Group before pressing play.
I’d agree having to choose a speaker first on a menu that is not entirely visible ( if you doe not want the the last speaker you last used, that is visible) and only after that being able to choose your music on a screen that is visible is counter intuitive. I’ve mentioned this choice being questionable before. Especially since the speaker section on the screen looks like a button, which it is when used for grouping, but acts as a menu when swiping it up. It took me a week (the speaker section looked even more like a button then, having all rounded corners) to find this, some only find the swiping option when reading posts like this.
No, working off iPhone app, when I search on music, I get two options, a play button and the … (the options under … are either “play now” or “Save to Sonos Favorites.”) There is a small window that allows me to manage the current playing selection (Pause, skip, etc.), but not the new music. I can only play or not play. Yes, once I hit play, I can then access the speaker selection option, but the guests are awake by that time :-(
I mean, maybe there’s a way to do it, but it’s so entirely unintuitive as to be what I would have classified as a bug in my former high tech life.
I will select the room(s) I want to play music in first, then go select the music I want to play. That feels intuitive to me, so I don’t have an issue with it. I can understand why others think differently.
I also think the new app is not great at displaying what room your audio is currently playing in on certain screens. Not at home currently, so can’t pull up the screen I’m thinking of, and could be missing something.
Thanks to all who have replied, especially AJ with his/her detailed responses. I’m not on board with all of them since I had no network issues until the major app upgrade last year. So I’m thinking its the app. The voice thing: yes, I know SVC is a specific voice system and I know it responds to specific voice commands. My issue is that it just shuts down, especially after failing to fulfill a command. That tells me it has low self esteem. I demonstrated this to tech support last summer and they admited it was happening before esculating me to support purgatory.
Bringing me back to my original question, which is more of less “is it worth calling support these days?” Last summer, the support system seemed broken with techs that didn’t understand problems and ungodly wait times to talk to a team that might. Has sonos cleaned up its act and can expect the fine support experience I used to when I first became a customer?
