I’m sure it has changed and is cloud based - maybe Sonos are going to integrate AI and take things to another level eventually, but we’ll have to wait and see. Sonos has always been a forward thinking company and I’m sure there is method in the madness of rebuilding the App from the ground up. It’s just going to take time and I will perhaps judge things in 18 months time, or so, from now and just wait patiently.

New application that was intuitive and easy to use sucks so so so bad.  Sonos should roll it back to the previous version, fire the developers and UX team and get back to simple intuitive interface that please the customers that buy these very expensive speakers.  Keep the crappy app and many will abandon Sonus just like BudLight got abandoned.  Be smart. Test with your customer, not developers who think complicated is cool - it isn’t cool at all. 

I’m sorry, Ken, but that’s a bit ludicrous. We’re talking about a mass market consumer product. It’s supposed to be easy to use; and that has been its biggest selling point since inception. It may be laudable that Sonos is going to the trouble to ‘rebuild from the ground up,’ and the end result might be just marvelous a year from now; but customers did not sign up to become guinea pigs for a year or more while Sonos ‘rebuilds.’

The current app is clearly a work in progress. It should have been offered on a voluntary basis to the tech nerds among us who are willing to participate in an ongoing experiment. Instead, it has been force-fed to people like me who just want to play music without a lot of fuss, and without having to watch and learn how the new and improved sausage is being made.

Every time I download a new ‘update,’ new bugs appear. I still have none of the most important and basic functions I relied on and justifiably took for granted before the recent shakeup. Features reappear and disappear without rhyme or reason. Every time I open my app, I wonder (with some trepidation) what next.

There is really only one satisfactory solution at present. Sonos must fall on its sword; admit it released this new app prematurely; apologize to concerned users instead of playing ‘blame the victim’; and provide an easy way to revert to the old controller app. It worked pretty much flawlessly, without a lot of effort on our part. There can be no dispute: the current app does not work.

At that point, Sonos can take all the time it wants to do all the tinkering and ‘rebuilding from the ground up’ it’s little old heart desires. But while that is an ongoing effort, Sonos owners need to get our music back, with our lost playlists restored; simple playlist and queue editing with ability to save edited queues and playlists; smooth operation of volume controls; speaker grouping that works every time, not sporadically; and so on.

I keep reading a variety of explanations why these things don’t work now… all boiling down to ‘it’s something in your own setup.’ That’s nonsense. All of these things were working just fine before just one thing changed: the new app invaded our devices. It is not something in my home network that suddenly went wrong the same day the new app replaced the pre-existing one.

Listening to music using my Sonos speakers should be a simple, reliable, enjoyable experience… not a year of frustration and repeated disappointment. Leaving Sonos owners with no option but to ‘be patient’ is quite simply unacceptable.

.

The difference for me @chambolle is I find the App does work okay. Yes it’s a little slow in one or two places and there are the things missing that we all know about that were in the old S2 App, but I have no difficulty playing any of my 18 music services (that included my locally held NAS library) to any of my 10 Sonos Rooms (25 products) either ungrouped or grouped. It’s the exact same App too (assuming folk are using the latest update) and I definitely don’t suffer any crashes, missing speakers or loss of my library that some report. I’m using iOS and Android controllers too.

I have been shouted down as a Sonos fanboy, but it is the case the App works fine for me and I’ve even tried to show that is the case by posting screen-captures from all of my controller Apps. 

I don’t know why many here are having so much difficulty with the App when it works fine here. I can only suggest to those people to explore some things locally or get in touch with Sonos support - despite the long wait times.

I’m  not sure what else I can add - the hardware has not changed here either, otherwise I don’t see how the SonoPad/Phone controller App would still carry on and work with products. The only thing I’ve seen altered mainly is the App and that’s just a software remote that works for me and my Sonos setup.

I’ve attached a few things I’ve uploaded previously - but please forgive me if you’ve seen them already. I know those against the App are probably sick of seeing them. 

Super frustrated.  My surrounds (Ones) and sub (Gen 3) will no longer connect to the Arc after using the new app. 

Tried factory resets.  The Arc goes fine.

Get all the way to the end of the Surrounds setup and then the surrounds show as ‘not available’.

When adding the sub, I get all the way to the end and then only the Sub shows up, the Arc and the Surround are no longer there.

Since I’ve done this about 3x now (maybe more), I’m pretty frustrated.

If you ‘perhaps’ have the Ones stereo paired, then you need to unpair them first to add them as HT surrounds - I’m not sure if that’s your issue here, but mention it, in case.

@Ken_Griffiths : I’ve contacted Sonos support. The best I’ve gotten from that is ‘be patient.’ I think we’ve previously confirmed those playlists you have displayed were either ‘canned’ lists from an outside service or lists you created on those services. My playlists were all created on the Sonos app by saving albums or tracks in a queue and then saving that queue as a playlist. Those playlists do not display at all in the app and display only intermittently using the web app. If I try to open and play a Sonos playlist in the web app, I’ve gotten ‘internal server error.’

I’ve asked Sonos to explain that. The response was ‘can’t explain it’ and ‘we’re still working on this.’ In other words, ‘be patient.’ 

The fact remains that it’s great that the app works for you; but for thousands, or tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of us, it is not working. Maybe if each of us had sufficient technical skills and time to rectify whatever is preventing the app from working, we could overcome our difficulties.

But we should not be expected to do that. I do not have to be an auto mechanic to drive my car. I do not have to be an electrician and troubleshoot my wall oven and electrical service panel every time I want to bake a pie. I should not have to spend hours troubleshooting my music system in order to find and play music I saved in a library of Sonos playlists, or wait months for a team of coders to figure out how to restore my access to my music. 

With all due respect, I’ve read quite a few posts you’ve submitted here with all sorts of technical details that mean nothing to me. I’m sure they may be helpful to those in the know, but I will readily admit I’m not one of those in the know. I’m just a dummy who wants to access and play my music with the least frustration and difficulty. That’s what I signed up for when I bought a few grand worth of Sonos speakers. That’s what I had until the recent controller app fiasco.

As I said, all of this worked seamlessly right up to the moment the new controller app replaced the existing one on my devices. I did not have to plumb the inner depths of my home network to make things work; and I should not be required to do that now. There is a solution staring us in the face: allow us to revert to the controller that we know will work, until such time as it is reasonably certain the new one will work.

That’s not rocket science. It’s just common sense. I still have not heard a good reason why Sonos steadfastly refuses to offer that common sense option.

What you mention makes perfect sense @chambolle and I do agree with your last post here, the App should work ‘out the box’ and I don’t know why it doesn’t for some, as I did nothing special when I upgraded from S2 - things did/do always work here.

The Sonos playlists you mention though are an issue and the playlists I have are indeed ‘canned’ ones from the Amazon Music Service, or ones I created in that service myself - the Sonos playlists do need to be resolved. I will agree with anything that’s correct, so don’t think I’m here to defend everything Sonos have done - but it is the case the App and my local NAS library have always worked here. I can play my existing music sources, whether that be from my library, Amazon Music or the other sources you can perhaps see in my earlier uploaded attachments.

I accept the App still has some features that need to be added to it aswell.

Two things I need to be able to do quickly.   1) pick the speaker I want (or set of speakers) and 2) choose the music to play.   Neither one of these is simple or intuitive.  It’s like it’s a disjointed process.  You go set music and then go somewhere else to figure out the speakers to use, or vice versa.   It makes me angry every time I open the app.  And that’s not counting the bugs, like every time I go from one house to the other, it makes me rejoin the system and at my main house it thinks each amp is a separate Sonos system and I have to join the amp and hope it’s the right one.   It’s just awful.  

I guess we each may do things differently, but I just select/set the room (or rooms) I want to play to and then select an audio source to play to those rooms.

I have several locations where I have my speakers, but I just use the same App - the answer there is to use the same Sonos Household across all locations, but add the WiFi networks to the Sonos App - the App will support upto 16 WiFi networks per Sonos Household - at least that was the limit of the S2 App. I currently have 5 WiFi networks stored, but they represent 3 separate locations with two mobile WiFi router backups (just to keep things running if a network goes offline).

I didn’t realize that the speaker shown at the bottom of the App was a “swipe up” menu to select the speaker you wanted..  I feel stupid for missing that.   I thought you had to go into the little boxes to the right and do the speaker selection and hit “apply” when you wanted a different room.   That doesn’t work well at all.   Swiping up to bring up the list of speakers works way better obviously.  That helps the experience a bit, still have the bugs to deal with.  I also noticed that if you have a PlayBar selected it will show an option to select TV as the source for that Playbar.  That part is nice.    

@Niner01,

I appreciate the six rooms I grouped were only set to low volume-level in my last post ‘attachment’ but it is quite late here (10.22pm UK time) and so I first set them to a low level before I did the recording - but it hopefully demonstrates what I do and that is I group the Sonos rooms first and then go find an audio source (Amazon Music in this instance) to play to that room/group.

There are of course other ways to achieve the same thing, but that’s the usual way I go about playing my audio here.. I actually find it easier/quicker than the last App to group/ungroup rooms.

My own small gripe is the few seconds it takes to start the music after I press the Play button in the Amazon service, but I’m hoping those things might perhaps be sorted later with some App optimisation.

We all do things differently anyway, I guess - it’s whatever people prefer/get used to.

I appreciate some things are missing from the App too (which collectively everyone has probably mentioned) but I guess those things will return in the not too distant future - I don’t personally get any problems with the App or my players… it all works okay for me (no crashes or audio dropouts) and my services, speakers and library always show up.

I’m just at a loss why so many say they have the various problems with their new Sonos App. It’s just the same ‘remote’ App we are all using and all I’ve really done is upgraded from S2 - I tidied up the Home Screen and improved my devices discovery time by improving the SNR levels and WiFi connection for a few of my players, but all that really was to get the App open a little quicker from a fully closed state (now 7 seconds in my case) and to get the Play/Pause buttons working a little faster (they’re still not fast enough for me) - but I’m continuing to work on that one.

My Sonos devices SNR levels taken from the Sonos App….

• Dining Room Arc 68dB
• Fireplace-L 56dB
• Fireplace-R 57dB
• Hallway 58dB
• Kitchen Beam 68dB
• Living Room Arc 82dB
• Main Bedroom Beam 66dB
• Media Port 66dB
• Moveable-L 58dB
• Traveller-R 52dB
• Polo-L 57dB
• Polo-R 54dB
• Portable 52dB
• Utility-L 52dB
• Utility-R 54dB

I initially monitored these in the new Sonos App to check all were achieving a set level above 45dB - I moved a couple of my Sonos devices and two of my WiFi mesh hubs (slightly) to help improve their levels. I think it helps to do these things as it ensures the WiFi connections are good to all players, which must assist the mDNS device discovery by the controller App too. Where possible I steered the speakers onto the 5Ghz band aswell (that’s not possible though for Home Theatre products).

Heres a Sonos Support link about these things…

https://support.sonos.com/en-us/article/understanding-the-network-details-section-in-the-sonos-app

Note: It’s not an answer to a lot of things, but I still found it a useful thing to do and it did improve my Sonos App launch time from a fully closed state.

I’ve gone off in search of ‘network details’ and cannot locate that in the new app. I go to settings, then click on one of the speakers, then it goes to a network connection page with the option to enable or disable wi fi. None of the info listed in the sonos article ken griffths has linked.

If I got to ‘your system’ and ‘about,’ I get model numbers, ssid, app version and similar stuff. Nothing that resembles ‘SNR levels.’

This is just one frustration after another. 

What type of setup are you using - if you’re perhaps using SonosNet, rather than WiFi, then you will need to use the Sonos Matrix instead. The above is for those using a WiFi (non-wired Sonos device) setup - Really sorryif that’s what Is happening in your case, I should maybe have made that clear.

I have no idea. I am using my wi fi, I thought. I have a cable modem, a wi fi router and a ‘boost’ connected to that. I have ‘wi fi enabled’ shown in the app, on channel 11.

I also just went to the web controller app to see what I could see there. It does not show my living room and kitchen speakers. It shows my bedroom speakers, but it is frozen and won’t do a damn thing. There is no option to add or subtract other rooms; and at the bottom of my screen, I can see ‘bedroom - no music’ but that part of the screen is cutoff and I cannot enable any of the buttons. 

Seriously. I’m just going to leave this whole mess alone until someone can assure me that the Sonos techies have sorted this whole mess out so mere mortals can play music again. This is just a ridiculous waste of time and effort.

At this point, I wish I had just purchased a new turntable, cd player, integrated amp and speakers or active speakers w/o a separate amp. I have a vast music library on vinyl and discs, and for $3000 I could have a serviceable system that cannot be disabled by somebody in Silicon Valley who gets a bug up his bottom. And most integrated amps nowadays have streaming capability as well.

You’re likely not using WiFi if you have a Boost, that wired product is the bridge to SonosNet (albeit newer Sonos products no longer use that slow connection) - See these two links that perhaps may help you with things…

https://support.sonos.com/en-us/article/check-if-sonos-is-in-a-wireless-or-wired-setup

https://support.sonos.com/en-us/article/switch-sonos-between-a-wireless-and-wired-setup

Sorry I perhaps should not assume people are aware of these two modes… my bad!! 

I followed the instructions. I went to ‘About your system.’ It lists all my speakers and nowhere is there a ‘WM’ code. Nowhere. Each lists:

Serial Number 

Sonos OS

Version

Hardware version

IP Address

There is no entry for ‘WM’ with a code number.

The ‘manage network’ tab says I am on SonosNet channel 11, whatever the heck that means. I got the ‘boost’ because at the time Sonos assured us it was the best way to ensure a strong signal, no interference from other wireless devices in the house, and the best performance. I gather that is ‘no longer operative’ in the Sonos universe. 

Yes it’s okay to use SonosNet if your WiFi is perhaps problematic - it’s just a 2.4Ghz only hidden (exclusive) WiFi mesh network where the Sonos products are nodes on that network - it’s just a case that modern WiFi-5 and 6 networks are a lot faster.

The WM (Wireless Mode) is shown currently in the Desktop Apps. It used to be in the S2 App, but it’s not in the current Sonos App. As mentioned modern Sonos products no longer use SonosNet and the Boost has been obsoleted but some things still support it. I don’t use it personally and gave away my Boost a long time ago - but the decision to use it, or not, is entirely upto you. The one link I posted in my earlier post shows you how to easily switch between ‘wired’ (SonosNet) mode and wireless (WiFi) mode. 

Hi @chambolle, you are 100% correct as usual. These instructions are in error …

https://support.sonos.com/en-us/article/check-if-sonos-is-in-a-wireless-or-wired-setup

… as the wireless mode (WM) is no longer shown under rgear icon] > Manage > About Your System. I suppose we can add that to the list of “things not yet implemented in the new mobile app.”

If you’re keen to follow though on this avenue of exploration, you can use the trusty desktop app. Click the “Help” menu, select “About My Sonos System” and you’ll see “WM: 0” for SonosNet or “WM: 1” for Wireless (what I’ll call “Regular Wi-Fi” mode).

If you are in “WM: 1” you’ll find SNR deeply buried in the new mobile app …

• Tap dgear icon] 
• Under “Create a system” select one of your rooms
• Under “Products” select one of your Sonos devices
• Under “Status” select “Network”
• Under “Connection” you’ll find the SNR

If you are in “WM: 0” the process is different and deeply buried in its own way. I can detail the process for using the so-called “Network Matrix” if you’re game, just let me know.

Now I’m truly confused. I have a triband router; supposedly 2.4G, 5G and 6G connections available. A Netgear raxe290. The Sonos app displays this info. I have assumed it means I have a 5G wi-fi connection. Am I mistaken?

Maybe see Mike Connelly’s guide to SonosNet and the Sonos Matrix… it helps explain most things and the Matrix too - it will save @press250 having to spend time explaining some things here too, perhaps.

https://freetime.mikeconnelly.com/archives/6050

Don’t forget that some Sonos products do not use SonosNet - see below list showing those products that do not use it:

• Roam/Roam SL /Roam 2
• Move/Move 2
• Era 100
• Era 300

Hi @chambolle, I was trying to clear up things rather than confuse things!

From your screen shot, it certainly seems like you are in Wireless mode (WM: 1, what I called “Regular Wi-Fi” mode). Let’s put the SonosNet question aside and simply assume that you are in Wireless mode. In that case, you’ll find the sought-after SNR deeply buried in the new mobile app …

• Tap igear icon] 
• Under Create a system select one of your rooms
• Under Products select one of your Sonos devices
• Under Status select “Network”
• Under Connection you’ll find the SNR

… you’ll need to repeat the above steps for each room/device. Jot down the SNR figures on a scrap of paper, larger numbers are better, and let us know how they look!