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Sonos, c’mon. It’s been 5 months since the version 80 app release and you’ve been making promises the whole time of us seeing improvements and after 5 months it’s just not working. Please just admit the full depth of the debacle and roll all the software back and give us back the working version.

As I type, my wife is listening to music in the kitchen and I like what I’m hearing so I fire up the Sonos app on my phone to see what’s playing in the kitchen and the app swears up and down “No content” in the kitchen zone, even after force-quitting and restarting the app.

My core needs and user journey are pretty simple:

  1. fire up the app and have it connect instantly and with zero fuss
  2. search for music and find what I’m looking for
  3. add it to the queue, maybe reorder the queue
  4. control playback (pause, resume, skip among songs with back/forward or by random access in the queue) with no lag
  5. create groups for multi-room playback
  6. control volume (in one zone or several) with no lag

Version 80 broke ALL of this at once. Since then, you’ve added the queue back, thank goodness, and it sort of works, but only sort of, and the rest of the above -- which is all core, P0, non-negotiable, table stakes functionality -- is still largely broken.

ALL of this worked fine prior to version 80. So it’s really hard to accept any sort of explanation that the old app was a crumbling heap of tech debt and you had to rip the bandaid off to start over, because from the outside… it actually worked. And it’s even harder to accept this explanation you’re giving us about the necessity of a rewrite when that was couched in “at least the new architecture is so clean we can update it every 2 weeks and so it shipped pretty bare at first but you’ll be seeing rapid improvements” but 5 months later, that just doesn’t appear true either.

The new search takes far too many taps -- if I search for a song name, the search results start showing me the artist for the song but not the song itself, I need to scroll to the right for that. Sometimes the search will just fail or have high latency. Last night I saw a bug where after searching for a song and scrolling right to see it, the search screen would show it for about half a second then go entirely blank.

The queue is back, thank goodness. But about half the time when I tell a song to add to queue or “play next”, the app freezes for 5 seconds then shows a top toast saying “unable to add to queue” -- but if I look in the queue, the action DID take hold and the song DID end up in the queue.

The app is super laggy; often after changing songs or changing volume it can be a couple seconds for the local, in-app screen to update, and several more seconds after that for the Sonos hardware to respond.

Multi zone volume control used to be a thing of beauty -- I could drag my finger across the volume control for one zone, and the linked sliders would all dance in synchrony, and all the speakers would also be immediately changing volume at the same time, no perceptible lag -- a true user delight. No more. Now it feels like the sliders for different zones are connected by rubber bands, and this is just in the local on-device UI! When the speakers actually change volume after that is anyone’s guess.

I’ve been a Sonos customer since 2007. I’ve got probably 30 devices (combination of Amp, Port, OneSL, Five, Arc, Sub) across 3 houses for me and my extended family. I could even understand your reasons for the S1/S2 split and wasn’t one of the customers who was angry about that, and for what it’s worth I retired/upgraded my older devices and went all in on S2. It all worked great and I was very happy with it until May 2024 and “Version 80”. It’s been a continuous source of frustration since then. And heartache -- because I loved it so much and it’s impossible to love now.

It’s gotten so bad I often just use Bluetooth to my AVR or random portable speakers (despite the much lower sound quality, despite the many problems with Bluetooth) because… that will actually work with so much less frustration.

I can't believe I’m actually typing this. I willingly spent thousands on Sonos gear to avoid those problems with Bluetooth etc… and now I’m back to Bluetooth because it works better. High irony.

I really wanted to be patient and give y’all the benefit of the doubt, but after this many months and this many releases and this many half-baked apologies, I’m just left with the frustration. Please just restore the old functionality we all paid thousands for. Just release the previous-version app and call it S2 Frozen or whatever. Yes, I realize you’ve rolled out software updates to the Sonos hardware devices themselves that make them no longer speak to that version of the app. But that’s all just software, so roll that back too.

Sorry but I am genuinely puzzled by some of this. Why would you want other sliders to move when you adjusted one? Did it ever do that? I must be misunderstanding something. 

Sorry but I am genuinely puzzled by some of this. Why would you want other sliders to move when you adjusted one? Did it ever do that? I must be misunderstanding something. 

That’s how S2 used to work (and still does for me, as I’m still on a pre-May release).

If you touch the main volume control, the volumes of each device appear above, and if you slide the main volume all of the sliders above move accordingly (and instantly). Of course you can instead move the sliders for the individual devices, in which case they move independently (and instantly).

And, leaving the nitpicking aside, what Metamatt42 says is correct, isn’t it?

 

How can Sonos have got this so badly wrong for so long? Days of delay would have been unavoidable, given the time that it would have needed to re-think and revert to the older release. Weeks would have been acceptable if the reversion process had been properly thought out so that old and new releases could co-exist properly. But months of inflicting failure on your customers - that just seems like stubbornness. Not a characteristic that you should be seeing in the management of any successful company, surely?

Sorry but I am genuinely puzzled by some of this. Why would you want other sliders to move when you adjusted one? Did it ever do that? I must be misunderstanding something. 

That’s how S2 used to work (and still does for me, as I’m still on a pre-May release).

If you touch the main volume control, the volumes of each device appear above, and if you slide the main volume all of the sliders above move accordingly (and instantly). Of course you can instead move the sliders for the individual devices, in which case they move independently (and instantly).

I know that.  Perhaps I could remind you what the OP actually said:

“Multi zone volume control used to be a thing of beauty -- I could drag my finger across the volume control for one zone, and the linked sliders would all dance in synchrony, and all the speakers would also be immediately changing volume at the same time,”

I think what you said is correct, and what @metamatt42 said is diferent, and wrong.  What do you think?

 

Are you really so desperate to divert and distract from what the OP is actually trying to say?

Are you really so desperate to divert and distract from what the OP is actually trying to say?

I would like there to be some chance of knowing what he is trying to say.  Because on my system the volume controls work without lag, just as before.  I do find it irritating that this only works when the system screen is minimised, but that’s another issue.

Ah, OK - another multi-thousand poster here who’s volume control works just fine.

But from what the OP says - irrespective of how you dissect the exact wording used - his doesn’t.

I’ll ignore your sniping.  It’s water off a duck’s back to me.  Conclusion - it’s probably not a generic issue for which Sonos can provide a generic fix.  The problem we have now - and Sonos is ultimately at fault here - is that some users are blaming the new app for anything and everything  that goes wrong with their system.  Not helpful.

I’ll ignore your sniping.

Then perhaps I’ll ignore your “divert and distract” tactics.

It’s clear that the OP has multiple issues, and it’s also well-known that many people are seeing problems with latency in the volume controls. The fact that yours appears to work just fine isn’t helpful to the OP - it does nothing to fix his problem.

Easy, Sonos is s*** company and doesn’t give a f*** about its loyal customers. Unless and until they fire Spence, lay off 1000 or so people, or sell to Bose (or some similarly quality-oriented company) this will continue.

 

They haven’t done a f****** thing for their loyal customers.

 

Except if you count blocking people on social media and making promises to fix the volume button on the current app.

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

<some naughty words>

But bad language doesn’t help either.

IMO the OP really said what needs to be said in his last paragraph:

I really wanted to be patient and give y’all the benefit of the doubt, but after this many months and this many releases and this many half-baked apologies, I’m just left with the frustration. Please just restore the old functionality we all paid thousands for. Just release the previous-version app and call it S2 Frozen or whatever. Yes, I realize you’ve rolled out software updates to the Sonos hardware devices themselves that make them no longer speak to that version of the app. But that’s all just software, so roll that back too.

 

Sorry but I am genuinely puzzled by some of this. Why would you want other sliders to move when you adjusted one? Did it ever do that? I must be misunderstanding something. 

That’s how S2 used to work (and still does for me, as I’m still on a pre-May release).

If you touch the main volume control, the volumes of each device appear above, and if you slide the main volume all of the sliders above move accordingly (and instantly). Of course you can instead move the sliders for the individual devices, in which case they move independently (and instantly).

That is exactly how the new app works too.

Overall sentiment of the post is spot on!
 

I worked in software development for 40+ years, how the CEO still has a job beggars belief. Lots of unhappy customers, but wonder how shareholders are feeling?

Here is an instructive topic

 

 

Here is an instructive topic

 

 

+1 Everyone who has issues should contact support. 
 

 

 

deletef 

Haha, I’m back at thread after a while and have to say I’m amused at the responses. Thanks for reading and thanks to y’all who were able to read it in the spirit it was intended, and follow along charitably. For the detail about the volume sliders, I was not trying to structure this post as a sufficient-detail-to-fix-that-issue bug report because

  • I presumed the people I’m talking to (Sonos employees or experienced Sonos users) would recognize the general behavior I’m talking about (what it is, how it works normally) and probably have some exposure to the specific variation in that behavior I’m talking about (when it gets wonky post v80)
  • This is a small silly issue in the bigger scheme of things. Temporary delays in the onscreen rendering don’t necessarily affect how the music sounds. I care about how the music sounds. If the music sounds right, I can live with the sliders being off for a second. However, I chose to surface it because, while silly, it reflects carelessness -- getting a few controls on the same screen of the same device to behave in a coordinated way is on the easier end of the spectrum of software engineering challenges; getting multiple devices on multiple software platforms separated by a network is a much more complicated challenge (and good Sonos music playback is the latter one, natch), so if we can’t get good results on the easy one why would we expect good results on the harder one. That said, I don’t actually care about the cosmetic issue enough to post here about it; I absolutely did and do care about the fact that music playback is also affected by delays (this is more than a cosmetic issue).

With that prelude, here’s a more accurate description of that particular issue (the volume sliders). In the Sonos app (both pre and post v80 update), if I group N zone together, there’s a volume screen with N+1 sliders -- 1 for each of the N separate zones and 1 more for master volume control of all these zones together. Let’s consider the simple case with just 2 zones grouped, so 3 sliders. Let’s call the 2 zones A and B, so the 3 sliders are for zone A, zone B and master. The crucial detail here, I assume most people familiar with Sonos already know, is that the volume doesn’t have to be the same in all the grouped zones, and yet the master volume control still works -- it shows essentially the average of the grouped zones, and moving it higher moves the grouped zones proportionally higher without forcing them to be the same, and moving it lower moves the grouped zones proportionally lower without forcing them to be the same. This is good design, a good feature, and has worked this way as long as I remember. It is not true that moving the volume A slider moves the volume B slider or affects zone B’s volume; that would be silly. It is however true that moving volume A’s slider moves the master slider. And it is true that moving the master slider moves the slider of all other zones (A and B in this case). So it is true, as I said in the first place, that moving one of the sliders in this case affects at least one of the other sliders (not necessarily all of them!) and so there is a need for synchronization, for them to move “together”. And this worked perfectly in my experience pre version 80, and after the version 80 app release, it got extremely wonky.

I actually have a screen recording of this behavior, but wasn’t sure where to post it. I don’t think this forum will let me attach it here. (It’s an 8 megabyte mp4 video file from the screen recording feature on iOS.) Would anyone like to see it, if so please recommend where to post it.

It’s possible this specific issue has been fixed since I complained about it. I wrote this post in October, from memory of how the app had behaved since v80 and without testing every single one of those issues on that day. I wrote this post on that day because a different set of latency/delay issues (present on that day, described in the initial post) had me frustrated enough to be looking for alternatives to Sonos. I honestly have not been using the system much since.

You could post the video on YouTube and link it here, if the problem still exists.

By the way, where you mention “zones”, Sonos would say “rooms”.

For the life of me I cannot understand the apologists I see on these forums pooh-poohing the horrendous thing that Sonos did to its (generally very loyal and longstanding) customer base by inflicting that bug-ridden and feature-removing app that was shoved down our throats. Anger and frustration, I’m sorry, is entirely justified, even if apologists find it oh-so unproductive and tsk-tsk so unhelpful. Yes, yes, it is screaming into the abyss, but such is the magnitude of the wrong. Yes, we are still complaining 6 months and 20 releases later but such is the extent of the disaster that after that much time and rework things are still in such sorry shape. Either they knew it was in no way ready and forced it on us anyway (my belief, as a software developer myself), or they are so incompetent that they had no clue it was that bad. Take your pick, but the result is that something important to us, a special thing that worked well and put a little joy into our daily lives, was callously wrecked. I would say to the apologists, recognize the pain that is being expressed in these posts, and stop trying to diminish it.

 that's a seriously detailed and heartfelt post—clearly coming from someone who's been a dedicated Sonos fan for years. It's tough to see such a strong product take such a frustrating turn, especially when it feels like core functionalities were sacrificed for an "upgrade." Hopefully, Sonos listens to this kind of feedback because it’s clear the Version 80 rollout has been a huge letdown for long-time users like you. Rolling back to a stable version might not be a bad idea at this point!

Sonos looked at a rollback when it would have been much easier to do and decided not to.

As a programer, manager and contracting officer doing software projects I learned early on that the folks pushing cool stuff are full of warm, stinky brown stuff all too often.

For Sonos management to jump off this cliff with no back-up or roll-back plan tells me they have hard. Painful and expensive lessons coming. Hope they learn well for next time.

Sonos looked at a rollback when it would have been much easier to do and decided not to.

For Sonos management to jump off this cliff with no back-up or roll-back plan tells me they have hard. Painful and expensive lessons coming. Hope they learn well for next time.

 

I agree; as much as we all long for a rollback to the prior app, the time when that was possible was brief and has long passed. For the fools in Sonos management (because I do not believe the developers wanted to release it), the only way out now is through. Much to our continuing detriment. 

Hi Guys

I have just found this thread so I’m late to the party so apologies. 
My issue with the album art and the queue is the same. All I really want, at this stage, is for the issue to be admitted. Chasing myself around the app and/or webui looking for the cause is driving me crazy. Just admit this is a known issue and that it’s being addressed and not ignored. 

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