The new Sonos Mobile App & Web App

I don’t really know what a household is in Ring context.  My use case is that I have Ring cameras in my home, and I also have access to the Cameras at mom’s house.  There are 2 separate accounts, not related in any way except for the shared access.  I do have admin access to mom’s cameras though, as she isn’t really up for handling that herself.  I can’t change anything about her account though, just camera settings. (She also has ‘read-only’ access to my cameras, except the backyard...she doesn’t need to see what happens back there)

Anyway, within Sonos I just would not want a ‘sub’ account to be a full Sonos account.  The admin needs to be able administer these sub accounts. And I don’t see a value in letting someone with a completely different Sonos account and setup, at their own location, any sort of access to my home system.

I tried to keep it simple, but as you know, I’ve addressed the gotchas (grouping, Atmos audio, etc.) in other threads, and in my opinion, they are probably the reason we aren’t going to see the feature implemented. 

Thanks to everyone for the answers and explanations. However, I had also expressed myself incorrectly. Sorry for that. Of course I meant that Atmos music sounds much worse in combination with the ERA300 as surround due to the fact that the front-facing drivers are switched off than if I only use it in stereo combination with the ERAS (optionally with sub). But as I have read, this seems to be an insurmountable hurdle. Nevertheless, I wouldn't mind an automation system that triggers the switching, even if it takes 1-2 minutes, but happens automatically.  Fingers crossed that it might be possible at some point. No matter how ;-)

Call me an old fart if you want. I just prefer the good old Windows desktop controller. It does everything that's needed to play music all around my house. Occasionally I use my phone, I admit. But the Windows desktop controller still does the job, every day. God forbid they put it to eternal sleep...

Household maybe the wrong term in Ring terminology. They seem to refer to location when referring to a collection of devices at a single address. That’s what I meant by household. You can share the devices at a “location” with other Ring.com accounts, giving them non-admin access as you seem to have done by providing your Mom’s Ring account with non-admin access to some of the Ring devices at your house. 

If Sonos ever added support for user profiles my preference also would not be for each user to have to create a Sonos.com account. I would much prefer user profiles to be stored on the local system so that anyone on the local network could access the profiles even if not signed into the app using a Sonos.com account. The reason I mentioned web-based profiles (and Ring) was because you said the new web app requires web sign in (unlike the current Sonos apps). If the new web app can’t connect to the local Sonos system without web sign in, then the only way I can see profiles working would be for each user to have a Sonos.com web account. Allowing multiple Sonos.com accounts access to a single Sonos system could be achieved in a similar way to how Ring does it. What would be the alternative way to support user profiles if the web app requires web sign in?

I’m not sure I follow what you mean by needs to administer the sub accounts. With Ring, the administrator can remove access from accounts they have given share access to. What other user-account administration is needed?

I’m also not sure why you are focussed on people at different locations. The primary scenario I’m thinking of is multiple people living in the same house who use the system on a daily basis but want different favourites/preferences when interacting with the system. That’s how we use the Ring system in my house (each person in the house has their own Ring account; one person has admin control and the others have non-admin shared access) and similar concept could be applied to Sonos if user profiles needed to be web-based.

I think it is over 12 months since new search was introduced without the ability to search local libraries.  Now we have a new UI that not only fails to include local library search it also fails to provide a means to update the paths for such libraries. Coffin and nails come to mind.

Sonos headphones would have been my reason to upgrade to S2 and replace my S1 only kit. Now and given the limited use I think the headphones would have had as part of the sonos ecosystem those purchases are on going to be on hold until it becomes clear that local libraries regain their second (or better) class status rather than what really looks like total indifference at best.

Will it be easier to turn off and on the Sub or change the level? In the current app you have to take many steps to get there.

Hi @SleepyRobot 

There isn’t much change - you’d still need to go to Settings, select the right room, then adjust the setting.

I hope this helps.

Users logging in while off the wifi network (web app) would need to provide the name of the system they are logging into (the owner account of the system, perhaps including household as well), then the username and password.  So very example, for someone could log into my system by  accessing melvimbe_system / guest /password123.  Obviously ‘guest’ would not be a full Sonos account, and would only have context within the Sonos account melvimbe_system.   Authentication of the guest sub account could be done by a Sonos cloud server, or perhaps offloaded to the local Sonos system itself.

It makes more sense for a Sonos user to be able to create and maintain the profiles/subaccounts that have access to the system they are responsible for than to have someone create a full Sonos account just to access someone’s system.  That would be creating a full account when there is no intention of buying Sonos products or any of the features that come along with a full account.  From Sonos standpoint, you are now tracking a lot of accounts that aren’t ‘real’ accounts, messing up your analytics.  From the full Sonos account/user perspective, I know have to create and  maintain my own account, wife, 2 kids, and guest as separate full accounts.  I would much rather go into the Sonos account an adminster these as subaccounts/profiles under my system, with the ability to create/delete accounts, reset passwords, etc, than do that through Sonos.com, essentially.

I’m essentially trying to look at this with an object oriented approach.  I recognize that a full Sonos account and user profile account are similar objects, but they are not the same, and need different functionality tied to them.  It is better to treat them as different objects.   I’ve seen similar objects treated as identical from a design approach before, and it usually ends up as a complete mess.

By contrast with Ring, the user accounts are generally the same object with the ability to own products and view products other users own.  You aren’t ever needing to create a sub account for your family member to view the cameras.

But back on Sonos, there are lots of other things to consider with this sort of concept.  Can the system owner setup services for users/sub accounts, or do they do it themselves?  What happens when one user starts streaming and another user wants to end or modify that stream?  

In Sonos context, I think of the location as the WiFi network your Sonos is setup on.  It is reasonable to want to grant access to your system without wanting to give them access to your WiFi network, ether through the guest WiFi network or just mobile access. This request pops up on the forum from time to time.  So it absolutely can  be users in the same house, but not the same ‘location’.

I don’t think your Ring scenario, with multiple accounts created for members of your household, is all that common.  I can understand creating one account for admin and other for view only, but I suspect that is rare.  I suspect it’s even more rare to create multiple view only accounts, as that would only be needed if your household members have access to different cameras.  I’m glad it works for you, but I don’t think that’s really what Ring was trying to do when they allow users to view each others cameras.

SONOS offers a Professional Service. This is not intended for home users, but it does allow a Supervisor to administer users and multiple sites.