Update on the New Sonos App and Future Features - October 28, 2024

I just grabbed a Raspberry Pi, a cheap “Zero 2 W” will do just fine.

Put the music on a thumb drive, not the mini SD card to avoid update frustrations later on.

So I now have 80.11.39 for my Mobile App and 16.4.4 build 81.1-58120 for my PC App

Has anything changed? No! You are lucky if you get the music’s title or the artist. Worse, I don’t even get the “queue icon” on the lower left hand side, which means I have no idea what track is playing, let alone editing, deleting, adding or skipping. Precisely because of this, the only option left for me to create a queue list is to use the Windows 11 PC App (used to be 80.1-55014 and now 81.1-58120). I had been relying on the Windows App since May, waiting for Mr. Chief Innovation Officer and his hundreds of engineers and Santa to fix the mobile app.

So it is particularly annoying that TODAY I found out I had to update the PC app software from 80.1 to 81.1, or else, one cannot update one’s music library from the PC as all functions to manage your library are greyed out (even though your mobile app can scan and access the new music library - but which is the the lesser evil, not knowing what’s in the queue or not being able to update the library!!). As for 81.1 for Windows PC, no documentation, no release notes, not even notification and NO CHOICE not to download.

And if this is not enough, with constant new versions of software for both the Mobile and desktop/laptop apps, many of the speakers (for me it is always the S3) get thrown off the network and need to be factory reset and have their own software updates (I assume software that resides within the speakers?). I had to do this twice with 16.3.1 and now 16.4.4. If Mr. Chief Innovation Officer thinks this is a significant improvement: having to use a power extension cord so that I can fire up the speaker literally next to the mesh router to make sure signal is the strongest possible and still taking about three tries before the speaker is recognized, I wonder what we can expect …. another Error Code 913 perhaps.

 I pity all those people getting Sonos for Christmas. Or should I worry? How much can Sonos sell now and even if you could, it’s just more ill will.

I’d imagine most people who still cling to a drive-based music library will already have a Sonos or equivalent system. I would think those buying Sonos now (those ‘getting Sonos for Christmas’) will have streaming subscriptions. I’m noticing the majority of those posting here with app issues have music libraries which would suggest things are largely fine for streaming customers - Sonos works fine for me with Apple Music and Spotify. 

It’s not clinging. Classical and jazz listeners (and all genre for that matter) all have performances that Apple Music or Spotify don’t or cannot possibly curate. The only way to listen to what we like often means obtaining it in whatever medium and converting it into MP3.

Sonos is trading at its historic low. Hold your breath.

Yes, between Guitersuperstar’s advice to convert DTS to LPCM and Pete Pee’s review of the Ultra I’m GASing for the Ultra a bit now but I think I’ll wait a couple quarters to see how they go. Certainly will leave until I get a new telly that can pass through everything.

It would be a nice upgrade over my Playbase with its ported sub. I have DSOTM on Atmos Bluray, would be nice to hear it with overhead effects as well.

I can't see ripping CDs to anything but a lossless format.

A good number of folks find ripping gives new life to an ignored CD collection by making it painless to play.

I have too many CDs not streamed anywhere to give up my collection. Particularly given how cheap and easyy (once ripped) itwasto add it to my Sonos.

Hopely the fast scroll button will be soon reintroduced, it's a hell of a job, scrolling over 3000 artists in local library. 
But I'm afraid that the system, now working in the cloud, would always be slowly compared the old “local” app. 

Are people still having issues playing Amazon music? We haven’t been able to play my Amazon Music playlist since the spring update. This is so annoying! I’ve never seen a failure in an App update like this before. We have a bunch of Sonos products which we always used with Amazon Music and now they are just like expensive decorations sitting around our house. We have had Sonos products since 2007 and now I wish we never bought any. What a disappointment, I wish i could return all my products.

Having recently marked my 21st anniversary at Sonos, I want to express my deep gratitude to you for being a Sonos customer, whether you’re a first-time or long-standing one, and personally commit to you that the next 20 years hold so much more. The ease, reliability, and magic of our products is the most important thing to me and everyone else at Sonos, and the best is yet to come.

I was a customer. Not any more.

I’m back on S1 now across all my devices except the Era 300. And life is good.

Having held off of updating the app or speaker firmware for the last six months whilst watching the debacle unfold with horror I ended up updating both on Monday 4 November. This was unintentional and happened whilst trying to install the desktop software on a new Windows laptop. I watched with horror as my five rooms plus Boost started flashing orange as they attempted to update. However much to my amazement in certainly less than 5 minutes all units had updated. Of course then I had to relent and update the app on my Android devices (Pixel tablet and Pixel 8 Pro).

Apart from the initial pain finding my way round the app, all the stroking up or down from the appropriate point on the screen I have found the app responsive and the volume controls as easy and responsive as the old app.

Yes there are still issues with missing album artwork on the music library, no alphabetic progress when scrolling the music library or the Plex version of the library and still the lack/limitations of playlist editing. However I am reasonably happy with it.

Also today we had some electric work done which resulted in the power being knocked of a few times in succession. Despite doing nothing to order the way the kit powered up it all recovered without intervention. It is a mixture of Sonosnet kit, Amp, mini sub, Beam, One SL, Five and a stereo pair of Era100s. however all units are allocated fixed IP addresses.

We will see how it goes.