Update on the Sonos App from Patrick Spence

Over a year ago, we bought into this product called SONOS….. It was just what I was looking for and for some time it was superior to anything else that we looked at  for in house music and portability.  SONOS  meet our needs..

 Then not long ago  we started having issues bringing the system online. Some speakers would connect others would not. The biggest issue was SONOS  RADIO

I cannot play my music without having SONOS Radio also connected…. 

This product is now useless to me….

I do not understand  why the powers to be don’t roll back to the last working operating system  till better Beta Testing can be done without creating problems for the user.  I would appreciate getting something for my money.

Wes

….and the alarm “feature” is still only sporadicly functional. Today, when trying to delete an old alarm (my only one), the old alarm start time hangs up in the display (10:05). Adding a new alarm (10:00), which starts off at a default of 7:00 AM (why, BTW?), and going through the other normal steps of duration, music selection, etc., seems to work fine---until you finish, save, and return to home alarm window. Then, what do you get? The old time showing (10:05).  What a bunch of hooey. 

This is an odd complaint. Can you elaborate?

I have remained silent on this, but am by this time thoroughly fed up.  I spent thousands of dollars over a period of years on Sonos products, and until recently, I was thinking of replacing my last few Gen 1 products with newer ones.  No more.  I now see that the investment of money for hardware that can just be rendered nonfunctional by a screwy software update is not worthwhile, and I will be looking to migrate to some other solution, though with a lot of pain for the wasted money.  For me, a key to this system has always been the robust ability to access, search for, and play my own music library.  While bare access to the library has now been restored, simple functions like searching, having an alphabetical index on the side of the search box to quickly go to an item starting with a certain letter, being able to play albums with tracks from different artists (now all listed as if they were separate albums), etc., are not there.  I wouldn’t think any of those functions are complicated, and it amazes me that Sonos has not been able yet to restore this functionality. 

I’m with the group that thinks that a CEO of a company that screwed its customers (who had invested thousands of dollars each in its supposedly premium systems) should have been fired immediately.  That would have been at least one way to show, internally and externally, that this would not happen again. 

You lucky, lucky man - I would kill my first born for access to my music library again - instead I’ve swapped a 1002 error for a 913 error and have no idea if this is an app thing or something else.

I suspect you’ll get your wish on the CEO - often in these cases, given you’d need your head examining if you were willing to take over as CEO now, they’re kept on until the boat has been somewhat steadied and then (metaphorically) taken out the back and put out of their misery, with my guess, the CFO stepping into their shoes given the challenging financial situation they are likely to find themselves in very soon.    

When I first bought Sonos way back when, that robustness and just point it at an smb share simplified home use for me. I already had a server with nfs & smb shares for the computers and movie players in the house.

The CR100 controller and the not needing to run central dedicated server software that would need fixing after updates or when it randomly crashed was a breath of fresh air. SlimServer at the time was good at what it did, but it needed tinkering and fixing too often in the early days. The fun side soon wore off when I just wanted to listen to music and not bring my work home fixing a server 😁

It’s why I still cringe at all the ‘just run plex/roon/whatever server’ suggestions. The benefit of Sonos was always device level play queues (not supported by DLNA) and I don’t need another free or paid single point of failure piece of software to deal with to listen to music. If I’m going to run plex/roon/whatever then why bother with Sonos devices at all? And why would i want to add yet another system with it’s own issues and problems into the mix?

While I can sympathise with people approaching Sonos with a home audio perspective where devices can last for very long time, I personally have never considered them as more than an appliance that does what I need now. Unlike my AVRs/Amps which have slow moving hardware spec changes and I expect a long life from, the nature of services Sonos works and my early devices suffering hardware faults after 3 years mean I don’t expect a long life from them. If they do last it’s a bonus.

My last Sonos Amp purchase, was about 4 weeks before the May software release. I hadn’t even got as far as having it setup permanently because the room it was for wasn’t ready. More fool me, my main uneasiness around having the whole house Sonos became a reality 🙄

I think you’ll be in for a long wait for that to happen the way you describe.

More commonly these days, once things are righted he’ll put on his golden parachute, if there is a public statement it will be about finding new challenges or spending time with family before finding the next challenge, then move on to the next company to wreck.

There are plenty of CEOs doing the rounds in Silicon Valley, the Bay area and beyond who turn everything they touch to a shadow of it’s former self. They have no trouble walking out of one company into the next and repeating.

I have owned multiple Sonos products for the past few years in different rooms solely for music - speakers + subs. Always loved the great sound and convenience of the music I want wherever in the house I am. Particularly liked kicking back with the wife and having chilled Saturday night listening to favourite tunes. 
However the new app has ruined everything. Try to listen and it plays in random rooms not the one I’m in despite careful selection of where I am. When a song does play I have no volume control, can’t stop, pause or play new songs. It’s uncontrollable which is contrary to everything this system should deliver. I’ve spent £000’s on this and not only is it now rubbish and not fit for purpose has negatively impacted my quality of life. Weekend nights with music are now frustrating fights with a system I genuinely can’t control. I want my money back. A letter from the CEO might be touchy feely but I want this sorted now. I paid for something I expected to work. 

You know that the “full support” of the board does not mean.a lot in publicly traded companies. You have full support, until you are ousted. A lot of discussions happen behind the curtains...

On the top of my mind, a recent exemple:

Press Release – Paris, March 1st, 2021
Danone's Board of Directors confirms unanimous support for Emmanuel Faber,who proposes the separation of Chairman and CEO roles

Press Release – Paris, March 15th, 2021
New governance at Danone Emmanuel Faber steps down as Chairman and CEO Gilles Schnepp appointed non-executive Chairman

In a 15 days timeframe, we have a press release giving “full support” to the CEO, then another press release to announce that he we asked to step down by the board.

My system of Beam + Symfonisk + Roam was still working as of the 7/31/2024 update. The 8/6/2024 update broke everything. I can update the network and add each product individually, but then the app doesn’t detect anything on the system. Sometimes when I join an existing system, it’s the Roam, other times, it’s the Beam. My Symfonisk is just a brick that uses electricity. None of the planned updates appear to address the basic connectivity issues that most are having.