Update on the Sonos App from Patrick Spence

Yes, exactly. No suggestion/request to change the decision. In case I was too cryptic: This is your game, and so we’re using your rules, and so it’s your call.

Hi @garfieldairlines 

Well, that would be nice, wouldn’t it? And, to be fair, it’s exactly the kind of thing I enjoy doing - so, I’d love to!

However, I am not nearly qualified enough (contrary to my above advice, I did not go to college or Uni), and I suspect those who are are currently too busy fixing things. I will ask around internally to see if I can cooperate with someone on just such a thing, but please don’t get your hopes up - to a certain extent, some of what you ask for is proprietary information, and the rest is likely just beyond my ken. I think the biggest barrier will just be finding someone who understands and who has enough free reign to stop doing what they are currently doing in order to assist me.

I think where this appears disingenuous (on the part of Sonos, not you in particular) is down to the fact that whilst the instructions you linked to may be broadly correct, the bigger issue is that the same code people with local HTTP served libraries from a PC/Mac used to set them up is *still* present in the desktop apps… This is massively confusing for many people, and down right lazy on the part of Sonos for not addressing. (and this is in addition to SMBv1 issues) So, when people installed the updates, effectively their library disappeared and they would use the still available wizards to try and set it up again… The desktop apps have both been updated yet still include the defunct wizards. So when people see that libraries are ‘back’ they keep trying the wizards as quite reasonably in a consumer device, why would setup wizards that can no longer work still be in the official desktop controller? How hard would it have been to only have the add networked drive option in the list? At least then people wouldn’t be looking to continually re-add what they had before and would realise they needed a different approach!! 

And for me, this is the main problem here, Sonos is consumer grade kit, which is not to belittle it in anyway, but means it has to be usable and maintainable by 99% of consumers. Sonos have introduced a load of changes together (and I agree some of the combined timing is atrocious) that mean this is no longer the case. You can spend hours on support calls and still not get resolution. 

This is where people saying that it’s the network is just as galling to people with problems as people breaking community guidelines and just calling people names. 

If people’s systems were working before the update, and the only thing that isn’t working after is Sonos, as a consumer system, it’s on Sonos to do a much better job. It’s not now the responsibility of its existing customers to reverse engineer the changes and rip apart their home networks to get back to a working state. Especially when all the other smart home devices from other companies still work. 

Finally, on the point of indexing… it may well be a small change in terms of lines of code changed, but how on earth did it get past the most basic of regression tests which presumably it must have been run through? It’s not as if the issue is some esoteric classical music tagging edge case, it’s generic compilation albums which are pretty popular items in just about anyone’s local music library and something I’ve never known Sonos to get wrong in about 15 years. 

Hi @Ian_S 

I agree - it could and should all have been handled completely differently. And, although I’d very much like to, I do not have answers for your questions.

Corry P:

 I’m one who never lost functionality with the new 80.x app release.  There are usability items missing mostly in queue management but I have confidence those will be addressed.  This community makes clear what the queue etc. issues are.  What doesn’t help are vague posts that describe an issue without adding system details.

 This is probably an issue at the bottom of the list, but I want to keep it alive so eventually it can be looked into.  I have a surround setup consisting of Arc-Sub-300s.  Love what it does for classical orchestral in Dolby Atmos.  The only issue is it is not perfectly gapless.  There is not a gap in the traditional sense, but there is an obvious glitch most noticeable when the track change is during a loud portion of the music.  I know this is not app related and probably doesn’t fit this subject, but it’s important to me and hopefully others.

 I did create a conversation about this Atmos track change glitch.  I also used the CEO email to send Patrick a video of my system playing a track change that clearly demonstrates this glitch.  The video was also sent to Chris from Audiophile Style whose Atmos system ( not Sonos ) played the same track change flawlessly.

 I think there may be few in this community that have the same taste in music that I have, but I could use feedback from those with a system that will play Atmos from either Amazon Music Unlimited or Apple Music.  If you have such a system try the Album Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring, Esa-Pekka Salonen with the San Francisco Symphony.  Listen to the track change from track 02 to track 03 and tell me if you hear any irregularities.

Hi @MoPac 

At present, gapless playback of spatial audio is not yet supported. Gapless playback presently works with lossless, stereo audio from Apple Music.

We do plan on bringing this to Sonos in time but it’s no simple task, and, as you rightly point out, there are more pressing concerns at present. The workaround for now is to disable spatial audio playback:

I hope this helps.

@Corry P - this admission is unprecedented. Bravo. The Spence mea culpa seems to be filtering down, and high time.

Now, fix Spence. 😂

Thanks for posting but I tried this again and again and it still doesn’t work for me.  

This phrase stuck out; “anyone who has equipment not limited to SMBv1”. Does this mean that older speakers do not support anything other than SMBv1 and will no longer work with music libraries or does this refer to the computer/NAS?  I am assuming not the latter but clarification on this point might solve my problem. 

I have a Music library running on a new iMac - so I am assuming that it is not the computer that is the issue here with regard the SMB version being.

If it is a problem with older equipment then I should be able to remove the older equipment leaving the new speakers and presumably it should work.

‘older’ speakers in the sense that they only run on S1 software are limited to needing SMBv1 and will continue to work with it, unlike the newer, updated speakers and App.

The ‘equipment’ being referred to in bold is computer/NAS type devices, not Sonos devices.  If you can enable SMBv2 or above you should be fine with newer Sonos Apps..

So there are older speakers that will work on SMBv1 but not capable of supporting the later versions of the protocol and effectively my solution is to remove them from my set up?

As I’m running a new Mac I’m assuming that it is not defaulting to using SMBv1 - is this correct?

Thanks.