I thought I would like to share my thoughts on why I would never recommend
Sonos to my friends. After having given it some thought, in my opinion, the whole
concept behind Sonos is basically flawed.
First off, a little about my current Sonos situation. Today I have, and enjoy, a
fully working Sonos system with multiple devices spread across several rooms.
The system is stable, because at some point I decided to cable everything.
The majority of my past Sonos problems could all be related to wireless instability.
Here is why the concept behind Sonos, in my opinion, is basically flawed.
Sonos is sold as a speaker system with flexibility and ease of use as part of its core values.
The idea is simple. The speakers look good, and can easily be moved around
your home in various wireless configurations. I dont doubt that for many users,
this is in fact reality (eventhough the speakers are probably rarely moved around).
However, if you inspect the troubleshooting section of the community, you will see that
many Sonos users are having trouble with the wireless stability of their systems.
The answer from Sonos support is almost always the same - "Your wireless network
is not good enough.. you need to improve or otherwise change it". The user is left
confused, because most often the wireless network is performing sufficiently in all other respects.
Somehow the Sonos system is introduced as the weakest link on your wireless network.
There may be plausible technical reasons for this, but how was the user supposed to know?
And worse: The user has no way of knowing upfront, if this will be an issue on your network.
You may end up lucky, or not, it is a flip of the coin.
The weaksest link in your upcoming Sonos environment, will be the one factor
for which Sonos cant take responsibility - and for which you can never be sure to
fullfill the requirements.
To me this proofs that the whole concept behind Sonos is flawed.
Page 2 / 2
They have already been forced to start differentiating featurelevels between older and newer devices, like with Airplay 2 support, something, as far as I know, they hadn't done up to that point. At some time they will have no choice but to deprecate something more significant than a controller.
While I understand the outrage at "bricking" a device for the sake of "the ecosystem" tomorrow that is functioning perfectly well today, you could ask if it is really that big of a deal, in this day and age. Try to use a phone or a computer from 2005, you will find it as effective as a brick as well. A lot of people seem to have no issue shelling out ever increasing amounts for a phone every 2 or 3 years, even if their old phone still works fine, so why would it be an issue if a Sonos device gets bricked?
Somewhat off-topic maybe, but something to think about when contemplating the merits of the concept that is Sonos, especially on the point of the wireless technology it employs and the evolution thereof.
In regards to the performance of echos in multi-room speaker situations, I think the content it's capable of playing is also a big factor. Echos can only play streaming audio. The do multiroom audio from any other source. Echos have bluetooth yes, but when you use them as a bluetooth speaker, the bluetooth source cannot be shared with other echos. Likewise, their new Echo links have line in connections, but again, it cannot be shared wirelessly.
Of course, Sonos has supported sharing of line in sources from the very beginning, not to mention local libraries. In my limited understanding, this means that Sonos cannot 'afford' to have a large buffer, while echos can buffer to the limit of their on board memory essentially. They can afford to get ahead of the stream so to speak, possibly even to the next scheduled track if need be. Other speakers in the network can likewise get ahead. Sonos doesn't have the same luxury as their devices can't get advanced audio data from a line in source.
And I'm not a network or even really much of a hardware guy, but that's the obvious difference I see. Maybe echos aren't taking of advantage of their ability to buffer content, but I would guess that they do. It would certainly allow them to hide any temporary interference in the network.
And I think Sonos could possibly take advantage of using a larger buffer when the source is streaming. However, their older units probably don't have the memory to do this as effectively, so coding logic would have to consider not only the source, but the units involved in the group currently....which can change on the fly. It could also be that the existing API between Sonos and streaming sources isn't built to handling streaming with a larger buffer, not sure on that. All of this potential changes which would really only a small percentage of customers in some situations.
One other thing worth noting, as I hinted at above, Sonos allows you to regroup speakers on the fly, while echos do not. You cannot add or remove echos from a group once you've initiated streaming. I'd imagine echos are like that because it wasn't considered a high priority feature, and complicated buffering/syncing.
I actually both echos and sonos speakers can be the right choice depending on your needs. If you only want to stream audio, don't care as much about speaker quality, and are unsure about the quality of your network, echos is probably the better choice. Sonos is the better choice for others.
Of course, Sonos has supported sharing of line in sources from the very beginning, not to mention local libraries. In my limited understanding, this means that Sonos cannot 'afford' to have a large buffer, while echos can buffer to the limit of their on board memory essentially. They can afford to get ahead of the stream so to speak, possibly even to the next scheduled track if need be. Other speakers in the network can likewise get ahead. Sonos doesn't have the same luxury as their devices can't get advanced audio data from a line in source.
And I'm not a network or even really much of a hardware guy, but that's the obvious difference I see. Maybe echos aren't taking of advantage of their ability to buffer content, but I would guess that they do. It would certainly allow them to hide any temporary interference in the network.
And I think Sonos could possibly take advantage of using a larger buffer when the source is streaming. However, their older units probably don't have the memory to do this as effectively, so coding logic would have to consider not only the source, but the units involved in the group currently....which can change on the fly. It could also be that the existing API between Sonos and streaming sources isn't built to handling streaming with a larger buffer, not sure on that. All of this potential changes which would really only a small percentage of customers in some situations.
One other thing worth noting, as I hinted at above, Sonos allows you to regroup speakers on the fly, while echos do not. You cannot add or remove echos from a group once you've initiated streaming. I'd imagine echos are like that because it wasn't considered a high priority feature, and complicated buffering/syncing.
I actually both echos and sonos speakers can be the right choice depending on your needs. If you only want to stream audio, don't care as much about speaker quality, and are unsure about the quality of your network, echos is probably the better choice. Sonos is the better choice for others.
I have to say that I love my Sonos but I do think it can be sold too often as a simple system which works wirelessly without problems, with pushy sales men in the likes of John Lewis selling it as the easiest system to install and maintain.
I know how to sort out most problems that come along and if I don't I come on here or contact support directly. But if you go beyond the basics of a couple of speakers then it can become a technically demanding environment. Of course one chooses to go down that route but if you live in a smallish two bedroom flat/apartment you might hope not to deal with regular dropouts, having to regularly check on the best channel to run the system on, weekly failures of library updates (including the loss of all playlists), regularly having to reposition speakers and finding that the Boost does absolutely nothing to help.
For me this can be slightly frustrating but I did go in with my eyes open. But I think there are a number of people that don't do the research or buy Sonos as a simple solution, which I don't think it necessarily is.
I know how to sort out most problems that come along and if I don't I come on here or contact support directly. But if you go beyond the basics of a couple of speakers then it can become a technically demanding environment. Of course one chooses to go down that route but if you live in a smallish two bedroom flat/apartment you might hope not to deal with regular dropouts, having to regularly check on the best channel to run the system on, weekly failures of library updates (including the loss of all playlists), regularly having to reposition speakers and finding that the Boost does absolutely nothing to help.
For me this can be slightly frustrating but I did go in with my eyes open. But I think there are a number of people that don't do the research or buy Sonos as a simple solution, which I don't think it necessarily is.
I think that it's sometimes difficult for people to believe this, when every other system on the network works perfectly. I have had huge file transfers traverse the network without problems, yet Sonos (which has much, much lower data requirement) was never reliable on my wireless network/Sonos Mesh - despite changing every piece of network kit, every cable, buying a Bridge and using the different wireless connection methods. In the end, we moved house - and still had problems, unfortunately too intermittent to easily track down. In the end, I went wired - even though this meant using EoP adaptors, and now have a fairly reliable system. No-one else I know would have persevered with it.
So no, I wouldn't recommend Sonos to a friend. Knowing (and hearing) a number of the problems that I've had over the past six years has put most of our friends off of getting Sonos anyway, as I'm usually (in my circle) one of the more technically capable people - and they reckon that if I can't get it to work properly, then they certainly won't.
I bought the system as a simple interface to my music stored on a NAS (as I'm not particularly interested in streaming services) so also find that the quality of the UI has actually deteriorated (IMHO, of course) since I bought in to the system. Plus, at the time that I bought it the 65k limit wasn't that obvious. Successive iterations of the controller software have slowly distanced themselves from my preferred usage, so I've dreaded every upgrade since 4.x Even though I've locked the system off as much as I can, sooner or later someone is going to press a button on one of the lesser used devices and the whole thing will kick off again.
I'm still using Sonos - I'll continue to use it until something better comes along. I fully understand, of course, that other people may have very different experiences - I'm very happy for them 😃
I understand a lot of people have problems in their houses.
Iam glad to say sonos is rock solid, as is SkyQ, sometimes used at same time, with fibre broadband, but then it is a 1999 house with paper thin walls 😉
Iam glad to say sonos is rock solid, as is SkyQ, sometimes used at same time, with fibre broadband, but then it is a 1999 house with paper thin walls 😉
Sonos is basically flawed . . .
. . . proof the whole concept is flawed . . .
And yet "other people" (actually it is an extremely vast majority of Sonos users) have very different experiences? That's a pretty overarching critique to arrive at from analysis of a single installation. And I would tell you things about file transfers lacking the real-time constraints that streaming has, so naturally they are successful regardless of the bandwidth available, but why bother?
. . . proof the whole concept is flawed . . .
And yet "other people" (actually it is an extremely vast majority of Sonos users) have very different experiences? That's a pretty overarching critique to arrive at from analysis of a single installation. And I would tell you things about file transfers lacking the real-time constraints that streaming has, so naturally they are successful regardless of the bandwidth available, but why bother?
I hope you are right, that the vast majority of Sonos systems are playing without problems..
That could easily be answered by looking into the average number of daily customer support requests related to network-related playback issues.
As these figures are not publicly shared, we will never know though.
I hope you are right, that the vast majority of Sonos systems are playing without problems..
That could easily be answered by looking into the average number of daily customer support requests related to network-related playback issues.
As these figures are not publicly shared, we will never know though.
Or, one could simply look at the dozens of professional reviews, which are overwhelmingly positive. Or the customer reviews at Amazon, Play Store, Best Buy, etc, which are also overwhelmingly positive. Most people love their Sonos, and have very few, if any, issues. Most issues can be traced to the home wifi network, which can easily be avoided by using a Boost.
My Sonos works flawlessly with Virgin Media Super Hub 2 and would recommend it without hesitation.
If you think about all the systems out there, and the small number of fault reports on here it paints a pretty good picture for Sonos.
If you think about all the systems out there, and the small number of fault reports on here it paints a pretty good picture for Sonos.
Oh, yes. And I'm using it with a Virgin Super Hub. Makes absolutely no difference. If it was a stable system then nobody would be having any problems.
*YAWN*
What a logical fallacy - "If it was a stable system then nobody would be having any problems."
Just as absurd as saying "If a Volvo was really a safe car, nobody would ever get in an accident while driving one!"
The vast majority of problems with Sonos can be traced to networking problems or WiFi interference, neither of which Sonos can do anything about, unless you want them to configure your network for you or violate the laws of physics. Fact is, the systems that are not stable are very rare, though it does seem the owners are prone to both hyperbole and temper tantrums.
What a logical fallacy - "If it was a stable system then nobody would be having any problems."
Just as absurd as saying "If a Volvo was really a safe car, nobody would ever get in an accident while driving one!"
The vast majority of problems with Sonos can be traced to networking problems or WiFi interference, neither of which Sonos can do anything about, unless you want them to configure your network for you or violate the laws of physics. Fact is, the systems that are not stable are very rare, though it does seem the owners are prone to both hyperbole and temper tantrums.
I agree that there is some merit in the opening argument, but the conclusion is incorrect, IMO. It is the state of home WiFi networks in general that leads to these issues, so if one had to say something on the lines argued it would have to be that EVERY home audio wireless system is basically flawed for relying on that foundation. The uptime is not as good as wired kit for any make out there. And ALL may need occasional housekeeping of the network.
That said, I also don't know any make that betters the Sonos uptime that is north of 99% in a robust but typical home WiFi set up. With just one wired unit, Sonos also bypasses issues of busy home networks. And there are many that fall short of this standard.
Finally, while the uptime may not approach the 100% of wired legacy kit, this is more than offset by the many advantages of multi room wireless.
That said, I also don't know any make that betters the Sonos uptime that is north of 99% in a robust but typical home WiFi set up. With just one wired unit, Sonos also bypasses issues of busy home networks. And there are many that fall short of this standard.
Finally, while the uptime may not approach the 100% of wired legacy kit, this is more than offset by the many advantages of multi room wireless.
All good points from @Sjoop1985, @Kumar and @revdv. I suspect most users don't need to reserve IP addresses (I never have), but if a system is experiencing problems, especially after updates, this can be a useful element in tackling the issues.
It seems to me that when users do have problems with Sonos, a large proportion of them result from using Sonos in ways it wasn't originally designed for, but which Sonos has had to make possible to remain competitive, for example:
1. Using it in fully WiFi mode (particularly where extenders are involved)
2. Playing content stored on a mobile device
3. Using Airplay
4. Using line-in for TV audio
5. Voice control
Even in these examples Sonos works well for most users.
One objection I sometimes hear is 'there is nothing wrong with my network, everything else works fine'. This ignores the fact that a Sonos system does make greater demands on a network than 'standalone' devices. Potentially a large number of Sonos and controller devices have to stay in constant touch. SonosNet does that best.
Edit: good point from @pwt too, but our posts crossed!
It seems to me that when users do have problems with Sonos, a large proportion of them result from using Sonos in ways it wasn't originally designed for, but which Sonos has had to make possible to remain competitive, for example:
1. Using it in fully WiFi mode (particularly where extenders are involved)
2. Playing content stored on a mobile device
3. Using Airplay
4. Using line-in for TV audio
5. Voice control
Even in these examples Sonos works well for most users.
One objection I sometimes hear is 'there is nothing wrong with my network, everything else works fine'. This ignores the fact that a Sonos system does make greater demands on a network than 'standalone' devices. Potentially a large number of Sonos and controller devices have to stay in constant touch. SonosNet does that best.
Edit: good point from @pwt too, but our posts crossed!
I know how to sort out most problems that come along and if I don't I come on here or contact support directly. But if you go beyond the basics of a couple of speakers then it can become a technically demanding environment. Of course one chooses to go down that route but if you live in a smallish two bedroom flat/apartment you might hope not to deal with regular dropouts, having to regularly check on the best channel to run the system on, weekly failures of library updates (including the loss of all playlists), regularly having to reposition speakers and finding that the Boost does absolutely nothing to help.
For me this can be slightly frustrating but I did go in with my eyes open. But I think there are a number of people that don't do the research or buy Sonos as a simple solution, which I don't think it necessarily is.
You are correct. Due Its wireless nature Sonos will have some issues. To many different wireless scenarios out there to avoid every problem.
However I do think Sonos is easier to setup and than the other systems. I’ve spent a good bit of time on avs and other forums and Bluesound, Play Fi and Heos all have the same complaints I see on here. Quite a few folks who have had prior experience with Sonos proclaim that it was much easier to use and maintain. They seem to feel the other systems provide a advantage with the higher sample rate.
I only have experience with Sonos. I do know that when you start combining hardware and software among different companies like Play Fi does you are asking for trouble. Support will be a nightmare as each company in the chain blames the other.
Paradigm which uses Play Fi has very few reviews out and they are all positive from a sound standpoint, but you will find a high number complaining about the unusability of the app, crazy support and the constant reboots.
I don’t believe Heos and Bluesound support Apple Music which is big for our family and Bluesound’s $1000 soundbar doesn’t even do surround. It’s PCM only.
Sonos has issues and I hope someone from the company watches this site and heads the complaints.
Sonos has a 10+ Year head start but it will not take the Denon group and others long to pass.
I’m still on the fence but for now Sonos is the recommendation I would make with a few caveats
Sonos has a 10+ Year head start but it will not take the Denon group and others long to pass.
I’m still on the fence but for now Sonos is the recommendation I would make with a few caveats
The easier to use thing is the usual set of complaints with an app refresh and has nothing to do with the red herring of higher sample rates. Conflating the two - I learnt that word from Matt Damon talking about degrees of sexual exploitation and how some of that isn't as bad as others, and was waiting to use the word:-) - is wrong.
Sonos may well be surpassed but I doubt it will be Denon. My bet is on one of Apple/Google/Amazon, if that were to happen on the new fronts of voice+home automation+music services as a one stop shop. Not that Denon isn't good - their mini/midi systems are some of the best as are their bluetooth portable speakers. But they are behind Sonos on multi room WiFi.
My only caveat about Sonos still remains the one about having a stable WiFi. And needing all its features, of course.
@tphren :i agree with the post, I have brand night hawk router with a download speed of 300 mbps . my play 5 sound use to break frequently while airplaying from my MacBook. Yes, it works better when playing through the Sonos app directly using the iPhone. to get rid of this issue I had to hardwire the network and now its working fine. the other issue is being such an expensive speaker they only support 2.5 GHz network which is basically shaming. I also have Bose Soundtouch 30 gen 3 and I find it a lot better and simple than Sonos play 5.
There are very good reasons for using 2.4GHz for a multiroom system - better range and wall penetration than 5GHz, in particular. For Sonos HT setups, where low latency is crucial, and wall penetration isn't, Sonos uses 5GHz. Shaming? Not at all. Deliberate and technically justified.
Because people were being put off buying Sonos due to the "it's not truly wireless!" claims and competitors advertising with "no bridge required", they were forced to implement the Wifi mode, and with that expose the user experience to the unpredictive nature of the users home Wifi.
Good point; WiFi mode was a marketing tick the box to address this issue. Wiring one Sonos unit to the router is still the only way to go for stable performance where more than one/two zones are involved. Even where this unit needs to be a Boost, the per day cost of it over a 5 plus year useful life is peanuts compared to what it delivers.
And the other thing that needs doing for stable performance doesn't involve any cost - reserving IP addresses in the router for all Sonos units including controller hosting devices.
This is not a sonos problem, but a household wifi problem that becomes apparent with wifi hungry kit. This has not and will not flawed sonos in 12yrs.
Exactly the same problems crop up on the SkyQ forum, where sky has to push video around wireless mesh as well as audio.
Do you think SkyQ is therefore flawed as well?
Exactly the same problems crop up on the SkyQ forum, where sky has to push video around wireless mesh as well as audio.
Do you think SkyQ is therefore flawed as well?
However: in parallel I also use Echo/Dots around the house, some that are wired to the line in sockets on Sonos. While none of them play in stereo paired mode, or in grouped mode except on rare occasions, I find music play from them to be just as stable with nothing wired to the router, nor any IP reservation done for the units.
Whether this indicates a technology edge that has been eked out by Amazon over Sonos isn't something I have an answer for. I would not use any such progress if made by Amazon to say that the Sonos concept is basically flawed seeing that it was first deployed fifteen years ago. But it does indicate that there needs to be less user involvement for Echo to deliver stable music play.
Whether this indicates a technology edge that has been eked out by Amazon over Sonos isn't something I have an answer for. I would not use any such progress if made by Amazon to say that the Sonos concept is basically flawed seeing that it was first deployed fifteen years ago. But it does indicate that there needs to be less user involvement for Echo to deliver stable music play.
The evidence suggests that this kind of intervention is only really required in a very small proportion of Sonos installations. There are many millions of Sonos users whose systems work perfectly out of the box, without recourse to this forum or any other form of support.
However, if one does encounter issues, this forum is a fantastic resource, with some very knowledgeable and helpful people willing to give up their time to assist.
Enter your E-mail address. We'll send you an e-mail with instructions to reset your password.