Worst most complicated piece you'll ever buy. Avoid at ALL costs
Userlevel 2
Don't Buy. Never been able to get it working properly. You can't even make it useful by plugging in your iPhone into it with a 3.5mm to 3.5mm lead. Its not plug and play which is basic for most systems.....You have to tell it to do that function with the controller.....Absolute S**T
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As an after thought, if you don't want a streaming product and do not want to use a controller there are many 'jack link' products out there. TV Sound Plinths, Computer Speakers, Sound-docks etc Come along and be satisfied not frustrated..
I-ve just bought to pieces of sonos crap and I am very dissapointed because I am stuck with sonos software that does not allow you to freely choose what and wich program you want to listen to everything has to come from sonos software. Libratones speakers are better and you can use as you please.
So much admission free entertainment early in the day?
Sorry, i pass and go back watching soccer with this amazing stadium atmosphere produced by the Playbar and a pair of Play5. Apologies for the rather unproductive contribution 😉
Sorry, i pass and go back watching soccer with this amazing stadium atmosphere produced by the Playbar and a pair of Play5. Apologies for the rather unproductive contribution 😉
After reading the whole thread I get the impression that the complainers here have bought the wrong system for their needs. Simple research would have confirmed the lack of headphone support. As for connecting a CD player, I assume you have an amplifier. Add a Connect and you can stream CDs across your Sonos system. If the only stations you listen too are BBC, buy a radio. Alternatively stream radio via Sky to Sonos. My system consists of one Playbar, one Connect, one Play3, one Play1 and a Bridge. These are spread over three floors. Apart from following Sonos instructions for setting up I have not needed to do anything else for the system to work. I find Sonos convenient and easy to use. Having the controller on my smart phone and tablet is great. I always have one or the other with me and that saves the need for a separate controller in every location i have Sonos. Freinds who also have Sonos think it is great. I recently recommended to another friend and she found it simplicity itself to set up and she certainly isn't the most technically minded person. I will be adding more and will continue to add more. It is a shame that some of the posters on this discussion have found Sonos not to fit their requirements, but that is why there is a large number of alternatives to choose from. After all one size does not fit all.
Userlevel 7
+22
You are correct Kevin ... not that Sonos is completely blameless (slow speed of development for wish list items) ... but many people complain because they did not understand the system they purchased. It doesn't fit everyones needs and many people buy Sonos that don't have an interest in the things that Sonos does better then any other multi-room networked wireless speaker. But a Bluetooth or Airplay it is not ... and wasn't conceived to be. But give me a reliable networked player with rock solid mesh network and no server software required to play local library ... that is what I purchased and got.
You are simply not right! I just want to have a choise and Sonos doesn't give that possibility.
Userlevel 6
+3
Dear Sonos,
This is a dead horse please delete this thread. I love my Sonos, it does exactly what I want it to do with no hassle.
This is a dead horse please delete this thread. I love my Sonos, it does exactly what I want it to do with no hassle.
Userlevel 7
+22
There are plenty of possibilities. I stream if I want from iTunes I stream direct from my pic. It may be matter of cost and effort but aren't all things.
I started small with Sonos. A play 3 just to try it out. Amazing. Took more time to get it out of the box than it did to make it work. (All my music is on a NAS drive - Sonos sucks up flac files and spits them out beautifully). Now I have 2 play 3's, a Sub, a play 1 and a play bar (The play 1 sits in the kitchen on its own until I can buy a partner for it). Fantastic sound, great access (we have deezer and amazon music) and it just works. Even my teenage Son likes it because he can play the music he wants when we are out of the house (he has a controller app on his iPhone, and so can play all his music as he sees fit - when we aren't there).
It isn't all rosy. We have occasional drop outs of music. Have contacted Sonos, and I'll report back in due course. I expect they will do their dial in jiggery pokery and all will be fine.
That's all!
It isn't all rosy. We have occasional drop outs of music. Have contacted Sonos, and I'll report back in due course. I expect they will do their dial in jiggery pokery and all will be fine.
That's all!
Honesty, Dave what were you expecting? Your passive-aggressive comment was met with actual aggression. IMHO Ray taught you a valuable lesson. I bet you're one of those people who speak softly about other people behind their backs, and say things like "you're causing a scene" after breaking up with your girlfriend in a public place.
As for SONOS- it sucks. Plain and simple. The software is garbage. It doesn't do airstream because they are too cheap to pay for the licensing fees (on a $500 speaker), and getting it to function shouldn't take pouring over the user forums.
Sonos is a failing system, undoubtedly. consumers want easy use products that work seamlessness, immediately and without fault. Products should be easy to install and work immediately - that is what they demand. Good products do not have counts threads of millions of consumers moaning about how rubbish it is, ergo Sonos is rubbish, always needing tweaking and full of errors................I do not think it will survive - do not buy it!
It is a mark of failure that comments like - not taken time to seek face to face advice or take time and money to implement systems properly or a 12 year old can install it. Guess what consumers;
1) Don't want to pay over the odds for poor face to face advice - we want to install ourselves, effortlessly
2) Don't have the time and want something I can plug in and play - we don't want to send 30mins on hold to rectify a problem we have called about before.
3) Don't want a system a 12 year old can install, intuitive products can be installed by a 12 or an 80 year old.
Wrong perspectives above, today people grow up with intuitive well designed product that works flawlessly. Sons is not any of those things.
But in my experience (and after 3 years of Sonos support being unable to fix properly) a "rock solid mesh network" is exactly what this product isnt. In fact it is so far away from that it isnt even funny. I can stream video around the house with Apple TV with maybe 1 network issue every 6-12 months. With Sonos I am lucky if the network works 3 times in a row. It is a running joke with our friends how bad this product is.
Also there is an attitude with Sonos and obviously some supporters on here that if it isnt working it is the fault of someone else, i.e you dont understand it, you bought the wrong thing, your router isnt working, your firewall is blocking it, your itunes folder is corrupted, you didnt pay extra for a reseller to set it up. But that isnt good enough these days. It has to work out of the box if you are a casual user or a serious audio person and it has to keep working without having to call support all the time.
Totally agree - thought it was me, or rather the wife or kids who kept "screwing things up" but it really is just a ppoor product. 50% of people I know are OK with it cos they hardwire it (the wireless it hopeless in any city) and the rest of us have given up. Last week I rebooted 4 times, reloaded, repointed, reconnected and it worked for a whole day and now it doesn't recognise the computer it is hosted on. I mean REALLY? the freeware I had before was better than this crap. 4 years a user and max of 4 weeks of working.
Wow. I feel sorry for anyone that cannot get a Sonos system to work. Really....I do. Generally thought of as the easiest system to set up. I mean I have set up dozens of other style systems which were both portable and stationary and Sonos was absolutely the easiest. Push a button!!!! Come on. For the people that say "Thought is was me". It is.
Agree entirely with Paris TX. Many of my non-techy friends have bought Sonos after seeing / hearing my system and have been listening happily to music 15 minutes after getting the gear home. Dead simple, sounds great.
Userlevel 6
+3
To add to this
Like any high tech gear today you do need to learn a bit about it to get the most out of it.
Sonos 101
Run the system on SonosNet
Scan you wifi and make sure that you are on the best channel for Sonos and your home router .
Scan your WiFi channels in your home Click hereReserve IP address on your router for your Sonos gear.
Give you Sonos gear the right environment and you will get years of happy use out of it.
Ok. I wanted to add a speaker to my bathroom so I just now ran to Best Buy (could have got one cheaper on Amazon but oh well) and picked up my first Play 1 ( I have 4 play 5's). Unboxing - 1 minute. Plugging into speaker and wall - 10 seconds. Getting the Sonos system to recognize it by pushing two buttons - 10 seconds. Grouping it with my other speakers since this is how I like it - 15 seconds (this includes naming the room). Issues encountered - 0.
Sound from the Play 1 - So much better than I expected. Now I regret not getting the two play 1's deal that they have so I can add one to my workout room.
Again...if you are having trouble setting these up, then either you somehow have a defective unit or your just not paying attention. From memory - Open the Sonos app and go under manage. Select add a player or Sub. Follow the step by step (that include pictures)...I believe it says wait for green light on your Sonos speaker after you plug it in. Now click next and it shows you what two buttons to push and release. Hmmm that is it. 5 Speakers in my house and it was just as simple every time.
For the first time I did adjust equalizer settings for the Play 1. Only because of acoustics in the room. Just a slight bump of Bass and Treble on it. Sounds great with the few Genres I tried.
On another note...They had a Sonos system setup for demo so I got to mess around with the Playbar and Bass. Wow..very impressed. Not quite $1300 combo impressed, but I might eventually go that route if there is ever a discount.
I am pleased for those who have a working system, really I am. I know lots of them seem to work and if yours works then I guess you can't understand why other people are having problems.
I can't speak for others but I have certainly spent (literally) days on the phone with Sonos support, they have remote accessed my computer, run tests on the router (In the time Sonos hasn't been working properly I've had about 3 router upgrades), changed the wi fi channel lots of times, and they can't fix it.
So it is not user error, or lack of effort, or lack of knowledge (I assume Sonos support know what they are doing).
It is a system that for some reason doesn't work for everyone's set up, and no matter what you try it cannot be made to work consistently even by the experts.
I think it is unfair for people to suggest that some users are only having trouble because they can't follow the steps to set up their system. The fact is that there are some gremlins that are impacting a lot of systems lately and they are not things that are easy to track down. From hypersensitivity to interference (even when your players are wired) to what appears to be intermittent STP glitches, there are definitely some underlying issues that can affect the stability of a Sonos system running the current firmware version even if the user follows all best practices to set it up. I hope Sonos is making system stability a high priority and is looking for a root cause to some of these more stubborn cases.
Worked for about 1 month direct from an iphone (only way I have got it to work recently) - now that has stopped too.
Credit to Sonos for keeping this thread open and letting people hear real life experience of how rubbish their product is - or maybe they just don't care?
I guess if you spend enough on marketing it drowns out poor product to some extent.
Credit to Sonos for keeping this thread open and letting people hear real life experience of how rubbish their product is - or maybe they just don't care?
I guess if you spend enough on marketing it drowns out poor product to some extent.
Considering the very few posts that agree with the title are being thoroughly drowned out by dozens of posts praising the product, why wouldn't they keep it up? Hell, I'd make it a stickie!
Credit to Sonos for keeping this thread open and letting people hear real life experience of how rubbish their product is - or maybe they just don't care?
I guess if you spend enough on marketing it drowns out poor product to some extent.
Have you actually tried to do anything to fix the issue, like raise a support call? The fact is the overwhelming majority of Sonos systems work without any trouble at all, it's a very GOOD product, the best one out there. you probably have a very simple problem that will would fix your issues if it can be identified but if you won't engage in that process then nobody can help you. It's entirely up to you.
Userlevel 3
+2
Flawless performance. Amazing sound. Perfect audio sync. Op expends the energy to complain but never once considers calling tech support. Sonos tech support is the best - they're all network experts. One call and it could all be fixed. But it's more fun to post drivel.
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