Will Sonos work for me?

This might help: Sonos User Guide

Sonos used to be able to create its own network. The new app has no way to manage networks that I can see. Maybe this will be fixed soon.  Not even sure if the line-in feature is working.

A month ago, I would have said, sure, this will work for you.  Now, I’d say hold off until they fix their software or look at competitors like Bluesound.

A lot of loyal customers having problems connecting and registering thier earlier Sonos devices, since app upgrade 80.00.2… so I would look at alternatives untiol Sonos fix this, BTW its been broken for quite some time.

Agreed - not long ago most existing customers would have been positive, but unless you/they are wanting just streaming services, Sonos is probably best avoided until they are clearly through their current self-inflicted fiasco.

I was a user of Sonos products (about 15 ) for the last 8 years and used it only for streaming locally held files on my NAS server.

Since the app release, I have swapped out all my Sonos stuff and replaced it with equipment from various different manufacturers.

Whilst I am sure the app will get fixed eventually, it is the behaviour of the board that concerned me the most. They clearly have no compunction to serve their customers and will happily shaft them if the alternative would be more detrimental to their share price.

This is the second time they have shafted their customers. I have no doubt they will do it again.

I am not sure. In fact, I suspect “Search” will never work right again with the useless “universal search” that returns results for any word in the search string. There’s no longer a way to search for a song or an album or artist - search returns everything, not the specific thing.  Try searching for “Animals”.  Do you want the Pink Floyd Album, the band, or dozens of other unrelated things?

Given that they had already started trying to push this out with the previous app, I think we’re stuck with it now for a long while or forever.  And the way they decided it was fine to roll this out without local NAS library support tells me what they think about that as well - it may come back, but what was once the hallmark feature of Sonos has now been relegated to an afterthought.  I’m still able to make things work using a combination of old app, computer app, and new app.  And like you, I’m looking at options to unwind my Sonos setup, just a bit more slowly. ;) 

As for the original topic, no, I am not able to see any line-in sources in the new version of the app.  I do still see them in the old app and desktop PC app.

OP, you definitely want to hold off on Sonos at the moment and especially don’t want to foist this onto your parents as it will seem broken and confusing...because it is.

My line-in completely disappeared after the app update. However, having installed the latest version of the app I can now see it again. The workaround was painful. I had lost three of my speakers from the app. I had to move them to next to the router, plug in the ethernet cable, then setup from there. For the Five, this also required a specific time unplug of the cable to allow the chime to be played, before re-plugging in to complete setup. I remember thinking “I’m glad I didn’t set my mum up with this as planned”. 

The one think I simply can’t get to work is my personal music collection. This has been carefully curated over a number of years, with CDs backed up onto Apple Music, artwork saved and stored on a NAS. This NAS was purchased solely for use with the Sonos infrastructure. There is a workaround, which is to use Airplay from my iPhone to connect it to whichever Sonos device I want. Actually, the search function with this method is glorious and quick by comparison. It does negate the need for the NAS, and requires me to have all my music backed up on the cloud (which I’m paying for on a monthly basis), but it does mean I can listen to those early Radiohead demos and many live gigs whenever I want.