It's less the app, more the business decision to tell people who had spent thousands and thousands of dollars on elaborate sound systems to go throw it all in the trash and start over, all at once.
Even Apple has never been that bad. They drop support for things over time but even their roughest transitions (x86, Apple Silicon) have come with extensive day 1 support for previous functionality.
People will think what you’re saying is hyperbole; however, I was on a walk with the family, and I saw a Sonos speaker in the trash. It looked like new and a fairly recent model. I lugged it home, and it was a $US500 Sonos Play:5 speaker system [1].
Once home, I plugged it in, and it powered up.
I tried to pair it with my iPhone using the new Sonos app, and it didn’t work (the app never found the speaker).
I then tried the same again using my development Android device, and it instantly worked!
Once it was set up with the Android app, I could access it via the iPhone version of the app.
I can only imagine some iPhone owner literally threw it in the trash because he couldn’t get the iOS app to work. Bonkers…
Well that is basically the model of the home stereo today.
People don’t realize sound was solved decades ago. How they could get the same stereo their grandfather could have ordered from the sears catalog and some cabinets from that sears catalog and that would be better sound than they are capable of ever perceiving, and how it would last them their entire life on that one stereo and probably the lives of multiple generations of family members. With IO that has always been a standard and always will be a standard. And a stereo like this isn’t even terribly expensive. A couple hundred up front for never having to make another home audio equipment purchase in your life is some serious savings.
Instead they are sold soundbars and other crap tiny speakers that are not built to last, and might use specific io to connect over open standards that have been around for decades. They end up spending quite a lot more money for a shit experience that they are none the wiser that there are even alternatives to, without becoming audiophiles themselves consuming hundreds of pages of relevant media in that niche.
I have two Play 5's that I have had for a decade and they're still currently set up working completely fine on an Apple device. That's a speaker that was released 16 years ago and still works through the Sonos app, still allows me to play Spotify, still works natively with the Playbar to watch movies and TV.
That sounds pretty good to me. If people want to throw out their hardware and buy new that's fine, but they haven't needed to throw out their Play 5's.
If I was still using an Apple iPhone from 2009 you can bet it would be a terrible experience
2 out of 3 of my Sonos devices were rendered useless by their policies. One day they were functional and working, and the next day they were not. One of these was a fancy, very expensive jog-wheel remote that I rather liked (every one of these in use all got absolutely bricked, deliberately, in a bullshit move), and the other was a Sonos Bridge (a wireless access point) that they didn't deem worthy of working with new software (even though that was also bullshit).
The remaining device has mechanical issues (as old speakers sometimes do). This one is disappointing, but at least it isn't irrational.
> It's less the app, more the business decision to tell people who had spent thousands and thousands of dollars on elaborate sound systems to go throw it all in the trash and start over, all at once.
As a Sonos purchaser, ironically product longevity was the reason I bought so much of their stuff!
While other similar systems would drop support for old devices eventually, I could be confident with Sonos that I was investing in stuff that would continue to work.
… until now! I’ve started to lose confidence. Which is a shame - I’m moving into a new house and wanting a sub, but now questioning if that’s a sensible decision given I don’t know how long my older speakers will work for now they are going glitchy. Real shame!
> They drop support for things over time but even their roughest transitions (x86, Apple Silicon) have come with extensive day 1 support for previous functionality.
Catalina literally just dumped half the software that ever ran on MacOS overnight to make the transition to Apple Silicon seem smoother than it actually was.
First of all "Even Apple" implies Apple is particularly bad, in fact it is one of the better ones in supporting older usecases and devices. But even then x86 to Apple silicon is not the roughest by far.
For me, it is the removal of x86-32 bit software support. The removal wasn't needed at all and broke all the steam games.
I can vouch for this, as I have a pile Sonos "bricks" that _used_ to be components of a costly yet functional sound system. Won't touch anything Sonos with a 10ft pole.
I like to reverse decisions further back. The connected speaker is basically a commodity at this point. Sonos does have some nice features, but they are very expensive. I think the ceo saw the down sales and lack of new products and rushed out the app hoping it would work and boost sales. Obviously it was a disaster, but I’m not sure if sticking to the status quo would have led to any different outcome in sales.
The app update they're talking about is the one that got released last year which is terrible, it keeps crashing, doesn't work with time zone and a bunch of other stuff
> It's less the app, more the business decision to tell people who had spent thousands and thousands of dollars on elaborate sound systems to go throw it all in the trash and start over, all at once.
What does this refer to? Did Sonos drop support for products? When was this, which products?
I mean, the week the iPhone X came out, they put out an irreversible update for the iPhone 7 that made it unusable. They also tried to charge me 2,300$ to fix just one broken keyboard key. Apple is definitely that bad.
Please stop putting salespeople in charge of highly technical product companies like Sonos. I'm so glad that Tom Conrad is an engineer by training. I hope he can turn this mess around.
The key technical change that broke Sonos was abandoning their reliable UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) system for device discovery in favor of mDNS, while also shifting from direct device communication to a cloud-based API approach. This new architecture made all network traffic encrypted and routed through Sonos cloud servers (even for local operations), adding significant overhead and latency, especially for older Sonos devices with limited processing power. They also switched from native platform-specific UX frameworks to a JavaScript-based interface while moving music service interactions through their cloud instead of direct SMAPI calls, resulting in slower performance and reduced functionality.
For a more extended discussion, see this excellent LinkedIn post from Andy Pennell, a principal engineer at Microsoft with a deep technical understanding of Sonos systems. He created one of the most successful third-party Sonos apps for Windows Phone and worked directly with Sonos on their official Windows Phone 8 app.
My Sonos app experience is probably the worst of any smart devices I’ve owned. Dropped connections, unable to connect or stream, just all-around inconsistencies. Great speaker when it’s hardwired but the “smart” app is bad. Why did it take years for the chickens to come home to roost?
>Why did it take years for the chickens to come home to roost?
because the problem with sonos is that they're actually really really good. dollar for dollar, it's some of the best sound quality you can find for home audio, and it doesn't require a month of product research to figure it out. it's easily available in most big-box stores, and unlike some other brands they don't have a shit-tier line of products that look indistinguishable from their good stuff so you have to be cautious as a consumer to buy only the good stuff. if you go to best buy and spend $500 on sonos products, you're going to get your moneys worth.
it's too bad their app sucks, because their hardware doesn't.
FWIW there are several third-party mobile applications that work just fine to operate Sonos equipment.
The speakers expose a few SOAP-based APIs to any clients on the LAN. Those allow for track control, grouping, etc. They don't allow adding new music services, but they can do the vast majority of daily interaction. These APIs continue to work nearly flawlessly even for my Play:1 devices that are 10 years old.
Streaming via AirPlay is indeed hit-or-miss, but it hasn't gotten worse in the past couple years.
I control my Sonos from a jQuery-based web application I wrote nearly 10 years ago that runs on a raspberry pi in my closet. I have not had to change anything in several years, and I use my 15+device Sonos system all the time.
The new app is indeed a dumpster fire. Somehow the company managed to make their first-party application worse than any of the third-party applications.
We used Sonos at a place I used to work, and it was easily one of the worst tech experiences I've ever had. Constant issues. We had a 10-step troubleshooting guide that had to be referenced daily (until everyone had memorized the steps out of repetition), with a bonus (half-)joke step that was "dash it to the ground". Even during the infrequent and intermittent working periods, it was nothing special.
I've always been amazed at how different my experience apparently was to everyone else's, because I only ever see glowing praise (before the apparently disastrous new app rollout, which still sounds like a better experience than I had). I can only assume there were significant updates and improvements in the time since, because the company wouldn't have lasted a month if our experience was typical.
Well, it didn’t used to be bad. OG Sonos was awesome. If the ceo kept leading investors on with “just one more quarter/we are almost ready to launch the big fixes/etc” then I can understand why it took so long. AFAIK this is the first ceo that Sonos has ever ousted so I think it’s a pretty big deal.
Hoping the new one will have more foresight to not screw over existing customers in the face of the new shiny.
In other news, I hear Framework is looking to get into other hardware niches… if they ever made a networked speaker, I’d buy it.
I wonder how much of that is Sonos sucking vs bluetooth just being an absolutely terrible connection protocol. it's always a raindance prayer that bluetooth will work, even harder to have it pair. bluetooth makes printers seem like NASA level quality software.
> The company said it would cost between $20 million and $30 million to fix these issues and decided to cut about 6% of its staff.
> Spence, in October, had acknowledged mistakes surrounding the app's release and said that he and seven other company leaders would forgo their bonuses.
People out of a job because of you and you're gonna forgo your bonuses.
> Spence, whose total compensation was $5.19 million in fiscal 2023, took a roughly $72,000 cash bonus.
I, like an idiot, sold my Onkyo Integra amplifier, radio tuner, tape deck, Canton and KEF speakers for next to nothing and switched to Sonos. I deeply regret it. In my kitchen, there’s an old Grundig radio and a Sonos speaker. Guess which one gets turned on in the morning and evening during meals?
The app is so bad that I'm about chuck three Sonos Ones in the trash (metaphorically) and replace them with HomePod Minis or whatever—and I would certainly never go back to Sonos products after that. Huge failure. The CEO should've been dumped months ago.
I hate these stupid ‘smart’ devices. Personally, I just have some decent quality speakers hooked up to an good quality old school amp with an AirPort Express feeding into the line in.
I do this with WiiM. For me, the biggest thing is that I have speakers that are >20 years old that still work perfectly. Why replace what already works well?
I looked at the Sonos ecosystem for this, but their non-speaker devices are absurdly priced. The network audio streamer is 449 and the amp is 699. WiiM amps are either 299 or 379 and their network streamer ranges from 149 to 329. I have a few of the network streamers which were 149. They connect into my receiver, into an old amp I have, etc. and work perfectly.
Same. Denon receiver, some capable speakers, and Airport Express for Airplay (which I would love to replace for something with a bit less connection delay - come on, Apple)! Only the last part is dependent on a modern stack ,the first two will last decades.
Iirc, this is because the network access required to control the speakers could be used to determine your location. So it is really the OS that is letting you know what you’re risking, not the app requesting too much.
> He’ll remain an adviser to the Sonos board through June and get paid $7,500 per month until then. He’ll be paid a cash severance of about $1.9 million, and his unvested shares in Sonos will vest.
I got a sonos device as my welcome gift to my previous company.
It's good that I can just simply stream spotify to it, but:
1- I don't like the sound processing. I mean, I understand that for most folks it's great, but they don't even come close to my Genelec setup. So I mostly use it to listen to podcasts, but for serious music/movies, I only use proper high fidelity sound setup
2- I don't like the all or nothing approach: if I don't like my current audio streaming setup, I can keep the speakers and the subwoofer, and just get new electronics. But with Sonos, I have to throw everything out.
A hardware company should not be able to brick products that can "in principle" work for a ling time.
When I was building my home back in 2022 the builder's audio person insisted I use Sonos. I said no. Then I said no another 100 times as this person just pushed and pushed and pushed. I eventually explained I didn't want to be vendor locked. Technology changes, and I don't want to be caught up in the BS.
I ended up designing the system myself. Wired in speakers, down to the basement where all the receivers are. I'm really happy with the result, and grateful I didn't get bullied into a specific Vendor.
Not everyone has this luxury. Once the drywall is up, it's really hard to get a decent whole home system and Sonos was the way to do that. My Dad and my father-in-law are in deep with Sonos. I can feel their anger and frustration when we're over. They really did their customers dirty.
I used to be a fan of Sonos and bought one of their speakers. The state of speakers to play music is actually pretty sad now: you're basically relegated to Sonos or a smart speaker (which I do not want).
I believe my (rather old) Sonos is now not supported and there's really no reason for that. It's such a Google move (eg earlier Nests aren't Matter-compatible for really no reason).
Even when I was using it, there were basic issues that plague most network-connected devices: they're usually really bad with dealing with transient network issues. Like if my Internet hiccups, I don't want the Internet radio station I'm playing to stop and have to be manually restarted.
Also, Sonos insists (or it did when I last looked into it) of creating it's own 2.4GHz mesh network. There was really no way of forcing it to use your existing network. You could kind of turn off the internal mesh network and force it to use Ethernet but not entirely.
As a user, I want to play my Spotify or Apple Music and have that synced across multiple speakers. That's the real value proposition of something like Sonos. It shouldn't be that hard. Particularly with music, you get fetch the whole song. There's really no reason for a network interruption at all.
I don't necessarily want to use a dedicated app either. I want to treat my Sonos as just another output choice on Spotify like headphones or a Bluetooth speaker.
Fault tolerance and ease of setup is what something like Sonos should be about. And that's hard because you have to deal with a long-tail of issues like packet loss, token expiry with third-party providers and so on.
I have no idea what Sonos have been doing isntead.
TIL. I am actually considering moving to Sonos and this got me rethinking. Sonos is what came up as the reliable option for wireless speaker systems. I am not an audiophile and so don't care too much about fidelity. Ease of use is the main functionality for me, and Sonos came up as the best option. I will wait for a bit to see how things pan out before deciding.
I've owned Sonos for 10+ years, and I would not consider their products easy to use. They cater to a very specific use case (homeowners with distinct closed door spaces, 100% investment in their ecosystem, low interop outside of the ecosystem including with other Music streaming systems) and if you fit that narrow mold, you will have a great time. But if you don't, you will find yourself with a lot of overpriced equipment for what it is.
In the 10 years I've owned them, I've used the app less than 10 total times. I much rather prefer just using them as an over priced surround system and use my Playstation to play music through the TV/sonos.
I'm a big fan of WiiM for a more affordable alternative (for some). I'm not an audiophile, but have a handful of passive speakers around the house and I hook up a wiim amp or a wiim 'streamer' (forget the name) to my existing amp/receiver setup. Works great for me. WHA works well, although I never use it.
For me, the major thing that matters is that I can see a device in spotifys device list and can play to that device. Similarly, it needs to be zero setup for anyone else on my wifi network (wife, kids, friends). WiiM covers that perfectly.
Granted, there is some work there if you don't already have speakers. I personally think Spotify is a great product. I just don't want my speakers running an operating system. I have speakers as old as 25 years that work perfectly with the WiiM. No point in adding additional tech in a speaker that works perfectly as-is. My biggest worry (which Spotify has been pretty good about) is that the speakers work over WiFi and at some point, will be sunsetted. Maybe not within the next few years, but I don't have much faith that a Sonos system will work well in 10-15 years.
I wouldn't recommend either. I bought into the ecosystem around 10 years ago because I had just gotten my first real job and wanted to treat myself to some nice stuff. I got the Play:5 and then the sound bar and subwoofer soon after.
Then, like two years later, everything I bought became 2nd class citizens. I have use Legacy apps that are just barely working. It sucks.
It was super cool when it all worked but if it took them this long to get rid of that CEO, then I don't seem them turning around at any point soon.
My impression is that the current Sonos app becomes unusable when your home Internet connection is unstable. It usually works fine here, but when our 5G starts switching channels due to a snowstorm, the Sonos app becomes erratic.
I understand there's also issues with mDNS discovery and maybe other things, but the worst mistake seems to be the assumption that everybody has a stable Internet connection all the time.
There are other apps that have made a similar mistake. E.g. Ubiquiti's UniFi management app has problems connecting to the local LAN console if you originally signed in using a cloud account and Internet becomes unstable.
One app that handles this right is the Home Assistant Companion app. It detects when you're using a local WiFi SSID and connects directly to the internal LAN address which always works, and otherwise uses the cloud connection or public WAN address.
Glad to see this here. I have a couple sonos speakers in my kitchen and I am still scared to update to the latest app. I was fortunate enough to check the sub-reddit prior to updating.
I've spent a bunch of money on Sonos products in the past, and this app update basically killed it for me. Hopefully they can recover what they once had.
[+] [-] crooked-v|1 year ago|reply
Even Apple has never been that bad. They drop support for things over time but even their roughest transitions (x86, Apple Silicon) have come with extensive day 1 support for previous functionality.
[+] [-] schappim|1 year ago|reply
People will think what you’re saying is hyperbole; however, I was on a walk with the family, and I saw a Sonos speaker in the trash. It looked like new and a fairly recent model. I lugged it home, and it was a $US500 Sonos Play:5 speaker system [1].
Once home, I plugged it in, and it powered up.
I tried to pair it with my iPhone using the new Sonos app, and it didn’t work (the app never found the speaker).
I then tried the same again using my development Android device, and it instantly worked!
Once it was set up with the Android app, I could access it via the iPhone version of the app.
I can only imagine some iPhone owner literally threw it in the trash because he couldn’t get the iOS app to work. Bonkers…
[1] https://files.littlebird.com.au/pb-BfEVPbWlDe-hkxfK0.png
[+] [-] kjkjadksj|1 year ago|reply
People don’t realize sound was solved decades ago. How they could get the same stereo their grandfather could have ordered from the sears catalog and some cabinets from that sears catalog and that would be better sound than they are capable of ever perceiving, and how it would last them their entire life on that one stereo and probably the lives of multiple generations of family members. With IO that has always been a standard and always will be a standard. And a stereo like this isn’t even terribly expensive. A couple hundred up front for never having to make another home audio equipment purchase in your life is some serious savings.
Instead they are sold soundbars and other crap tiny speakers that are not built to last, and might use specific io to connect over open standards that have been around for decades. They end up spending quite a lot more money for a shit experience that they are none the wiser that there are even alternatives to, without becoming audiophiles themselves consuming hundreds of pages of relevant media in that niche.
What a cash cow of an industry.
[+] [-] isatty|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] NoPicklez|1 year ago|reply
I have two Play 5's that I have had for a decade and they're still currently set up working completely fine on an Apple device. That's a speaker that was released 16 years ago and still works through the Sonos app, still allows me to play Spotify, still works natively with the Playbar to watch movies and TV.
That sounds pretty good to me. If people want to throw out their hardware and buy new that's fine, but they haven't needed to throw out their Play 5's.
If I was still using an Apple iPhone from 2009 you can bet it would be a terrible experience
[+] [-] ssl-3|1 year ago|reply
The remaining device has mechanical issues (as old speakers sometimes do). This one is disappointing, but at least it isn't irrational.
[+] [-] Closi|1 year ago|reply
As a Sonos purchaser, ironically product longevity was the reason I bought so much of their stuff!
While other similar systems would drop support for old devices eventually, I could be confident with Sonos that I was investing in stuff that would continue to work.
… until now! I’ve started to lose confidence. Which is a shame - I’m moving into a new house and wanting a sub, but now questioning if that’s a sensible decision given I don’t know how long my older speakers will work for now they are going glitchy. Real shame!
[+] [-] Mindwipe|1 year ago|reply
Catalina literally just dumped half the software that ever ran on MacOS overnight to make the transition to Apple Silicon seem smoother than it actually was.
[+] [-] YetAnotherNick|1 year ago|reply
For me, it is the removal of x86-32 bit software support. The removal wasn't needed at all and broke all the steam games.
[+] [-] drzaiusx11|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] matwood|1 year ago|reply
I like to reverse decisions further back. The connected speaker is basically a commodity at this point. Sonos does have some nice features, but they are very expensive. I think the ceo saw the down sales and lack of new products and rushed out the app hoping it would work and boost sales. Obviously it was a disaster, but I’m not sure if sticking to the status quo would have led to any different outcome in sales.
[+] [-] exadeci|1 year ago|reply
The app update they're talking about is the one that got released last year which is terrible, it keeps crashing, doesn't work with time zone and a bunch of other stuff
[+] [-] mandibles|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] philjohn|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] alkonaut|1 year ago|reply
What does this refer to? Did Sonos drop support for products? When was this, which products?
[+] [-] DidYaWipe|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] ClassyJacket|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] dguido|1 year ago|reply
The key technical change that broke Sonos was abandoning their reliable UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) system for device discovery in favor of mDNS, while also shifting from direct device communication to a cloud-based API approach. This new architecture made all network traffic encrypted and routed through Sonos cloud servers (even for local operations), adding significant overhead and latency, especially for older Sonos devices with limited processing power. They also switched from native platform-specific UX frameworks to a JavaScript-based interface while moving music service interactions through their cloud instead of direct SMAPI calls, resulting in slower performance and reduced functionality.
For a more extended discussion, see this excellent LinkedIn post from Andy Pennell, a principal engineer at Microsoft with a deep technical understanding of Sonos systems. He created one of the most successful third-party Sonos apps for Windows Phone and worked directly with Sonos on their official Windows Phone 8 app.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-happened-sonos-app-techn...
[+] [-] hbarka|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] notatoad|1 year ago|reply
because the problem with sonos is that they're actually really really good. dollar for dollar, it's some of the best sound quality you can find for home audio, and it doesn't require a month of product research to figure it out. it's easily available in most big-box stores, and unlike some other brands they don't have a shit-tier line of products that look indistinguishable from their good stuff so you have to be cautious as a consumer to buy only the good stuff. if you go to best buy and spend $500 on sonos products, you're going to get your moneys worth.
it's too bad their app sucks, because their hardware doesn't.
[+] [-] ryanianian|1 year ago|reply
The speakers expose a few SOAP-based APIs to any clients on the LAN. Those allow for track control, grouping, etc. They don't allow adding new music services, but they can do the vast majority of daily interaction. These APIs continue to work nearly flawlessly even for my Play:1 devices that are 10 years old.
Streaming via AirPlay is indeed hit-or-miss, but it hasn't gotten worse in the past couple years.
I control my Sonos from a jQuery-based web application I wrote nearly 10 years ago that runs on a raspberry pi in my closet. I have not had to change anything in several years, and I use my 15+device Sonos system all the time.
The new app is indeed a dumpster fire. Somehow the company managed to make their first-party application worse than any of the third-party applications.
[+] [-] tiltowait|1 year ago|reply
I've always been amazed at how different my experience apparently was to everyone else's, because I only ever see glowing praise (before the apparently disastrous new app rollout, which still sounds like a better experience than I had). I can only assume there were significant updates and improvements in the time since, because the company wouldn't have lasted a month if our experience was typical.
[+] [-] yurishimo|1 year ago|reply
Hoping the new one will have more foresight to not screw over existing customers in the face of the new shiny.
In other news, I hear Framework is looking to get into other hardware niches… if they ever made a networked speaker, I’d buy it.
[+] [-] sergiotapia|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jgrowl|1 year ago|reply
> Spence, in October, had acknowledged mistakes surrounding the app's release and said that he and seven other company leaders would forgo their bonuses.
People out of a job because of you and you're gonna forgo your bonuses.
> Spence, whose total compensation was $5.19 million in fiscal 2023, took a roughly $72,000 cash bonus.
[+] [-] x0x0|1 year ago|reply
Well, the board seems to have fired him too?
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Ringz|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] aaronbrethorst|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jamesy0ung|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] cheeze|1 year ago|reply
I looked at the Sonos ecosystem for this, but their non-speaker devices are absurdly priced. The network audio streamer is 449 and the amp is 699. WiiM amps are either 299 or 379 and their network streamer ranges from 149 to 329. I have a few of the network streamers which were 149. They connect into my receiver, into an old amp I have, etc. and work perfectly.
[+] [-] tomaskafka|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] frenchmajesty|1 year ago|reply
As CEO of a public company you get about 3 quarters down before you're out.
[+] [-] newprint|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] wmf|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Drew_|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] acchow|1 year ago|reply
Incredible vesting schedule
[+] [-] simlevesque|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] aljgz|1 year ago|reply
1- I don't like the sound processing. I mean, I understand that for most folks it's great, but they don't even come close to my Genelec setup. So I mostly use it to listen to podcasts, but for serious music/movies, I only use proper high fidelity sound setup
2- I don't like the all or nothing approach: if I don't like my current audio streaming setup, I can keep the speakers and the subwoofer, and just get new electronics. But with Sonos, I have to throw everything out.
A hardware company should not be able to brick products that can "in principle" work for a ling time.
[+] [-] richardlblair|1 year ago|reply
I ended up designing the system myself. Wired in speakers, down to the basement where all the receivers are. I'm really happy with the result, and grateful I didn't get bullied into a specific Vendor.
Not everyone has this luxury. Once the drywall is up, it's really hard to get a decent whole home system and Sonos was the way to do that. My Dad and my father-in-law are in deep with Sonos. I can feel their anger and frustration when we're over. They really did their customers dirty.
[+] [-] jmyeet|1 year ago|reply
I believe my (rather old) Sonos is now not supported and there's really no reason for that. It's such a Google move (eg earlier Nests aren't Matter-compatible for really no reason).
Even when I was using it, there were basic issues that plague most network-connected devices: they're usually really bad with dealing with transient network issues. Like if my Internet hiccups, I don't want the Internet radio station I'm playing to stop and have to be manually restarted.
Also, Sonos insists (or it did when I last looked into it) of creating it's own 2.4GHz mesh network. There was really no way of forcing it to use your existing network. You could kind of turn off the internal mesh network and force it to use Ethernet but not entirely.
As a user, I want to play my Spotify or Apple Music and have that synced across multiple speakers. That's the real value proposition of something like Sonos. It shouldn't be that hard. Particularly with music, you get fetch the whole song. There's really no reason for a network interruption at all.
I don't necessarily want to use a dedicated app either. I want to treat my Sonos as just another output choice on Spotify like headphones or a Bluetooth speaker.
Fault tolerance and ease of setup is what something like Sonos should be about. And that's hard because you have to deal with a long-tail of issues like packet loss, token expiry with third-party providers and so on.
I have no idea what Sonos have been doing isntead.
[+] [-] yalogin|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] eawgewag|1 year ago|reply
In the 10 years I've owned them, I've used the app less than 10 total times. I much rather prefer just using them as an over priced surround system and use my Playstation to play music through the TV/sonos.
[+] [-] cheeze|1 year ago|reply
For me, the major thing that matters is that I can see a device in spotifys device list and can play to that device. Similarly, it needs to be zero setup for anyone else on my wifi network (wife, kids, friends). WiiM covers that perfectly.
Granted, there is some work there if you don't already have speakers. I personally think Spotify is a great product. I just don't want my speakers running an operating system. I have speakers as old as 25 years that work perfectly with the WiiM. No point in adding additional tech in a speaker that works perfectly as-is. My biggest worry (which Spotify has been pretty good about) is that the speakers work over WiFi and at some point, will be sunsetted. Maybe not within the next few years, but I don't have much faith that a Sonos system will work well in 10-15 years.
[+] [-] fnordlord|1 year ago|reply
It was super cool when it all worked but if it took them this long to get rid of that CEO, then I don't seem them turning around at any point soon.
[+] [-] kennu|1 year ago|reply
I understand there's also issues with mDNS discovery and maybe other things, but the worst mistake seems to be the assumption that everybody has a stable Internet connection all the time.
There are other apps that have made a similar mistake. E.g. Ubiquiti's UniFi management app has problems connecting to the local LAN console if you originally signed in using a cloud account and Internet becomes unstable.
One app that handles this right is the Home Assistant Companion app. It detects when you're using a local WiFi SSID and connects directly to the internal LAN address which always works, and otherwise uses the cloud connection or public WAN address.
[+] [-] Always42|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] niek_pas|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] saaaaaam|1 year ago|reply
I wanted to start some music playing via Sonos in another room for my dogs earlier while I was on a call.
It took nearly two minutes for the app to update and be able to select my "calming cello music for dogs" playlist.
[+] [-] ellieh|1 year ago|reply