Oh Sonos! App update borks users' favorite features and worse Sonos has alienated chunks of its customer base after releasing a revamped app for its music boxes that strips users of often-used features, including making it nearly "impossible" for the vision impaired. The redesigned app landed on May 7 sporting a new home screen, and was intended to give easier access to improved product …
Hmm
It does strike me that this may not have been ‘well thought out’ before hitting the big red ‘DEPLOY’ button!
Honestly though, reading the responses that SONOS put out, the sheer level of Marketing Speak and corporate BS, is really quite astonishing. ""The refreshed UI design is rooted in the needs that we've been hearing from our listeners for years.” So it’s your fault Mr and Mrs Customer, this is exactly what you asked for, no?
"There are many advantages to using the cloud, but I'll highlight one....” So probably not too many or they would have mentioned more than one, but I suspect that the main advantage (well advantage to SONOS anyway), is that they get to collect far more data on listening habits and usages - not that they would in any way sell said information for extra profit, no sir!
Well done, what was once the ‘go-to’ platform for distributed home audio, manages to alienate the very people they need to remain viable!
Well done, what was once the ‘go-to’ platform for distributed home audio, manages to alienate the very people they need to remain viable!
Makes me quite pleased about the slow rate of progress and lack of interest in Logitech Media Server. Mine continues to distribute music around my house quite nicely.
Mind you I have to gloat quietly - I'm still expecting Logitech to turn off the Harmony servers. I think my remote will continue to work without the servers but what's the betting it'll be just before I have to replace some of my kit and thus have no way to reprogram the remotes.
Oh well.
Edit: Oh. It's been renamed again. Lyrion Music Server now.
Whilst LMS and PiCorePlayer can be controlled via a web browser for those on iOS, iPeng IMHO is money (one off about £10) well spent. A mature application for controlling LMS (and multiple PiCorePlayers) with a very responsive and helpful developer. Its upgraded when necessary to support evolving versions of iOS, otherwise the app is left alone (already has superb functionality - if its not broke, don't fix it!)
See here
https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/ipeng/id767266886
Support forum here
https://forums.slimdevices.com/forum/user-forums/3rd-party-software/51576-ipeng-support-thread
whenever i see an Apple Airport Express discarded in someone's computer junk cupboard I grab it. If you have old-school analog amps the Airport Express is a great way to get the amp onto the LAN. The wifi in them was average so I always run them with the wifi turned off in bridge mode on ethernet
This is why all media is streamed around my home using 'Emby' I actually used to be involved with the project back from 2008 when it was called Video Browser and a plugin for Vista media Centre...
So I have a lifetime sub to premium... Granted I do need a significant amount of storage, and it's why my server still has a BDRom and some old software that's no longer available (was sued out of existence) to rip my media from my physical copies (because I don't buy digital products aside from the odd PC game now and again)
I can even access my server when away from home if needed... But I don't as I refuse to use wifi in places I don't trust and only have 20GB of data a month... Instead, I take my nvidia shield box with me on trips and stuff a 1TB external SSD with a load of my own media to consume. My phone has about 150GB of music stored on it....
Whilst they could render my Emby premium inoperative... it doesn't stop the software itself from working and I can always simply switch to kodi and point that at my networked drives. I've got 2 shield TV boxes in the house
"Well done, what was once the ‘go-to’ platform for distributed home audio, manages to alienate the very people they need to remain viable!"
For a second time !!!!!
The whole S1 debacle sickened me. My initial response on social media to this was... "This enforced upgrade effectively breaks any lock in with my S1 kit."
And after an HDMI software bug in Apple TV triggered a replacement of my Receiver, I discovered a new platform that sounds similar, HEOS. The same ms timing of old Sonos but in a brand that understands that they are answerable to the market.
"So it’s your fault Mr and Mrs Customer, this is exactly what you asked for, no?"
No. eBay does this all of the time. Way back, I could scan down my "sold" page and easily see whether an item has been paid, shipped, feedback given/received, etc. Now it's a lot of clicking to find all of that. I work on dual 24" monitors and have to wonder how the newest graphically intense UI plays out on a mobile device. Even on my laptop I have to do much more scrolling.
Change for change's sake is a poor excuse. On numerous programs, I've had to learn where everything is and the keyboard shortcuts over time and when all of that changes, I am left with a big efficiency loss and no improvement once I've relearned the interface over what it was before. I'd much rather there were tweaks under the hood that sped things up, made better use of memory and any added features were slotted in a logical place in the menus rather than an entire redo of all of it.
Sounds like another day for Sonos, I love the hardware I have, but the software is a bag of dicks and has only gotten worse.
The most egregious part is how the older speakers upstairs keep losing the wifi (a mesh repeater is in the same room some two meters away) and they are an absolute paint to get back on, switch off, on, try, nothing, off, on, try, nothing, off, on, try, maybe, oops, no, off, on, try....
Me thinks time to investigate the Picoreplayer ecosystem (hardware using a Raspberry Pi with potentially amplifier HAT add on) which is based upon the former Squeezebox/Logitech Media Server - now renamed Lyrion. Although Logitech no longer support LMS it has an active developer base expanding its functionality.
Michael Herger (a Logitech employee still supports it and there are a mini army of reactive developers supporting a multitude of plugins enhancing its functionality) eg Tidal, BBC Sounds, I have found them streets ahead in responding in a timely manner to external changes that break functionality (e.g. when the BBC changed their streaming model and broke a lot of commercial digital radios, LMS had a working solution up in hours, whereas it was months before others caught up - some never did and left punters with junked sysyems.
I’ve been using the ecosystem to stream synchronised music around my home for years (this includes locally ripped music, as well as internet streamed from a wide variety of sources). Its most compelling points are its open source, hardware can be easily replaced and superb software support. IMHO Its open source software at its best.
Links
Software site https://www.picoreplayer.org/
Hardware https://thepihut.com/collections/raspberry-pi-audio-hats
Support forum https://forums.slimdevices.com/forum/user-forums?20-User-Forums=
I have a lot of Sonos kit that I bought early on — hell, I even managed to buy their own remote control before it was discontinued in favour of apps. I'm happy to say that everything still works (except the long-dead remote, which stopped accepting touch input). This is no thanks to Sonos, which keeps pulling stunts like this: I had their servers blocked at the router for a long time, fearful that they'd follow through on threats to brick stuff they considered too old. And I used iMazing to make sure I had a copy of a known-good version of the app in case I updated an iDevice by mistake. Sonos' continued behavior does not tempt me to update to current hardware. Maybe it's time to install those blocks again.
Just add the words 'yet again' in that first sentence... and it'll be a lot more accurate.
Their repeated 'fuck the customers' screw ups has convinced me to never buy a single item of theirs... When I was looking for some new speakers for my cinema setup... avoided them, when I wanted some speakers for my listening nook... I avoided them. When I was looking for a little bluetooth speaker for the kitchen... I actually bought a little £60 one from Curry's of all places (yes they tried to sell me a warranty and did wonder I was still laughing at the till).
When a company convinces me that it's better to buy a product from Currys than them... You know they've royally fucked up.... Yet Again. :)
You can add the "yet again" in several places in that first sentence...
We got a small bluetooth "speaker", size of a hockey puck (I guess, I'm not Canadian, so I don't know these things[1]), which is adequately loud and has adequate sound quality - when cooking there's so much noise around me (extractor, boiling pots, sizzling pans, me shouting at the kids to get that onion chopped and stop bickering because I actually would need it right now), so "adequate" (and simple) is, well, adequate. It goes plenty loud enough for the kids to enjoy it, singing Fear of the Dark top of their voices...
[1] and I managed to piss off the Finns with that comment as well, I guess ;-p
My wife was convinced that somehow either my daughter had changed something on our network or that I had somehow relegated her to using only the Sonos device in our laundry room because after the automatic update of the app on her iPhone she couldn't figure out the sequence of swipes and clicks on new meaningless icons to display all of the devices on our network. We've also been using Sonos since the beginning with the physical remotes. I still enjoy the audio quality and the hardware but I'd like them to show their work on usability studies that show that what their users actually do has ever gotten easier. The problem with getting used to something counter-intuitive is that when it's arbitrarily changed to a different something counter-intuitive it's doubly painful.
My 30 year old amp is still working just fine thanks.
Granted I had to add a no frills Bluetooth dongle to the aux input about 10 years, but that's still working great as well.
Upstairs I have a cheap ass Douk Audio / Nobsound amp in the bedroom and guess what....several years later, still going strong.
Running even older amp setup! (so old the turntable input is switchable between moving magnet & moving coil which was common on mid range* (not just on high end kit like today) back in the day as I use MC cartridge)
It gives me music in up to 2 rooms (2 lots of speaker outputs, wired to 2 rooms). Works for me, but I still actually buy physical media** , and WFH a good excuse to get away from desk & stretch my legs when I need to change CD / album (or album side).
Plus plenty of stuff ripped to MP3, periodically update SD card in my phone with a changed selection as can listen to that on headphones (in rooms not linked to main system) or broadcast to a bluetooth speaker (we have a couple of those for rare dry & warm UK days if we want non headphone music in the garden). So never had need for Sonos or similar system, but can see teh attraction if you mainly stream music from the net..
* though always arguments as mid vs high end boundary
** Which is good as I have control over the music - I do have a freebie Spotify account but it does not let me choose which version of albums that had been remastered (seemed to only give me option of recent remaster, rather than originals / earlier remasters)
I’m used to regular Sonos updates, often followed by a firmware update for my Sonos Move.
I’ve been so impressed with this speaker that I was considering the new v2, and would’ve bought one already if it would've worked as a stereo pair with the original.
Anyway, I don’t subscribe to a music streaming service. I have a Debian file server loaded with my Flacs. These stream via smb at home, I use an app to stream while I’m out, and it also feeds the local library of my Sonos move.
Post update, no options to manage library, or update it!
Add new music? Can’t get the Sonos to scan my shared music folders.
I went so far as to call support. I couldn’t believe it.
The girl I spoke to put me on hold to speak to someone else, and came back that no, it can’t be done from the app, and do I have a computer? I need to use the windows or Mac OS version of the app in order to add new music to my Sonos local library!
I mentioned that I was stunned that the app would be put out with such basic functionality missing.
Shame, as the speaker is really nice sounding, weather (and bathroom) proof, and the battery lasts and lasts (and has a usb c port for a power bank for extended long sessions, that I’ve never actually needed) but like many modern items of hardware, we’re at the mercy of ever updating apps and online servers, even for local stuff. Hopefully they’ll fix it, soon.
I also have two blind mates who use Sonos products. I haven’t heard from them since the update. Maybe I’ll call.
From what they said, it was completely the opposite of agile. They admit that they committed the number one cardinal sin of software development, which is to throw what you have away and start from scratch.
You can *always* make incremental changes to get from where you are now, to where you want to be. Admittedly it may seem like starting from scratch is easier, but it's a false economy. What people don't realise is that the current implementation is also the only definitive documentation of the system behaviour, and the features that people are using.
Another company that made this mistake was Mikrotik, when going from RouterOS v6 to v7. They decided to do a rewrite from scratch. Three years later, v7 is still a buggy pile of sh1te. Certainly they needed to do some major things (e.g. upgrading the Linux kernel to a modern one; upgrading the BGP implementation to use multiple cores); but those could have been done one at a time, fixing the issues in each piece as required. Sadly, newer Mikrotik routers only run v7, just as newer Sonos hardware only runs S2.
If the code is "too complex", then refactor it (preserving functionality). If it's weighed down by legacy features, then decide one by one which features to remove, and pull them out. At each stage, maintain a viable working product. Admittedly, all that is pretty much impossible if you haven't inherited an automated test suite - so if necessary, start by building that.
You can do a new version from scratch ... but keep your old one & let people choose which to use, DO NOT force the new version on customers (especially in early days when it will be buggy no matter what tests you have done, it will not have covered every nuance of every real world install / config of old version) .
Eventually, when new version at least as good as old one, not missing any functionality / usability, you can then think about expected lifetime of old version.
.. Worked with some software ages ago, 6 different versions of API at that point, customers could use version they liked, no pressure to instantly switch to newest version
A new version would have either 1. new methods available or 2. potentially breaking changes to old method signatures or expected data in headers / body (usually the former, rare cases of the latter, typically involving extra or additional or different authentication data / method being included )
A customer of mine wanted a Sonos Port to stream music throughout their house. I've set up hundreds of Sonos devices. No big deal.
I purchased the unit on May 2nd, received it May 5th, and went to install... May 8th, right after this update came out.
Huge disaster.
After this new app update, the Sonos Port will not add. I get different error messages on iOS and Android. I have extensive knowledge of how Sonos operates on networks and troubleshot extensively to rule out any network-related issues. Attempting support after this, I navigated at least two different AI chat robots and a couple broken forms. I was added to the real human chat queue, waiting over an hour for a human. The chat went fairly quickly, where they told me I _must_ call in order to solve this problem. This could not be resolved via chat.
I came back another day, even bringing a basic known-working-with-Sonos home router to isolate the Sonos to its own network, and called. 90 minutes later, I troubleshot with the person on the other end. At the end of troubleshooting, where of course my gear was ruled at as being the problem, the call dropped. Called again... 120 minutes of hold. Next human spent 40 minutes reviewing the last call details. Said I would need to speak with a level 2 tech, but none are available. They would e-mail me to arrange a call. Why couldn't online chat send this e-mail?
A few days later, I get the e-mail with a link to a calendar. Clicking this link... takes me to a calendar with no availability. No day for the following year is available. Tried refreshing over the next few days and there was never any availability. The email conveniently stated I could reply... so I did, telling them that this new app has impacted my customers and myself, that this rollout has broken adding new devices and setting up new systems, and that the level 2 support had no availability.
I got a reply back yesterday, telling me "should you require urgent assistance, please do not hesitate to give us a call. When contacting us, kindly provide your case number, and if an L2 agent is available, your call will be transferred accordingly." Right. Doubt it. Called, 2 hours of wait time later, and another short hold, I was told there no L2 availability, but they could email me to schedule...
I've spent over 8 hours in total on the phone. I've waited 2 weeks. I understand the issue is likely related to older firmware on this device and a compatibility issue with the new app. One solution might be to "downgrade" to S1, then go back to S2, but they removed this option in the new app. One solution might be to be able to apply a firmware update without adding the device to the system, but Sonos never offered this. One solution would be to offer the app and infrastructure that worked, but Sonos never operates this way. This was an avoidable problem. There was no issue with adding new devices new app being pushed.
You wanted my experience with this? Here it is.
Will never buy expensive hardware that relies on server side, the idea of that the manufacturer can just switch them off at will when they have no interest in them anymore and try and force you to buy their next overpriced, incomplete, bug ridden shiny ithing. I run my own streaming/content servers for legal format shifted audio and video that anybody friends or family can access anywhere so long as they have a connection and the hardware can access a network share, either on my local or cloud servers.
You can't even edit/clear playlists...
Before the update you could edit playlists, set tracks to play next or add to end of queue.
Now all you can do is replace a queue with your selected track!! How this got out of Beta I'll never know
If I had just bought Sonos gear and had to use this app I'd be getting a refund on the speakers and switching to another brand ASAP.
If you are on iOS you can't roll back, but more recent devices are accessible via AirPlay 2 for example ( doesn't help with older S1 devices though)
WTF Sonos - at least make the old app available still - none of this was mentioned in the Release notes......
"There are many advantages to using the cloud," The main reason is probably so Sonos can spy on its users.
Once more a software outfit thought it knew what was best for its users rather than checking to see what the users wanted and NEEDED. The fact they admit some features didn't work shows Sonos, like just about every other major software house (eg., mictosoft) has no quality control or internal testing.
It's now clear that Sonos rushed this update out to cater for their new headphones - Sonos Ace. I've just had an email inviting me to preorder for £449. Er. . . no, I don't think so. They've steadfastly refused to roll back to the previous working S2 App and are saying they'll reinstate the missing features in the "weeks and months to come". Meanwhile, we mere customers who've spent £££ on a premium product are left with a toy version of the controller software with no queue management and no search facility for our local music library.
What Sonos seem to have overlooked is that, while the old app was a bit clunky, it worked pretty well and we don't all have time to dick about with a new UI only to find that some very basic functionality isn't even there!
They'd have been better off leaving everything as it was and launching their headphones with a beta app (which is what the new app feels like anyway)
Speaking as a long time Sonos user I don't understand how this ever got out of internal testing, much less into a general release. No ability to edit or manipulate the queue, volume control across multiple rooms doesn't work, no ability to search by composer, no access to TuneIn without creating yet another account, plus the previously mentioned lack of access to alarms and local libraries. This is just one in a long list of reasons why, even though my apartment is filled with Sonos speakers, I've always hesitated to recommend them to anyone else. Fortunately I still have an iPod Touch that hasn't updated, but the iPad that I bought specifically to use as a controller is now useless for that purpose. I'm looking into getting the Windows controller to run under Wine on Linux, or maybe buying an Android tablet so I can side load the controller.
Sonos has always viewed its older customers as a liability -- they produce no revenue but still need support -- but I don't think throwing them under a bus is the answer.
I have over 64 GB of audio on my laptop and continue to digitize my old vinyl. The update blocked access to all these tracks. Sonos suggests uploading it all to a cloud service and streaming when i want access. Will they pay the storage and streaming charges? No.
If i can't access the library from every device, i don't care. I want to be able to listen to it at home, as i have done for a decade.
Sonos needs to reenable home libraries.
"The update blocked access to all these tracks. "
I'm going to assume that it was very convenient to use the Sonos system to do all of that. Convenience is the bait to get you to bite the hook and once you have, a quick jerk on the line and that's it, thanks for playing.
Over the years, Apple has enshittified iTunes so I've had to find ways to manage my media. With the discontinuation of the iPod, I'm expecting that anything they do going forward is only going to support the iPhone, iPad and other iOS devices sans the iPod. iTunes has always felt like a work in progress. The interface isn't intuitive and breaks the long established conventions Apple used to studiously adhere to so users could be up and running right from the gun.
I've learned to make sure that I'm not boxing myself into a proprietary corner. A little convenience today might mean hours and hours of re-indexing a large media library and I have some whoppers (music, other audio, movies, images, video, etc). A certain amount of investment has to be made, but at the same time, an escape plan has to be put in place in case it turns out that a piece of software is made incompatible with an OS upgrade and the author/publisher decides they won't be updating the program going forward and one is left thinking "what do I do now".
For some things, I have a couple of "way back" machines running older OS versions and software. Why not? I've got a stack of older computers given to me for free. The funny thing is one of them was owned by the actor that played Ferris Bueller's dad, Lyman Ward. I have framed 8x10 promo photo of Mr Ward from an estate sale to go with the box. I will say that I wiped the drives since there were files still left on the drives. Those drives are now backing up some of my data. Getting a computer for free with a couple of drives is a great way to make duplicate backups. It's also a good way to have a machine that can be dedicated to running an irreplaceable bit of software or as a bridge to upgrade file formats when the newest version of software will no longer read a version from many years ago.
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