Every Sonos app sucks. It's just one of those facts of life.
this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2024
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Glad I dumped them for $100 HomePod minis. The extra layer of shit just isn’t worth the sound quality, especially since I’m usually listening with headphones.
Haven't they been trying to roll out their new app for like 4 years now?
Sonos speakers sound great but their app was/is/forever will be hot garbage.
You may want to reevaluate your views. For the price there always were much better sounding options. Their main selling point is supposed to be convenience, but with all the software glitches it does not seem like they have it anymore.
I personally don’t own one. I work a couple of shifts at a bar that does though, so I’m forced to interact with it. Personally I would never buy or recommend one.
But in my interaction with the speaker it sounds good, the app just never works. It’s clunky and not user friendly.
As someone in the market for a new sound system - looking for recommendations for something wireless w/ Dolby Atmos. Any suggestions?
I didn’t even know the app was updated before this post. I only start it when I add new devices, which is never.
Sonos. Recent app troubles aside (it’s really not that bad, just kind of clunky for certain tasks), the longevity alone make them so worth it. Despite being essentially computers/smart home devices, they support 10+ year old devices in their latest app, older devices in their S1 Controller app, and the sound quality & setup ease is amazing.
Plus, they have pretty good Black Friday sales and make it easy to build piece by piece if pricing is too high. You can also used replaced pieces to build a sound system in another room.
Over ~3 years I started with a Beam, then bought a Sub and two Play:1s as rears. Bought an Arc, moved the Beam to the bedroom. Just recently I bought 2 Arc 300s as rears/upward firing Atmos speakers, and moved the Play:1s to the bedroom. Resale value stays high so if you have no use for a piece, you can sell it and get 50%-75% of what you paid out of it easily.
There are cheaper devices with better sound quality out there, but nobody else can compete on the whole package with Sonos.
You might check out wiim stuff. They seem to be the darling of budget streaming for the moment.
Wait they made an even worse one?
Yep. It's impressive, tbh.
It's a company that was one of the first to get into "smart xyz" at all, scored big, and since then has shown that they have absolutely not a single clue how to do smart home appliances.
This is what happens when a digital rewrite is on the critical path of a physical product.
Physical product development is a behemoth. Manufacturing, certification, marketing, shipping, warehousing, contracts with retailers, etc. all add up to mean that, past a certain point in the project, the product is gonna launch whether the digital side is ready or not.
If the C-level/VP-level folks aren't willing to tailor the product roadmap to allow for a safe rewrite effort, you're pretty much guaranteed this outcome.
(Options are either keep the new product on the back burner until after the rewrite settles, or launch the product without IoT support at first. But you gotta plan for these up-front so you don't mess up your product's legal claims.)
I’m lucky that I only have Gen1 products. I kept getting hit with “well don’t you want new features?” And I’m thinking to myself “what features?” This does everything I want. Plays local music, integrates with streaming services, syncs between multiple devices throughout the house.
And it’s a good thing I can’t upgrade after seeing this whole mess.
Hey why don’t we lay off the production people then claim we made a bunch of profit?
Ridiculous pay package pleeze.
It’s easier for me to control my Sonos devices through Home Assistant and dashboards I’ve created, rather than using the Sonos app itself. It’s like they hired some McKinsey consultants to make the app as useless as it can be.
I hate it, and I play music on my tiny Home Mini more often, just to avoid the app.
They literally wasted all the effort trying to do patent trolling for years, and now their own lineup sucks sick. Who would have expected that
That's the worst part, back when they were new, at least Sonos had a cool USP. Nowadays others do remote access and smart speakers too, and Sonos is still overpriced, still mediocre hardware, and now doesn't even have a nicely integrated all-in-one-app any more.
Kind of just the reality of corporate America. Live long enough until you become a villain
Audio is one of the easiest if not THE easiest to do wirelessly. Why ANYONE would use this proprietary bullshit is beyond me. I'm looking at my girlfriends Sonos that we never use anymore once I put a shitty sound-bar on the theater TV which sounds better, and we can chromecast anything we want to it or just flip to the HTPC and use it like a computer.
Eat billionaires. Fuck corporations. Open. Source. Everything!
Amen
Isn't Chromecast proprietary though?
So.... Yes?
Sonos’s protocol is also same; if people want to develop on their platform using the protocol it is documented and there are open source solutions:
Looks like Google cast is the protocol and it's proprietary, while they offer a SDK, it does not appear to be open source. There is an open source alternative though. https://github.com/MayaPosch/NymphCast/
I was starting to think there was something wrong with my setup. Glad it wasn’t just me! Hopefully they’ll fix it. Better they be upfront and admit the mistake.
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