Sonos CEO steps down after app update debacle

https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/sonos-ceo-patrick-spence-steps-down-after-app-update-debacle-2025-01-13/

by saaaaaam • 2 years ago

441 551 2 years ago

reuters.com

saaaaaam4• 2 years ago

No surprises here. Sonos has become pretty much unusable since the app "upgrade".

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.

billforsternz2• 2 years ago

Do your dogs have favourite composers and/or cello soloists?

saaaaaam4• 2 years ago

Vivaldi and Bach mainly. Elgar’s Cello Concerto in C Minor seems to be a favourite right now. They like Delius in the right mood, but unfortunately I do not.

Their favourite is Jaap Ter Linden’s recording of Bach’s Cello Suites, I think because it’s a little richer sounding than Yo-Yo Ma.

I read somewhere that dogs love cello music because it has the same tones as the human voice, and it certainly seems to calm them more than any other music.

ellieh• 2 years ago

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.

itslennysfault• 2 years ago

Did you stop using it? For me it seems like a huge improvement now.

I was really excited for the app update because the old app was really unstable. Then the update happened and it was like 10x worse than the old app. Then in the past few months it's gotten really solid (for me anyway) and I'm pretty happy with it.

gnabgib• 2 years ago

Discussion (71 points, 6 hours ago, 118 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42683753

alienallys• 2 years ago

Why does a single commodity product company have a stock when that says said commodity is not even the top spot in the category?

causality0• 2 years ago

It's strange. Tech journalism also has a bizarre fixation on them. There are tons of smart speaker companies out there but every time Sonos releases a product or really does anything they get tons of articles written about them.

unstatusthequo• 2 years ago

I’m happily enjoying my move to Denon and HEOS. It was that bad that bad that I liquidated all my Sonos gear.

jgrowl• 2 years ago

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.

x0x02• 2 years ago

People out of a job because of you and you're gonna forgo your bonuses.

Well, the board seems to have fired him too?

soperj• 2 years ago

are you really fired when you get nearly $2 million in severance?

GeertJohan2• 2 years ago

I recently switched my system to the S2 app and protocol. I was still on the old S1 app for the past years which worked fine, but I wanted to add new Sonos devices that only supported the S2-protocol/app.

I had checked the compatibility lists and found that one of my older sonos devices wouldnt be supported. But I accepted that as I really wanted to get a new Sonos Sub 4 (S2-only) to connect with my existing Sonos Playbar (which supports updating to S2).

The upgrade process was bad, had to restart and reset devices a couple of times.. but after a while I got all my existing Sonos devices onto S2.

When I added the Sub to the system, the app told me that I couldnt pair it with the playbar. The app adviced me to get one of the newer Sonos soundbars..

I'm very disappointed that they did this.. I fully understand that some devices dont work with a new protocol, but after consulting the compatibility list I expected my Sonos Playbar would be able to pair with all other S2 devices.. what is even weirder is that it is possible to link the playbar with the older Subwoofer devices on the S2 network, so why couldnt a newer device be able to do the same thing..

I returned the Sub and will be ditching Sonos (and probably any other system where you "buy into" the system only to be left with uncompatible gear after a while..

GeertJohan2• 2 years ago

I think from now on I will separate the "smart" from the "hifi" so I can combine and upgrade as I please.. will probably give Dante a try for networked audio, they have a good track record with quality and compatibility. Its quite prosumer though. Perhaps not as user-friendly as Sonos (was).

frenchmajesty2• 2 years ago

Interesting but I don't think the app is the only reason. The main reason is really the strong declining sales since last year.

As CEO of a public company you get about 3 quarters down before you're out.

threeseed• 2 years ago

But surely the main reason for declining sales is the app.

And not just the app itself but the fact that despite mounting criticism from the community they didn't immediately revert it. Thus demonstrating that they don't really care about their own, up until that point, very loyal customers.

massysett• 2 years ago

Even as a Sonos owner and former fan who detests the app, I doubt the app is the reason for declining sales. Competition is.

Sonos has been around for many years now. When it launched, smartphones weren’t dominant. To control a Sonos you had to buy a controller specifically for it. It had its own wireless networking because WiFi wasn’t dominant. To use it with WiFi you needed to buy a separate bridge.

Online music services weren’t a thing like they are now. Music collections were on your local hard drive.

Back then the main competition for Sonos was paying a pro to hard-wire a speaker system into your house. I saw one of these about five years ago. Built into the wall in the kitchen was a cassette tape deck.

All that has changed. Now there are wireless speakers from JBL, Apple, Amazon, Bose, Google, and at least a dozen others. There’s Bluetooth. There’s AirPlay.

The Sonos app was ok for its time, but it’s an outdated model now. But at least the app used to be good at controlling Sonos. Now it’s not even great for that.

Without that outdated app model, there’s no reason to buy Sonos. Just pick from…anybody else. Many are cheaper and sound just as good. They don’t rely on an app, which is good-just use Airplay or Bluetooth.

As bad as the app is, it’s not a trigger of the decline of Sonos. Is just a symptom of it. The company has no future. Thus its release of headphones that don’t even integrate well with the Sonos system. These are just as pointless as its speakers.

I doubt Sonos is around in a few years’ time.

gffrd2• 2 years ago

It's hard for me to believe this is the main reason, but I'd love to be shown otherwise.

My instinct is to think it's fuel on a fire that was already burning - declining sales across the market, smart speakers taking a big slice out of Sonos' pie, and missing the boat on new markets (headphones) … and then a bad app release being the straw that broke the camel's back.

Larrikin• 2 years ago

I actively tell friends and family to not try to imitate my home setup after this app garbage, where as I know specifically of a few friends who got into SONOS based directly on my recommendation and my demonstrations of the system.

richardlblair2• 2 years ago

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.

skrebbel• 2 years ago

I'm mostly impressed that your builder has an "audio person", must be a pretty fancy outfit!

richardlblair2• 2 years ago

Our home is pretty typical, with a few touches for my partner and I. It was definitely a more modest project for this particular builder, who typically builds homes 3x the size of ours.

flyinglizard• 2 years ago

I bought a Sonos Move 2 and it's a good speaker for what it is, but the connectivity is abysmal. AirPlay only works after I open the Sonos app, and sometimes wouldn't start at all until I put my phone into airplane mode and back on. I thought I was buying into something sure, but it's really disappointing.

Meanwhile, although twice the price, the Naim Mu-So Qb 2 I also bought recently is simply a marvel. Highly recommended.

simlevesque• 2 years ago

Sonos is dead. You can get a better sounding and cheaper multi-room setup with WiiM devices.

kjkjadksj2• 2 years ago

Or just buy an old marantz or something similar and an old airport express and be done with it for life.

Ringz2• 2 years ago

Sold my great Onkyo and try to exactly revert it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42689139

WXLCKNO• 2 years ago

I've been wondering for a while what the alternatives are.

I've got a Denon amp which has Heos, had random Alexa/Google Home devices previously, random amps with just Bluetooth or line in whatever. Thought there must be a way to sync these things, think previously there was the Google Chrome audio?

The WiiM devices seem nice but is that the price of entry to sync various unrelated audio ecosystems then?

Edit: had only seen the price of the highest end ultra device, this is actually very reasonable..

notatoad6• 2 years ago

Yeah, the wiim mini is very reasonable.

The other option for multi-room sync is AirPlay, on any device where that is possible (including wiim), so it’s pretty easy to solve multi-room audio these days.

Chromecast Audio lost the ability to do multi-room sync in a patent dispute with sonos

omnimus9• 2 years ago

WiiM is great i have 2 minis and 1 pro plus (good DAC for main speakers).

It somehow just works? Unreal. updates are bugfixes and new features… Most unreal thing. Their phone app didnt require me to create account? When was last time i saw that?! It just found speakers, setup network and Bye, enjoy.

fletchowns• 2 years ago

I've been wondering for a while what the alternatives are.

Raspberry Pi + Snapcast + Any speaker with an AUX input

I've got a few Pi's hooked up around the house now to extra speakers, home stereo, and even a .NET snapcast client running on my desktop PC.

That setup plus Music Assistant has been awesome so far. No proprietary hardware or closed source software :)

crooked-v• 2 years ago

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.

kjkjadksj2• 2 years ago

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.

What a cash cow of an industry.

kd913• 2 years ago

I think there can be a difference here.

Was looking recently at the power requirements of an amp + subwoofer + 5 5.1 JBL surround speakers.

The setup was done decade ago, and the power needed for it was nuts. Something like 500W for a Denon amp and 250W for a JBL subwoofer?

For reference something like a OG HomePod consumes what 45W? The Sony srs xg500 boombox can last 30hours and is a giant room shaking boombox.

The difference in power efficiency between these old and new setups are nuts. Nevermind compatibility with AirPlay, streaming etc…

gazchop• 2 years ago

Nailed it. You don’t even have to buy new stuff now.

Still rocking my early 90s system. Has required a couple of amp repairs (capacitors and sticky relay) but no big issue. Bought a Bluetooth DAC for streaming stuff. Job done.

worik• 2 years ago

Well that is basically the model of the home stereo today.

The entire digital ecosystem seems to be heading this way. Even cars

stetrain• 2 years ago

Well one of those options lets me click a button on the phone in my pocket and play music across multiple rooms without running any wires between rooms. And similarly supports surround-sound audio without running wires around or inside walls.

I appreciate the value in a basic stereo system but there are some major differences in functionality to the end user.

dfltr• 2 years ago

It feels like one of those low-sci-fi settings where we thought it'd be funny and quaint to have post-collapse scavengers endlessly repairing retro tech, but now it's actually happening and it's not funny anymore.

Like for example: My dad bought a hulking integrated Akai amp / cassette / turntable combo in the early 80s. Every user-facing component was brushed aluminum, the volume pot was the size of a Dallas church, and it probably would have killed any living organism you dropped it on.

My dad died over a decade ago and I guarantee that amp is still sitting in someone's living room heating the place up. I'm just mad it's not in mine.

mitjam3• 2 years ago

Still enjoy my Elac speakers from 20+ years ago at an analog amp, a class D amp wouldn‘t be bad, though. For smaller speakers at computers I like active nearfield monitors and a good interface like Focusrite. Can recommend Genelec speakers, for example.

rurp• 2 years ago

Yep, and this kind of needlessly wasteful consumerism is everywhere in the tech industry. All of the token statements about sustainability that come from the same industry that normalized and celebrates this kind of product strategy drives me a little crazy sometimes.

PaulDavisThe1st• 2 years ago

A couple hundred up front for never having to make another home audio equipment purchase in your life is some serious savings.

I have a rather nice NAD amplifier that I bought about 29 years ago. It had to be repaired once at about the 6 year mark. Recently, it has developed a new electronic failure mode that I don't believe can be repaired.

So ... yes, but let's not overdo the "never have to make another home audio purchase" part ...

jnwatson• 2 years ago

I've been dabbling in Hifi for most of my life, a hobby inherited from my father. I have some awareness of consumer Hifi over the last 50 years.

Speaker and amplifier design are vastly better than even 15 years ago, partially because of better engineering and mostly because of advances in electronics. An entry level receiver today would wipe the floor with consumer level equipment from the 80s.

Still, traditional Hifi is dying to the "crap tiny speaker" folks. The company that owns Denon and Marantz may go out business this year.

It is ironic because traditional Hifi is in an amazing place in terms of value. I recently bought a budget (<$300) setup for my PC and I'm blown away by what a couple of modest bookshelf speakers, a modern mini-amp and a compact subwoofer can accomplish.

DidYaWipe11• 2 years ago

Except the industry is nearly dead. Almost nobody is buying legitimate stereo systems anymore, and the ones that are out there (at almost any price) are mind-bogglingly incompetent. I'm shocked that Sonos is even a going concern at this point, although I suppose it is because of what I relate below.

The home-audio market is consolidated into a tiny number of manufacturers masquerading under once-proud brands they bought. The crippling incompetence of the products themselves is depressing.

A few years ago my Denon A/V receiver crapped out and I decided to go "upmarket" and get an NAD T758. I accept a bit of quirkiness from a smaller name, but "quirkiness" doesn't come close to describing the design and functionality defects that plagued this thing. Everything from baffling menu navigation (not kidding: Pressing Enter did not select a menu entry; you were supposed to use an arrow key) to the fact that it would only pass 720p video because it reported erroneous EDID info to HDMI devices. It didn't pass the info from the connected display device; it just provided its own EDID blob to everything, which reported a max resolution of 720p.

The NAD also featured Dirac processing, which I shelled out for to get the full license and spent hours with a test mic profiling my room and speakers. Then... it would just lose the entire configuration. Deleted off the receiver. "We haven't been able to figure out why this happens," said NAD. In fact, in several years they never fixed a single one of the crippling defects I encountered and reported.

But NAD isn't the only shitshow in town. Let me address the biggest impediment to whole-home audio (or even multi-zone audio): manufacturers' bizarre conceit that anyone can use secondary zones that only play ANALOG sources. The NAD was crippled by this stupidity, as is the top-of-the-line Pioneer I bought to replace it.

In the case of the NAD, I addressed this defect by running RCA cables across the back of the receiver, from its preamp outputs to a CD-player input; and assigning that input to Zone 2. Why the hell didn't NAD just do that internally with a switch?

On the Pioneer, it's actually worse. There ARE no preamp outputs. It has THREE zones, one of which I can tie to the main one but the third, yep, can only play analog sources.

All I want to do is play the same shit on ALL MY SPEAKERS. My living-room ones, my patio ones, and my backyard ones. All I need is A, B, and C speaker switches. But NOPE. As far as I can tell, nobody makes this. Nobody addresses the 99% use case for multiple "zones." There are at least NINE AMPS in my receiver, but I can't play the same source on three pairs of speakers.

BTW, I did build a patch bay with switches, to wire the secondary zone in parallel with the first... but this overloaded one pair of amps in the NAD and destroyed the entire receiver. Yep: NAD doesn't have a simple overload breaker. They just burn the entire amplifier board up; that's the breaker. Unfuckingbelievable.

But back to the main issue: Who is seriously going to dick around trying to select sources and adjust volume to each zone (with what, by the way, an app?) on one receiver instead of simply buying a bookshelf system for every remote room you want to play music in? I sure as shit wouldn't, and I'm the kind of person who ran digital cables under my house to an equipment closet so I could have a proper surround setup in my living room. I have a projector and home-built screen, but even I would never bother with the stupid usage scenario Pioneer, NAD, and the two other makers envision:

This scenario revolves around nonexistent people who are going to put on a RECORD or TAPE, then go to the other side of their house or down to their rec room for half an hour... and then come running back to the other side of the house to flip the record or tape over. WTF.

theshrike793• 2 years ago

I had a fancy separate stereo system with a HDMI switcher in the AV amp, well reviewed speakers I bought from a hi-fi enthusiast friend and all that.

It was a massive pain to put out all the cables, adjust the system manually little by little (the setup mic kinda helped, but wasn't that good).

Then I got a Sonos Beam and that set of "crap tiny speakers" with a fancy DSP brought so much more dimension to movies that it wasn't even funny. Upgraded to a Sub and it automatically offloaded those frequencies to it and the Beam got even better now that it didn't have to cosplay a subwoofer.

For setup all I had to do was walk around the space and wave my phone around and the difference was clearly audible even to my non-discerning ears.

Later I upgraded to an Arc + got two rears and everything got a lot better.

The v2 app is utter crap, I haven't had to use it for anything else than Trueplay adjustment when we moved a while ago. The v1 let me debug what the soundbar was receiving (my TV was sending data in the wrong format and I was just getting fancy stereo instead of Dolby Atmos). V2 doesn't have any power user features at all.

I'm not going back to a wired setup with a separate amp unless I get a dedicated theater room I can sound proof and manage the acoustics. I _am_ considering switching to a brand that doesn't need an app to setup, but it's slim pickings in the upper tier of soundbars.

_2d30• 2 years ago

People don’t realize sound was solved decades ago.

This really isn't true at all. HiFi has an obscene amount of snake-oil and non-rigorous design decision making.

Audio Science Review (https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php) has documented this very clearly and well.

whatevaa• 2 years ago

Sound might be solved, but multi-room audio is not. On major renovations you could layout speaker cables, but then you can't adjust positions.

Custom solutions with, like, snapcast and raspberries (like mine), works and you don't need to deal with any of this, but then you need to deal with software setup annoyances. It get's technical.

marcosdumay2• 2 years ago

People don’t realize sound was solved decades ago.

Not wireless transmission, and not uniform spatial distribution.

AFAIK, Sonos was about those two. They didn't solve them either, there's still plenty of space to make a dent there.

YetAnotherNick• 2 years ago

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.

hmottestad4• 2 years ago

I assumed it was part of the migration plan to Apple silicon. Rosetta 2 makes x86 apps work on Apple silicon, but I had assumed that Apple could only really get 64-bit x86 apps working smoothly and that’s why they removed 32-bit support a few years earlier.

ClassyJacket• 2 years ago

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.

hmottestad4• 2 years ago

I tried to search for info about an update that broke iPhone 7 phones. Couldn’t find anything. Can you point me to some more info?

hoorible• 2 years ago

Looks like we found the “things that never happened” double Jeopardy for today

schappim2• 2 years ago

throw it all in the trash and start over

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

aksss2• 2 years ago

EEVBlog had a video about mod'ing a dumpster-found Sonos Play 5 into a cloud-free working system.

EDIT: Whoops, here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeIk-4ItQ70

They (Sonos) basically willfully attempted to brick their consumer devices, and since many sonos customers were prosumer enthusiasts but not technical (hw or sw) it really did signal EOL for the products. Bananas. I still have a my Play1/3/5 infrastructure operating through Home Assistant and AirBridge that turns them into Airplay devices. It's not perfect but still gives them utility. Considering how much they f'n cost..

dmazzoni3• 2 years ago

I have some old Sonos speakers that have been gathering dust for a while.

I decided to sell them because they still have some value but I don't really want them, especially with what the company has done recently.

However, I wanted to set them up again to make sure they work. I spent hours trying to get them to set up again with no luck. I'm sure this is exactly what other users are experiencing. The old app was so nice and reliable. I don't have an opinion on the new app because I just literally can't get it to connect.

And I know they're not dead. One has an audio-in jack and still plays. It works great. There's no reason any of them shouldn't be fine. The only thing that changed was the app. I just want to get them set up so I can sell them on Marketplace for a good price as fully working.

petepete2• 2 years ago

Funnily enough I bought a Sub Mini last year and had to borrow an iPad to add it to my system because it failed on Android, even when being walked through the process by someone from Sonos support.

rozab• 2 years ago

Be thankful Sonos no longer have 'recycle mode' - an antifeature which gave customers a discount in exchange for permanently bricking their old Sonos hardware. They were forced to discontinue the practice after backlash.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/5/21166777/sonos-ending-recy...

DidYaWipe11• 2 years ago

Do you have details on that? How and why was that necessary?

sorenjan• 2 years ago

Sonos has a good reputation for building quality speakers, but its latest move has disappointed some buyers. Recently, the company offered a trade-up program, giving legacy customers 30 percent off the latest One, Beam or Port. In exchange, buyers just had to "recycle" their existing products. However, what Sonos meant by "recycle" was to activate a feature called "Recycle Mode" that permanently bricks the speaker. It then becomes impossible for recycling firms to resell it or do anything else but strip it for parts.
Sonos suggests that after bricking the device in Recycle Mode, users drop it off at a recycling facility or give it to Sonos to do the same.

https://www.engadget.com/2019-12-31-sonos-recycle-mode-expla...

isatty• 2 years ago

At the risk of defending a megacorp: Apple has always been great about supporting their devices for a long time.

coro_12• 2 years ago

Usually yeah. Though it sure appears that a lot of apps requiring a recent iOS lately don't need too. It's curious where that push is coming from, if they're all individual company choices, made at once, for the first time ever.

troad3• 2 years ago

By phone standards, yes. By computer standards, absolutely not.

HanClinto2• 2 years ago

It boggles my mind that I'm not able to download the oldest released version of software that was compatible with my old version of iOS.

My iPad is too old to upgrade to the new OS, but yet no software is available for it in the store, because all new apps are encouraged to be re-released for the newest version of the OS.

My device is completely frozen in time from whatever software was installed on it when it went out of support.

tacker20003• 2 years ago

Why is apple always brought up even though they have nothing to do with the topic on hand, and speakers and iphones/laptops are obviously quite different products?

mandibles3• 2 years ago

Are there any projects working on open protocols for digital audio distribution? Any chance manufacturers opt into open protocols?

paradox4602• 2 years ago

There's a bunch of stuff built around the old Logitech media server system, with open source implementations running on esp32 and raspberry pi, as well as a slew of other devices

ssl-35• 2 years ago

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.

flybrand• 2 years ago

we moved into a home that had wired speakers installed in every room all to a central Sonos enabled device - it is all old. It worked perfectly until this.

Funny thing is, we thought it was silly when we moved in - then we grew to love it. Now I hate them!

NoPicklez6• 2 years ago

That sounds a bit over the top

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

mrWiz2• 2 years ago

There was a time when Sonos really tried to EOL "Gen 1" devices, including the Play 5. There was such a backlash that they backpedaled a bit, but Gen 1 devices lost the ability to interact with Gen 2 and later devices and you need to use a different app for them.

pcchristie3• 2 years ago

Kind of dishonest to compare a speaker to an iPhone isn't it?

Closi• 2 years ago

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!

alkonaut6• 2 years ago

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?

matwood2• 2 years ago

It's less the app, more the business decision

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.

Mindwipe2• 2 years ago

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.

philjohn2• 2 years ago

If this is the thing YEARS ago, they backtracked and they still work via the S1 app.

exadeci• 2 years ago

That's not the app change you think it's.

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

drzaiusx11• 2 years ago

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.

cibyr• 2 years ago

If the new app is such a disaster, why can't they just re-release the old one?

cpuguy83• 2 years ago

IIRC seem to recall they changed the infra and software on the devices and it just wasn't possible.... take that marketing messaging as you will.

brycethornton• 2 years ago

Yeah, I believe the firmware on all compatible devices was auto-updated to the new architecture and apparently they can't go back to the old firmware for some reason. What a mess.

runxel• 2 years ago

It's the story of good hardware but bad software all over again. I always wondered why except for Apple nobody gets this right. I know, it's somewhat totally different, but man, it surely can't be that hard (especially not effing 30 million bucks hard).

Luckily I only use my Sonos IKEA lamp only with Air Play, but the few times I have to use their app? Bonkers. Absolutely trash.

mandibles3• 2 years ago

Most hardware shops don't understand that the software is also the product.

duskwuff• 2 years ago

See also: automotive manufacturers. (They're slowly figuring it out, but it's taken a long time.)

niek_pas• 2 years ago

Can someone explain to me what kind of bugfixes cost between $20 and $30 million to fix?

Jtsummers• 2 years ago

Bugs for systems with piss poor documentation, testing, and build infrastructure. If you've done even a halfway decent job in those three categories, then it's very hard to have such expensive system maintenance/sustainment activities unless it's a very large system.

hbarka2• 2 years ago

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?

yurishimo• 2 years ago

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.

ryanianian• 2 years ago

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.

mandibles3• 2 years ago

Any links to good third-party apps?

sergiotapia• 2 years ago

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.

Darkskiez• 2 years ago

Only the newest sonos speakers have bluetooth, the problems with Sonos are nothing to do with it. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-happened-sonos-app-techn... has a good write up.

feyman_r• 2 years ago

Most of my Sonos speakers and soundbars worked before the app update and right after, all that became unreliable, across devices.

I’d say that leads me to believe it’s an app issue versus just Bluetooth. Agree that BT by itself has a reputation to match, but in this case Sonos is to blame. The other apps recommended in the post work well.

notatoad6• 2 years ago

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.

omnimus9• 2 years ago

I dont think this is true. I am no audiophile but Sonos is actually quite expensive vs getting some streamer like Wiim with basic cheap amp and any solid speaker brand - KEF, Elac, Klipsh, Polk…

I know its some choices but any of them are good choice its mostly flavours. What you get for same money will sound better and 100% last longer because you have modular system instead of glued box that stops working when Sonos stops caring about the product (like they did before).

dmazzoni3• 2 years ago

They're not the only good speakers these days, though.'

When they came out, there was nothing else that had their combination of sound quality and app features.

Before their new app, the competition had basically caught up, Sonos was only marginally better in a few ways.

With their new app, I'd never recommend Sonos.

tiltowait• 2 years ago

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.

hbarka2• 2 years ago

The app experience was bad for years even before this new app. The strange thing is when I was complaining then there were always defensive voices ready to deny any bad experience. I’m glad it’s finally come to light. Spent so much for Sonos.

newprint• 2 years ago

Ah, the app to connect to your Sonos speakers, but wants all the permissions from your phone, incl. your geo-location, otherwise it will not work.

wmf• 2 years ago

Every app that uses Bluetooth needs location permission AFAIK. It's unfortunate.

wnissen• 2 years ago

No, on iOS Sonos requires actual location services, and precise must be turned on. Pairing a basic Bluetooth device does not require that. I went to Sonos tech support, escalated, and they confirmed you can't just bluetooth pair to activate the speakers. Once you've done that you can turn off the location services, but I feel like it's a blatant violation of my privacy. I returned $800 worth of speakers.

Drew_• 2 years ago

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.

ChrisArchitect• 2 years ago

[dupe]

Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42683753

jamesy0ung2• 2 years 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.

cheeze3• 2 years ago

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.

omnimus9• 2 years ago

Also WiiM software just works better than Sonos so why go Sonos?

tomaskafka• 2 years ago

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.

flyingzucchini• 2 years ago

Spence apparently was ex BlackBerry. Hmmm.

Ringz2• 2 years ago

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?

johncalvinyoung• 2 years ago

now if only I could find someone making a similarly bad decision. I've been looking to upgrade to a midrange KEF stereo pair. :)

mitjam3• 2 years ago

Canton speakers are legendary, I wish I had the money back then. A good friend of mine still has his and won‘t give them away for any new smart speaker.

matwood2• 2 years ago

I’m old so maybe that’s why I never understood the Sonos fascination. Sonos was also crazy expensive for what it was. Around covid I sold my almost 20 year old floor standing Paradigms and bought some KEFs because I needed something smaller. I glanced at Sonos, but thought no way do those sound as good or last 20 years.

Nursie7• 2 years ago

Go back 13 or so years when I bought in -

Speakers with decent sound (sure, your separates system is going to sound better, but pretty decent). They have some really fancy wireless mesh tech in an era where that's unheard of. They pick up your local music collection and have a controller application on most OS's that allows you to build stereo pairs or tv surround systems wirelessly, arbitrarily group together rooms in your house, stream music from wherever to wherever and generally just have music in the places you want it with little hassle. I still have some Sonos play:1 speakers I got in 2012 that are going strong, even though they live mostly outdoors now.

Now, if those aren't your use-cases, and you really do care about high fidelity sound (I don't), then it's probably not for you. But it has been great for me and I've built up quite a lot of speakers.

Unfortunately (and here's the subject of TFA) - in the middle of last year they screwed the pooch, and half the time their app doesn't even load any more :/

yalogin2• 2 years ago

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.

eawgewag2• 2 years ago

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.

qsi• 2 years ago

I suspect that mold is not as narrow as you think. I bought most of my Sonos setup over a decade ago and it's still going strong because I never upgraded from the S1 app. It's the newer S2 app that has been horrendous.

I would not buy or recommend new Sonos products now. Occasionally I do think about adding to my setup but since the update debacle that's no longer an option. Over the years my Sonos has been pretty reliable, and very importantly, the wife and kids can use it easily. We just want "Play X in Room Y." It works very well for that. Even my nerdy self is OK with that... I have plenty of other things to nerd/worry about and I just want my music to play.

I did have a period of instability after I moved some Sonos speakers around, and I must say their tech support was pretty good (this was maybe four years ago). They looked at my logs and told me it was a weak signal issue, which I thought was ridiculous and initially dismissed... but after digging some more and troubleshooting my home signals, it turns out they were right.

Old Sonos with old S1 app is still great for me! It really pains me to see how far they have fallen.

silisili• 2 years ago

I've never owned Sonos, but I have owned and researched a lot of wireless routers and generally active on their forums. Across them all, it seems like tons of topics of people constantly complaining about Sonos connectivity and blaming the routers.

I don't know what makes them different, or if they are just that popular that I'm seeing the noise, but it's something that I'd personally dig into more before investing.

fnordlord• 2 years ago

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.

cheeze3• 2 years ago

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.

yalogin2• 2 years ago

This is exactly my setup. I have a multi room setup and want to control them with an app. Looks like Wim is something I should look at. Thanks for the suggestion

champdebloom• 2 years ago

I’ve been using Kef LSX II and their KC62 Sub for the past year and I love the sound and convenience. Sonos came up as a frequent alternative, but I preferred the look and sound of the Kefs.

I only have them in one room, so I can’t comment on multi-room audio.

nycticorax2• 2 years ago

I have a Sonos system at home, have for years. (I currently have to use the "Sonos S1" app because I have one older device that is not supported by the new app.) It sounds good (to me) when everything is working, but honestly the reliability has never been that great. After first buying it, I eventually learned that you really want to buy one of their 'hubs' (the one I have is the Sonos Boost) and have that plugged into your wired ethernet network. Otherwise, at least in my hands, things just don't work very reliably. (You can also, I am told, plug a single speaker into your wired network and achieve much the same effect, but for reasons it was easier for me to buy the Boost.) But even now when you select a new song/album/playlist, it seems to take a weirdly long time for it to start playing and have the album art show up on the phone, and sometimes it just fails and you have to try again (the 2nd time almost always works, FWIW). But it is really nice to have decent-sounding on-demand music throughout your home at the touch of a (few) button(s). I hear that bluOS and HEOS are decent alternatives, but they don't seem to be as popular as Sonos, and I've never seen a convincing demonstration that they would work better for me. And of cource there's the lock-in factor: Replacing all my Sonos equipment would be pricey at this point. I used to get really mad about lack of cross-manufacturer interop when I was younger and poorer, but nowadays I'm willing to stomach it if it means that stuff just works. But it's continually irksome that equipment at these prices isn't 100% glitch-free.

eitally• 2 years ago

For a use like you describe, I'm currently accomplishing that with a mix of various Google/Nest speakers & screens throughout the house, arranged into a few different groups. What would make Sonos a better option?

javier23• 2 years ago

I got a bluOS device just as a networked amped for my 25 year old speakers. But honestly its too much of a hassle to switch inputs. The price wasnt too bad, but I basically use it as a dumb amp with digital audio input from the tv. At least the amp fits under my tv.

tshaddox2• 2 years ago

I've got the Arc soundbar and subwoofer one year ago to save space by replacing my more typical 3.1 setup with receiver, sub, and bookshelf speakers.

I'm happy with the form factor, audio quality, and overall TV experience, and I honestly haven't used the app enough to even notice if there was a big update.

That said, I haven't used any Sonos multi-room functionality. But I have noticed weird gaps in functionality with the Arc's Amazon Alexa integration. The Arc doesn't support moving audio to it from other Alexa speakers, or vice versa. I have to imagine they deliberately disabled this, as if I'm going to replace all my Alexa devices just to get Sonos multi-room audio working!

DidYaWipe11• 2 years ago

Why even bother? Just get a $100 bookshelf system anywhere that you need music.

shepherdjerred• 2 years ago

Sonos sucks, but afaik everything else is worse

leonseled• 2 years ago

All this negative feedback had me second-guessing as well. But I took the plunge this month and I’ve been very happy tbh. Setup was flawless and I haven’t run into any issues since purchase.

But my setup is just Beam + Ikea Symfonisk for surrounds. Planning to add the sub mini later on.

My guess is the issues start to occur the bigger your setup and if you heavily use the app? I havent touched the app since setting it up.

Nursie7• 2 years ago

I don't know if it's related to the size of the setup, but (quick calculation...) I have 8 zones, seven with individual speakers and one of them is a Beam+Symfonisk Frame+sub surround thing.

We're on starlink, which is great but adds some latency to some stuff, and the new app has been terrible - barely loads, claims to start playing but nothing happens, volume adjustments take random amounts of time or may be ignore, all sorts.

But also when not using the app (just watching tv) the surround system is still pretty perfect.

RobMurray2• 2 years ago

You will have nothing but trouble, but it will sound great, even when blasting Spotify ads at you on your spotify premium subscription.

Nursie7• 2 years ago

Sonos has been great for me for 12 years. The newer products also showed up as airplay targets, which made things even easier. You can do fun stuff like group one that target with other systems to stream the audio around, or group another room (say the kitchen) with the tv so you can keep listening to your show while you move between rooms.

But the app they released last year is an unreliable clusterfuck, and while you don't need the app for things like tv audio, if you want to stick an album on in your shed while you do some carpentry (one of my use-cases recently) then you're probably going to want to use it. And right now that's very hit or miss.

So I think a little bit of wait and see is probably the right choice. If they get good again and drop the moronic everything-goes-through-our-cloud approach, I'd have no hesitation in recommending them again.

quirkot• 2 years ago

That app update screwed me up for weeks. Feeling that sweet sweet vindication right now

limitedfrom2• 2 years ago

Glad to be using the Sonos speakers as just AirPlay 2 speakers. No issues, no app to deal with (never even opened them past setup), perfectly synchronized with non-Sonos AirPlay speakers as well.

rconti• 2 years ago

"Perfectly synchronized?" I airplay to 6 sonos speakers using airplay2 (not grouping in the app) multiple times a day, and I can practically predict what will happen if I try to add speakers too quickly, or too slowly. You'll add 2, then a 3rd, then you'll notice one isn't actually playing, and when you add the 4th, all the rest drop out, and you get to re-add them again. It's such a chore to keep a multi-speaker airplay setup working right.

A lot of this could be solved if Apple put some basic engineering effort into the airplay UI, such as adding aliased groups. Every time I want to play to my effing speakers it's a 60 second ordeal.

Sometimes the little banner pops up from the top of the screen helpfully letting me to play to all of the speakers like I was before. Other times it not-so-helpfully suggests just playing to ONE speaker for some incomprehensible reason.

Still other times, the banner covers what I'm trying to see, and swiping it away seems to activate airplay even when I don't want to.

limitedfrom2• 2 years ago

Unfortunate that's your experience. Personally, at least with my 3-4 speaker setup (multiple Sonos and 2nd gen AirPort Express feeding non-Sonos speakers), I've never really had issues (maybe out of sync once or twice a year). Your mileage may vary I guess.

aaronbrethorst• 2 years ago

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.

omnimus9• 2 years ago

Maybe just get separate speakers and streamer like WiiM. You wont regret it if the streamer dies you will still have speakers and just replace the streamer.

werdnapk• 2 years ago

This is the route I took. I did not want to get involved in the sonos ecosystem even though most people were telling me sonos was "so easy" to setup. My setup... passive speakers, an amp and a wiim streamer and I can swap out any of the pieces with any nother from another manufacturer at any time if I want.

SethTro• 2 years ago

The board likely kept him till most of the bad PR had subsided so the new CEO can have a friendlier reception.

eximius2• 2 years ago

It has been bizarre watching this debacle from the sidelines. I must have bought just on the recent side of whatever demarcation of problems are being complained about.

My app works fine. My speakers work fine. The worst problem we have is rarely the music pauses, we're unsure why, and we just hit play again.

I'm wondering if there is some functionality I am not aware I'm missing or if it is limited to older models that I am simply not experiencing the problems with?

cheeze3• 2 years ago

Do you use the Sonos app itself? Most of my friends with Sonos just use Spotify/Apple music and skip the Sonos app altogether. It sounds like the app update was pretty horrible though - no ability to even _queue music_. But easily sidestepped by just using Spotify.

eximius2• 2 years ago

We have multi-room, so I use the Sonos app for EQ between speakers. Sometimes for starting a station from Pandora or playlist from Spotify.

If we need more control over the music, we go to the Pandora or Spotify apps themselves, but Sonos for the speakers.

I guess I didn't use the old one so I don't know what I'm supposedly missing.

supernovae• 2 years ago

I spent truckloads of money on home theater and audio systems and have been quite happy with my Sonos.

I have the Sub, The original big play bar and some 1s and I have a record player that plays to sonos and then upstairs I have an Arc.

I've probably got 10 years on this system now and couldn't be happier. I remember having to replace my receivers 2-3 times in a 10 year time frame from failed circuits to needing HDMI to needing a newer HDMI and all that jazz.

My play bar has just been optical out from the TV and it's supported 5.1 audio realy well.

I use the spotify play direct. I'm not a huge fan of the newer app and I wasn't impressed with them EOL'ing products.

With that said, it's been wife and kid approved. Everyone in the house knows how to use it and its been problem free. No wires for my cat to chew on.

hilti• 2 years ago

I‘m extremely happy about my 50 year old WEGA speakers that sound way better than any Homepod or Sonos that I had before. And I paid $90 for the used LB3541.

rmm• 2 years ago

I never really use the app other than when building system which was hit or miss. But pleas make it work accross vlans without having to run seperate services to handle it!

gregwebs• 2 years ago

Sonos couples the digital music selection to the sound system, trapping you in an ecosystem that can then brick your devices. The Wiim Pro is a great digital receiver that you can hook up to any sound system. Use Spotify or whatever you want for digital music selection.

dguido• 2 years ago

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.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-happened-sonos-app-techn...

stuff4ben2• 2 years ago

It's not like the salesy-CEO was writing the code, there was still a bunch of engineers who said "hey this sounds like a great idea". Personally I want my CEOs to be on the sales side, make more money for the company. That being said you best have a good CTO/CIO that aren't sales-oriented.

rachofsunshine• 2 years ago

One imagines a lot of the engineers going "yay!" are just people who want to have a job tomorrow.

magicalhippo2• 2 years ago

Our company makes B2B for a rather technical niche.

We got a sales-oriented CEO who knows when to listen to us developers. It has worked very well for our company.

Being more sales-oriented he's found good business models and knows our customers well, and hence what our products are worth to our clients so we're not selling our products too cheap. This was the case before he took over from a more technical CEO.

While a CEO with an engineer background can certainly do well too, I think it's probably easier to find a good sales-based CEO that simply knows when to listen to their technical team. At least in theory...

harrall• 2 years ago

Bruh an engineer probably suggested those changes.

You think a salesperson is suggesting mDNS and frameworks?

Glawen2• 2 years ago

Yep, it is definitely an engineer behind this, wanting to show off.

My job now is to deal with the aftermath of failed design choices at my company. It only took a couple of guys to impose their deluded design, because noone stood up to call their bullshit.

rootedbox• 2 years ago

The salesperson had no idea what mDNS or the frameworks was.. and rubber stamped it.

Tteriffic• 2 years ago

Likely project manager or architect.

jedberg3• 2 years ago

I don't think having a sales person in charge was the problem.

The problem is the fundamental disconnect between what's good for users and what's good for the company. The company wants you to have to pay them money every month and control how you interact with the product, so that they can be a services company with recurring revenue.

The consumer wants a device that they buy once and it just works.

observationist2• 2 years ago

Engineers are in a better position to understand what the customer wants and needs. Salespeople are there to sell their product, and fundamentally don't need to understand what the customer wants, or needs.

Give a good salesperson a handwavy outline of something to sell, and they will sell it. They don't need technical accuracy for success. Yes, this is bad for customers, and makes life harder, and results in ridiculous, counterproductive, infuriating situations for IT staff, engineers, and other people who have to deal with the technical realities of every day business.

A salesperson can just mash psychological buttons in manager's brains, and they'll make the sale. The consumer, in enterprise level markets, is hardly ever the team or individual in charge of operating the technology. The consumer is the manager, or managerial team, looking to check boxes and shuffle numbers and spend $X on Y department, for which they get rewarded for a wide array of arbitrary outcomes, almost none of which have anything to do with the practical impact of the product in question on the people who end up most affected by the purchase.

If an engineer with a solid understanding of the product being sold is in charge, he's in the best place to rein in the sales and marketing teams, and to direct development based on customer reality. This probably results in lower profits, overall, but a better product, and a better reputation in the long run.

benreesman4• 2 years ago

I haven’t owned Sonos gear in a long time, but certainly back in the day they had just amazing products. That SUB where it was so perfectly balanced? They did a demo (that you could easily reproduce at home) where you could have it driving “call the cops” noise disturbance bass without upsetting a nickel set lengthwise on top, just a great unit and not the only one. Awesome stuff.

But while superior products at a price point can capture a bunch of share, after that they grow at the rate of the market. Those markets have “matured”.

For whatever reason we don’t as a society let “tech” markets mature. We demand growth long after everyone is satisfied.

This is where ideas like “growth” and ideas like “useful” diverge: raise your hand if you like Facebook or Google in 2025 more than 10-15 years ago.

Sonos (and I’m aware of the structure) “grew” right out of a sustainably profitable business with happy customers.

danielmarkbruce4• 2 years ago

The problem is the fundamental disconnect between what's good for users and what's good for the company

The fundamental problem with 95% of companies, and 99% of publicly listed companies.

mrandish• 2 years ago

The company wants you to have to pay them money every month and control how you interact with the product, so that they can be a services company with recurring revenue.

Yes! This pervasive trend has nerfed so much consumer tech. I simply won't buy any more hardware that relies on proprietary clouds

griomnib10• 2 years ago

I have experienced this most acutely with the most recent round of macOS and iOS updates.

Nothing Apple is shipping seems to be for me, the user. Rather it’s a grab bag of crap “AI” for Wall Street, ways to make it harder to run software of my choosing, and wholesale trashing of perfectly fine UX to cram in whatever useless feature some PM landed for their promotion.

I could say a few hundred things much worse about the direction of windows 11, which is even more obnoxious than Apple, but then I’d have to relieve the horror of being forced to submit my email address to Microsoft to install the damn OS.

Day by day I feel the devices I’ve spent a huge sum of money on no longer belong to me. I’m getting really fucking tired of it, and something has to give.

nelox• 2 years ago

Agree. Just ask Steve Jobs.

givemeethekeys• 2 years ago

Bait and switch is the fundamental problem. Abuse of power.

atoav• 2 years ago

As a music fan one would think I'd be their target group. But I haven't even considered their product and classified it as "some smart crap that is an excuse to syphon data out and lock me in". So all stick, no carrot.

alkonaut6• 2 years ago

But Sonos doesn't sell any services/subscriptions, just products, correct? So even if they wanted to have recurring revenue how would they do it? They sell gadgets?

mananaysiempre2• 2 years ago

abandoning their reliable UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) system for device discovery in favor of mDNS

I don’t know about that part. UPnP is exactly the HTTP-abusing XML-laden layer-spanning horrorshow you expect from 2000s Microsoft where it was mainly supported, mDNS is a fairly compact and neat set of independent extensions to preexisting Internet protocols born during Apple’s short period of flirting with open standards. In a greenfield project, you’d need to show me some really impressive tooling to make me choose UPnP, because five minutes with the specs are enough to tell implementing or debugging the thing is going to be a nightmare.

(No experience with Sonos or their implementation of either.)

stephen_g• 2 years ago

I had the same reaction, all the other parts of the parent comment sound bad but switching to mDNS seems like the one that should have been an improvement or at least neutral...

eddythompson80• 2 years ago

I'm guessing people commenting on UPnP vs mDNS implementation are mostly referencing this post https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-happened-sonos-app-techn...

But it wasn't just a move from UPnP to mDNS with everything else remaining the same. They also moved to HTTP/WebSocket instead of UPnP eventing, added encryption.

While most complaints in this thread about the app all say "it's sluggish", with the initial release of S2 many had their systems that worked perfectly fine with S1 undiscoverable with S2. At the time all the advice on Sonos forums, Reddit, etc was "First check your router and make sure mDNS isn't disabled". Which caused a lot of people to have a kneejerk reaction of "wtf is this mDNS shit and what was wrong with the "old reliable UPnP"

spamizbad• 2 years ago

Ditching a native framework for something JS-powered and running everything thru a cloud server sounds like technical decisions willfully made by engineering leaders.

sgarland7• 2 years ago

Probably egged on by people telling them they had a much larger hiring pool if they went with JS (which is almost certainly true).

Just once, I’d like to see a leader actively refuse these kinds of arguments when the process they have is objectively better.

Never once have I ever experienced an Electron-ified version of an app and thought, “oh yeah, this is better.”

dmazzoni3• 2 years ago

That's an example of something that can be done well or done poorly.

AirBnB, UberEats and Facebook are all built with React Native and they have excellent performance.

Using a JS framework for your UI doesn't inherently mean it will suck. It can be done well.

If you expect it to be half as much work, you'll be disappointed.

If you expect it to be a tradeoff that makes some things easier and some things harder, and you're willing to invest in making it excellent, then it can be a very reasonable choice.

bigfatkitten2• 2 years ago

This architecture sounds like a profound engineering failure, not a sales problem. The sort of failure that should get engineering leaders fired.

x0x02• 2 years ago

Hard to say. I'd bet there was a decent chance the eng team stridently warned the execs about what would happen and got overruled.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/09/it-was-the-wrong-dec...

In particular

Employees claimed that Sonos’ desire to get new customers and please investors was becoming more important than ensuring that old hardware would work properly with the new app.

That sure sounds like this was a deliberate choice.

That said, I suspect Sonos' market has mostly disappeared. A decade ago I paid $400+ to get streaming audio; now a lot of people are happy with Spotify Connect and $200 google speakers or a $50 refurb echo 4.

nl• 2 years ago

The new mDNS discovery mechanism works much better for me than the old one. I had two speakers that would constantly require reboots to be discovered with the old version but now they are 100% available.

insane_dreamer• 2 years ago

Those would have been CTO decisions or at least recommendations as to the technical merits of the change, not the fault of the CEO.

Now if the CEO made the change for other reasons (usually financial, such as customer subscription lock-in) despite the technical downsides (which should have been presented by the CTO), then yes, in that case the blame would primarily fall to the CEO.

cabinguy• 2 years ago

Do you think a sales person or a technical person dreamt up those changes you believe broke sonos?

wouldbecouldbe• 2 years ago

This sounds more like a modern CTO felt the need to refactor the a big part of the codebase for the sake of it and if that wasn't foolish enough, they decided to not roll it out incrementally.

elevatedastalt• 2 years ago

These sound like extremely technical decisions that presumably engineering leads in the company came up with, signed-off on, and convinced leadership to go ahead with.

I doubt a Salesperson has the technical expertise to initiate any of those changes.

accrual• 2 years ago

It could have been the other way around, though. Engineers could have been faced with calls asking for a higher degree of integration and dependence on cloud servers for profit reasons (carefully sold as better UX), then developed it because that's what they're paid to do.

Twirrim• 2 years ago

especially for older Sonos devices with limited processing power.

That reminds me: When S3 dropped support for MD5 ciphers, it ended up causing problems for a number of their customers who had remarkably old computers connecting to S3. The machines struggled to handle the newer / stronger ciphers they were now required to use. In one case it went from "just about keeping up" to "got no hope". That was a "fun" way to unexpectedly break folks.

Terr_2• 2 years ago

The machines struggled to handle the newer / stronger ciphers

Sort of like "test your stuff simulating a really shitty network connection", perhaps something else in that vein would be "test your stuff with excessively slow crypto and longer-keys."

urbandw311er• 2 years ago

Wow, thanks so much for the succinct and informative summary. I’m an owner of multiple SONOS speakers and am enraged by how these changes have effectively crippled my devices that I spent much hard-earned cash on. I am beginning to despair. I hope and pray they can just roll back half of them.

I suspect it’s all related to centralisation and control and subscriptions to radio services and profit however so I won’t hold my breath. Most enshittifcation has profit at its root. :-(

jdswain• 2 years ago

I've implemented both UPnP discovery and mDNS, and mDNS was quite a bit easier to make reliable than UPnP. However, if they did have a reliable UPnP system, it would almost certainly destabilise the software for any transition like this. There's just so many different network issues to deal with, it's tough to debug when a user reports a problem and it's probably an issue with their router which is only sold in Germany. It is very frustrating class of bugs, when the app just doesn't find devices on the network.

jdmg94• 2 years ago

mDNS is superior to UPnP, they just made a compounding sum of bad choices that ended up in a bad architecture. I do hope companies start learning that you can't have suit doing running an engineering company

Mindwipe2• 2 years ago

Google has engineers running an engineering company and that has turned every product for five years into a disaster.

sholladay• 2 years ago

You blame the sales-oriented CEO for the problems but then point to a list of highly technical changes as the ultimate cause. A salesman knows nothing about these architecture decisions and would have trouble asking for them to be implemented even if they somehow knew it’s what they wanted to do.

Could a more technical CEO have turned the ship around more quickly? Sure. But let’s be honest, the blame rests at the feet of the engineering team. Someone got excited about using some new tech and didn’t fully consider the ramifications. This happens all the time. And if you’re lucky, the code review saves you, or if not then QA saves you, or if not then the beta testers save you. If a problem remains after that, then it tends to become really hard to undo, from an organization perspective.

bmitc• 2 years ago

Engineering led companies can also be pretty miserable as well. Look at Google, for example.

raffraffraff• 2 years ago

Nice article by Andy. It's astonishing that they released that magnitude of change, and that they didn't provide a way to roll back once it showed itself to be a car crash. It should have been an opt-in beta, then opt-out, and maybe then after the bugs are squashed, incrementally rolled out.

I understand why they'd to remove this big clatter of legacy protocols, simplify it, and encrypted everything. A tech-focused CEO would surely want that too, but perhaps might respect the amount of work and testing involved. What they forgot is that in a Sonos is a clatter of legacy protocols on top of speakers that are sonically "ok". Wasn't that their unique selling point? Why wouldn't a CEO with a sales background understand USP?

As someone pointed out: they want to turn once-off purchases into monthly subscription. Maybe. They see this enormous userbase and brainstorm ways to squeeze recurring revenue out of it, but ironically they ruin the product and turn an army of advocates into enemies.

egorfine2• 2 years ago

mDNS is far superior to UPnP. What casted a bad shadow over mDNS was the Apple's discoveryd vs mDNSResponder saga[1].

[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2015/05/26/apple-discoveryd-replac...

madeofpalk• 2 years ago

Tom Conrad was Chief Product Officer at Quibi. They're not out of the woods yet.

btreecat5• 2 years ago

I'm not sure I understand the issue w/moving from UPnP to mDNS if everything was still locally accessible and managed.

Kinda feels like those two issues are orthogonal.

xattt• 2 years ago

Is this reversed?

surajrmal2• 2 years ago

I'm not sure any single one if those was necessarily problematic so much as the fact they did all of transitions at the same time and perhaps didn't do enough diligence in testing and slowly rolling out to ensure parity. For instance they could have rolled out mdns support with fallback to upnp and perhaps iterated untill they knew for a fact mdns was finding all the same devices as upnp with similar or better latency. However it seems that's not what they did.

mDNS is used by all the major players in the iot space today and there is a reason for it. For instance I believe Chromecast uses mDNS for discovery. Routers have had a long time to work through any possible issues. New code will always suffer from bugs and I'm pretty sure that's been one of the problems they face more than anything else.

knowitnone• 2 years ago

he still got paid millions just for the title CEO

jmyeet2• 2 years ago

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.

recursive3• 2 years ago

you're basically relegated to Sonos or a smart speaker (which I do not want).

I use dumb bookshelf speakers with Bluetooth support. Mine are "Edifier" brand, but there are others. Works perfectly. (at least as "perfect" as BT can ever get) No apps or smart stuff, beyond BT.

On the other hand, when I'm trying to comprehend how to get audio from a TV into them, then I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. I found one of the few remaining TVs with a headphone out, so I can use that. Next time my TV breaks, I guess I'll have to learn what is actually going with HDMI. Connecting arbitrary speakers to a TV seems like an arcane mystery.

jmyeet2• 2 years ago

The problem with Bluetooth is it doesn't have a really good audio codec. I really like the Sonos model of being a server that doesn't require a connected device to work as well.

stuff4ben2• 2 years ago

Outside of initially setting up my Sonos speakers, I never venture into their app. I happily stream via Airplay2 from my iPhone or iPad. Everything has been working just great on my stereo-paired Sonos Ones in my den, a separate Sonos One in the kitchen, and a Sonos Era 300 paired to a Sonos Sub mini in my living room. No complaints here and if anyone is thinking about throwing theirs away, I'll gladly take them off your hands for free.

aljgz• 2 years ago

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.

mrsuprawsm• 2 years ago

What's your Genelec setup, and do you use it in a living room/home theatre room, or as a PC speaker setup?

I recently bought a pair of Genelec monitors (8330) and a sub (7350), and am interested in replacing my Sonos arc soundbar, sub, and satellite ones with a proper Genelec-based 5.1 based setup. But my only concerns are price (it'd be at least 5k), and the distance to the monitors - my sofa is ~4.2m away from the television, and the maximum distance where direct sounds dominate (green in this image from https://www.genelec.com/correct-monitors: https://images.ctfassets.net/4zjnzn055a4v/3SiwbzysMQkGR6oN47...) is 3m for all but the most expensive monitors. So I'm curious if it works well for you.

petepete2• 2 years ago

Fingers crossed we get RSTP support soon. It's only been out 25 years.

JonChesterfield• 2 years ago

The combination of must use an app, the app mostly doesn't work, the speaker needs factory reset frequently makes it a paperweight on the way towards electronics recycling.

Firing the CEO seems good but insufficient. Liquidate the company, use the assets to try to offset the environmental damage done by the mass manufacture of e-waste. Or I suppose fix the software stack to bring the speakers back to usefulness, perhaps by throwing away everything done for the last few years in reset --hard fashion.

nemo44x• 2 years ago

Wherever they teach product management and design this saga will be a case study.

belval• 2 years ago

Over the holidays we played a game called Hitster which has a very simple premise of listening to music and guessing the release year. My in-laws have a Sonos system and it was so laughably bad connectivity-wise with the wrong song playing, no song playing, songs not stopping, etc...

I jokingly said that a 100$ bluetooth speaker would have been better, which was not super well received.

Bottomline is: It does not matter how good your sound system is if it's not reliable.

alistairSH• 2 years ago

Good. System architecture aside, the UX alone was a disaster. Less discoverable, more layers of menus.

Plus flaky pairing and system discovery (from iPhones, at least). Wife’s new iPhone couldn’t connect, even though my older iPhone was running the same app version just fine.

It was bad enough I bought HomePods for the bedroom to replace the Sonos 1s we’d used for years. I still have them in another room, just someplace that they don’t get used as often.

TheMagicHorsey• 2 years ago

I'd love to read a post-mortem from a SONOS engineer about what happened here so we can all learn. Has anyone seen any blog or Blind posts about this?

aisio• 2 years ago

Not a sonos engineer, but its a good external analysis https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-happened-sonos-app-techn...

NelsonMinar• 2 years ago

I have some Sonos systems installed in 2008 that are still working great. No hardware failures, app still does what it always did.

That being said they feel clunky and worse year after year, the UI is old fashioned, it's not quite as reliable. And of course the whole thing is orphaned. I'll never buy another set of several thousand dollars of Sonos v2 or whatever they want me to do.

NoPicklez6• 2 years ago

This is my experience as well, the hardware is still excellent but the app experience has really deteriorated, even in the latest app

crmd• 2 years ago

In my living room I have a pair of loudspeakers, an 18 watt stereo tube amp that I service myself, an analog rotary mixer, a pair of turntables, and an IKEA Kallax full of records.

10 years ago my friends called me a hipster for doing this instead of cloud-based music, but not so much any more. When I hear these horror stories of enshitified HiFi platforms it makes me feel like I made the right investment decision.

arusahni• 2 years ago

The fact that, many months after this app update, I still don't have play controls in the notification shade is appalling. God forbid I need to pause my music or need to skip a track.

Someone had to make a decision as to when the updated app would ship. They did not make a wise choice.

bborud• 2 years ago

I never understood why people bought Sonos products. They were fairly poor in terms of usability even before any shenanigans. My first and only Sonos ended up in a rubbish bin (well recycling bin) when it turned out it couldn’t reliably Play back audio books at 1.5x speed.

I never even considered giving it away because that would be a dick move.

Got a Teenage Engineering designed BT speaker instead.

ehsankia• 2 years ago

I was blown away when I found out this expensive Sonos device I was setting up for my mother-in-law didn't support basic bluetooth pairing. Like what? The cheapest 20$ wireless speaker supports bluetooth...

recursive3• 2 years ago

Kind of like how iPods didn't support direct copying of songs as files, whereas the cheapest hardware audio players could do it.

Actually, it's exactly like that. It's a path out of the walled garden.

midtake• 2 years ago

This would be a perfect time for Apple to step in and offer HomePods for the Home Theater. In a better configuration than "stereo pair".

sureIy3• 2 years ago

Why are speakers so hard? It's insanely old technology and they're still charging hundreds for a baseline handheld speaker.

I'm dearly holding onto my Marshall Acton that can be connect to WiFi without an app and stream directly from Spotify. No smart nothing.

Nothing like this seems to exist anymore, not for the $200 I paid this years ago anyway.

Before this I had tried a smaller but $250 Sonos speaker and it sounded like crap, with far worse UX.

jimmydoe2• 2 years ago

SONOS prices a premium for its network features. No one wants a few Chinese wifi device at home, otherwise SONOS would be gone.

sureIy3• 2 years ago

No one wants a few Chinese wifi device at home

Oh you are so wrong.

I'd say no one wants to pay double when two products look the same on paper, and thus people end up with Chinese WiFi devices.

danielmarkbruce4• 2 years ago

It's a fundamentally awful business. If you make a good product and just sell it you get a one time payment and you have a brand that one one cares about because you are a one time decision every x years. You don't "consume" it, there is no "new fashion". One time payment, and not a big one.

So, companies try to avoid this fate by doing things which make for a better business - but invariably are bad for customers. In most cases, if you come across something awful like this, it's because just doing the right thing for customers doesn't make any money in that particular business due to the nature of the product and buying process.

sureIy3• 2 years ago

Look at Bang & Olufsen.

You can definitely produce high quality goods that last decades and update them regularly because they're simply beautiful. My father's 1995 model is still in use to this day.

Granted, they're insanely high priced, but that means they also sell very few. There must be a middle ground.

lippihom• 2 years ago

The app update has been so bad I basically stopped listening to music completely. Decision making opposite of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"... went from truly one of the best app experiences to now the worst.

jimmydoe2• 2 years ago

been using SONOS for 6 years, never feel their app is best, imho v2 app is ok. you don't have to use app in many cases.

Always42• 2 years ago

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.

tsunamifury• 2 years ago

He tried to turn Sonos into Juicero

faramarz• 2 years ago

I sure hope they are already well into fixing the issues and that the resignation is just for posterity and shareholder appeasement, otherwise, any significant change will take half a year at minimum!

I’m now annoyingly used opening my Sonos app once, closing it, opening it again to get the damn ui to load current streams on any of the speakers.

jauntywundrkind2• 2 years ago

First big case of a tech company taking a major dive for not respecting Local First.

Things used to work without the cloud. Then the cloud got added and latency shot up, connectivity went down, and systems behaved worse.

neya• 2 years ago

Good. I hate "smart" speakers that need internet access to do a simple task. This is just market correction in my opinion and was bound to happen regardless of who the CEO was. As a speaker builder myself, it blows my mind people are ok with putting in spyware into their everyday home appliances like coffee-makers and speakers. I absolutely detest this trend.

tticvs• 2 years ago

FWIW I have 4 sonos devices in my home and I've got basically zero problems. I guess I mostly use Airplay to control them but I do occasionally use the app and it's fine.

I'm really not sure what all the fuss is about.

lifeinthevoid• 2 years ago

What are you trying to say, that everyone's wrong?

alkonaut6• 2 years ago

Did they switch apps again, or is this still about the debacle when they switched from their original app to the second gen (S2) app many many years ago?

Because while that was a shitshow, that's ancient history by now. Did they screw up another generational switch?

Nursie7• 2 years ago

Yep, there was a big update mid last year. They didn't orpahn any players this time, and a lot of people hate the UX but that's pretty subjective and people fear change, so lets ignore that. What they did that's not subjective -

- Wreck some folks systems so that they can't add new devices or discover their existing ones.

- Force everything to go via their cloud servers, which adds round-trip latency and server-reliability problems to everything you try to do

The latter one there means that, for instance, if I try to use the app to change volume or skip a track then it might work, or it might take several seconds and then change the volume, or it might not do it at all. Maybe you press the button again ... Then after thirty seconds it might apply all the interactions and skip half an album or get deafeningly loud.

But also the app may just not load properly, with half the interface staying blank. It may claim to have started the music but nothing's actually happening. It may not load the state of the speaker so you can't see what's playing or control it. It might not list all the speakers. Early on after the release we also got lots of tracks that would fail half-way through and skip to the next one.

It's an absolute shitshow, and when people started to complain they were told the problems were clearly with their network setup and that they were at fault, even though everything had been fine before. They started saying things like "Oh starlink isn't really supported because of the latency it introduces", which was only a problem because of their decision to make the whole system terminally online.

So yeah, they screwed the pooch again.

aquaticsunset• 2 years ago

I'm clearly in the minority, but the new app is leaps and bounds more usable and stable for me. The functionality gaps don't affect me - those features weren't things I used. And it's way, way more responsive and consistent than the old one.

Perhaps it's just my specific network situation. The old app was a constant headache of inconsistent state - music playing while it showed nothing playing, pressing commands (like skipping a track or pausing) but those commands never happening on the device. It also took a very long time to show my entire device list. Never quite worked with the Roam like it should have.

Nursie7• 2 years ago

So your experience is the exact mirror of mine. Old app was flawless and pretty low latency.

As soon as the new one came along I had the issues you describe with control latency - volume or track changes would either take a random amount of time, or do nothing, or sometimes queue up and all apply at once. Also had inconsistent state, the app showing music as playing while nothing happened, or the reverse. The app's home screen only partially loading, all sorts of crap, with the same issues present on android or iOS.

And apparently I'm one of the lucky ones - some people can't add new products or find existing ones.

Maybe one day they'll release a version that works for both of us :)

RobMurray2• 2 years ago

I hate my sonos setup now. It sounds great, but everything else has got worse since I bought them. The Sonos connect isn't supported by s2, the latency of changing volume got worse to the point that it is way too loud before you even notice it changing, There is something completely broken between Spotify/Sonos/Alexa making it only play Spotify free through sonos even though I have a subscription.

Then there's the things that were always shit, like no low latency streaming except through the analogue inputs on the Sonos connect and a closed protocol blocking open source improvements.

vlmutolo• 2 years ago

Has anyone had a good experience with bluesound? Sends like they offer a similar product but with less big-corporate headache. Haven’t tried them myself, though.

https://www.bluesound.com/

solardev• 2 years ago

Finally! About time. Thank you, Sonos, for doing the right thing eventually. As an owner of several thousand dollars' worth of Sonos equipment, I swore I'd never buy another piece again unless Patrick was gone AND they rolled back the app. At least we have one of the two now. The new app is still flaky, unfortunately, but not as bad as it was a few months ago. I still get random disconnections and errors, and some features still don't work like it used to.

I hope the new CEO creates a new culture there.

up2isomorphism• 2 years ago

Imaging a normal employee messed up 1/100 of this case and only need to “forgo” his/her bonus. He likely gets fired the next day.

mr_tristan• 2 years ago

Software problems almost never seem to actually impact brands, but this was so egregious it actually managed to. Even Crowdstrike increased revenue over the last year.

So… I’m not shocked at the timing. Sales have tanked, and proved the CEO couldn’t be relied on to right the ship.

It’s just one example of how long serious problems can fester in an organization. There’s likely deep cultural problems throughout the company’s decision making apparatus. We’ll see, but I don’t see Sonos capable of being a trusted brand again.

acchow• 2 years ago

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.

Incredible vesting schedule

tacker20003• 2 years ago

Every couple of months I go to my fathers holiday home and upon arrival i will have to update the damn sonos device and the app and whatnot… its just a chore and rarely is anything different from when he first got the speakers years ago.

I just want to stream my spotify playlist to it and thats it.

To be honest I miss the oldschool BT pairing speakers and I will probably get him one of these soon since Im just done with sonos and I cant see how normal non IT people can even put up with this and figure this whole update mess out.

kennu• 2 years ago

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.

fennecbutt• 2 years ago

Dude got paid like 5m$ a year, and now he's left he'll just go somewhere else and get paid the same or more.

These people don't earn that money. But keep defending ludicrous exec salaries.

Sonos CEO steps down after app update debacle

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