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Heartbroken by the Sonos App Disaster and What's Happened to the Company

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Re: Heartbroken by the Sonos App Disaster and What's Happened to the Company

#41

Post by oliwarner »

com wrote: post #39
oliwarner wrote: post #37

A million years ago when Sonos and Slimdevices/Logitech Squeezebox were both newish, I was cheap and chose Logitech on price and an open source server. Today we have their devices in 6 rooms, and open source players in 2 more. Logitech abandoned the ecosystem almost immediately after I started buying into it and I've worried what would happen but the open source community has made these things better than ever. Don't…

Are there new hardware options for new adopters of Lyrion?

It's mostly DACs and amps for Raspberry Pis. There are also some ESP32 boards that show promise. They're all mostly good enough but hardly as polished as the original Slim devices.

Re: Heartbroken by the Sonos App Disaster and What's Happened to the Company

#42

Post by _heimdall »

HelloMcFly wrote: post #40
_heimdall wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The deal breaker for me has been the loss of certain features. Specifically for me, they removed most of the functionality related to local network music libraries. Originally they said the feature was totally supported but just didn't make the cut for the initial app release. I've heard that story before, including from my own PMs. Can't say I'm too surprised that the feature still isn't supported and I've yet to se…

Being forced to unplug my speaker to get the music to stop playing was my deal breaker for the new app. That having been said, I've been a longtime Sonos customer and have loved the experience until this disaster. Unlike other commenters in this thread, my family has loved the ease of use and ability to move music between rooms and add / remove speakers. We also have our record player hooked-up with the Sonos Bridge.…

If I was more invested I'd stick it out as well. I have to expect they'll figure this out, its just a bad look and will take them time to dig out of this mess.

I live in a small place and only have a couple original Sonos 1's. Even then we usually only have one playing. I'm just going to sell both and get a similarly small speaker with an Aux input, it'd be just as convenient for me to plug in a phone and stream music from either Spotify or our home server.

Re: Heartbroken by the Sonos App Disaster and What's Happened to the Company

#43

Post by ryndbfsrw »

J_Shelby_J wrote: post #38
ryndbfsrw wrote: post #2

I feel certain products just dont need apps or 'tech'. Speakers should not be 'smart' anymore than a powertool needs an app. It just turns products that should otherwise be long-lasting become disposable waste once software support evaporates for any reason. I dont think it was a good product even back when it did 'work'. We received a pair as a house-warming gift and I remember not understanding how or why I should…

I wrote a home automation script that would use a camera as a motion detector and when we weren’t home would play a text to voice message on every Sonos speaker in the house if someone entered our apartment. Mostly for announced maintenance visits so they know that I know they’re there. Being able to listen to the show on the tv while in the bathroom or shower is nice. Means we don’t have to pause shows if we don’t w…

Any form of hacking products to be more useful is a win in my books! I can see the multi room play being a nice thing on the odd occasion. Perhaps if I had kids and had to move around the house a bunch more or maybe if it operated as a home system that could also do those additional things I may have had a more positive experience with it. But I maintain my original point that hardware tethered to some software service is basically a random financial-enshitification-quarter away from being bricked and that’s a shame for otherwise excellent hardware

Re: Heartbroken by the Sonos App Disaster and What's Happened to the Company

#44

Post by ryndbfsrw »

raffraffraff wrote: post #29
portn0y wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have that experience. Like every other experience the novelty wears off and I find myself keeping the vibe to a room because it’s distracting; lizard brain stays connected to music and I forget why I went across the house. In the end I use it so sparingly (social gatherings) owners of detached homes without shared walls, could save the money and time and just turn up the volume. That said, as always, YMMV

When I bought my house 13 years ago I asked the electrician to run speaker cable from the living room into the adjoining kitchen. I wired up two pairs of extremely competent car speakers in series (because 4ohms) in the kitchen ceiling, one over each corner of the dining table. I have two amps in the living room, one is an ancient 5.1ch Yamaha that runs a very decent set of speakers and sub, and a nice little Denon s…

This is a great setup. I’m approaching the age where I just want things that work and for no one to move my cheese

Re: Heartbroken by the Sonos App Disaster and What's Happened to the Company

#45

Post by krrrh »

The debacle caused me to try out all the third party apps and I finally found Clic (iOS only), which is made by an indie developer and implements lots of modern stuff that the official app will probably never get around to (live activities on the Lock Screen, Dynamic Island, an actually decent watch app). It’s such a great experience and I’m enjoying and using my Sonos system more than I have in years now.

This has been a great example of how a company culture can go off the rails, and management can chase dubious ideas that sound good, like cloud mediated controls or a unified react native codebase, while a single dev can make something many times better by working off more pragmatic assumptions.

Re: Heartbroken by the Sonos App Disaster and What's Happened to the Company

#46

Post by krrrh »

tikkun wrote: post #6

Sonos owner; I strongly dislike it. I disliked it on the old app, too. Will get Apple homepods next.

I was going to do the same thing.

I posted elsewhere on this thread how the third party app Clic for Sonos has saved me. Might be worth a try before you go through the expense of changing over.

Re: Heartbroken by the Sonos App Disaster and What's Happened to the Company

#47

Post by justinclift »

brnt wrote: post #27
udjdjdvehrh wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the killer feature is that you don't annoy everyone else in your household

Or neighbourhood. I have neighbours with horror vacui: they just need noise 24x7 and their garden is no exception. I really do not understand this feature. If I want to listen to music without headphone, I'm going to sit down in front of my stereo where sound is best.

"horror vacui" on wikipedia doesn't really seem to be turning up anything appropriate to explain what you're meaning?

Re: Heartbroken by the Sonos App Disaster and What's Happened to the Company

#48

Post by kashunstva »

justinclift wrote: post #47
brnt wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or neighbourhood. I have neighbours with horror vacui: they just need noise 24x7 and their garden is no exception. I really do not understand this feature. If I want to listen to music without headphone, I'm going to sit down in front of my stereo where sound is best.

"horror vacui" on wikipedia doesn't really seem to be turning up anything appropriate to explain what you're meaning?

“horror vacui” (Latin) - “dread of the void”

I suppose the neighbours are of the sort, like many seemingly, who cannot tolerate silence.

Re: Heartbroken by the Sonos App Disaster and What's Happened to the Company

#49

Post by tengwar2 »

justinclift wrote: post #47
brnt wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or neighbourhood. I have neighbours with horror vacui: they just need noise 24x7 and their garden is no exception. I really do not understand this feature. If I want to listen to music without headphone, I'm going to sit down in front of my stereo where sound is best.

"horror vacui" on wikipedia doesn't really seem to be turning up anything appropriate to explain what you're meaning?

You might know it as "Nature abhors a vacuum". Originally it was a statement of Cartesian physics: the idea was that "action at a distance" was impossible, and since distant objects did clearly interact (through gravity and light), all of space has to be completely filled with particulate matter (assumed to be in vortex motion). From this and "cogito ergo sum" it was possible to build a model of physics which extended to the ethics of how you should treat your dog.

However here it is used as a simple figure of speech rather than literally: the neighbours don't like to lrave anything unfilled with sound.

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