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Sonos CEO Patrick Spence steps down after disastrous app launch

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Re: Sonos CEO Patrick Spence steps down after disastrous app launch

#131

Post by baumy »

Aaronmacaron wrote: post #48

I see a lot of negative comments in this thread about Sonos in general, which is interesting to me because I'm currently thinking about buying Sonos speakers. What exactly don't you like about it? Is there a good alternative to Sonos that ticks all the following boxes? - Connect two or more speakers wirelessly to get stereo sound (I hate cables) - Good support for different audio sources (bluetooth, Spotify, AirPlay,…

To directly answer your question - when I was trying to setup whole home audio and decided I didn't want to go the rpi route of doing it myself, the alternatives to sonos that I found were "Audio Pro" and "Bluesound". I ended up going with Audio Pro, so can't speak to bluesound, but it should tick all of your boxes.

I have 3 Audio Pro speakers, 2 different models, and they all sync up perfectly. I can select 2 to be stereo if I want. I can play from spotify, airplay, bluetooth, or google cast. The models I have do support 3.5mm input, but I've never used it so not sure if you can plug into one and have it also play in the others. As a bonus, it's all compatible with the wiim streamer devices. After buying a couple wiim minis, my klipsch TV speakers + computer speakers are able to join the whole home system with the Audio Pro speakers.

If I had to do it all again, I might just buy powered speakers of any brand of my choosing and get wiim minis for each of them. That's another viable alternative you could look into. But the Audio Pro speakers are pretty nice imo.

Re: Sonos CEO Patrick Spence steps down after disastrous app launch

#132

Post by mvdtnz »

lawn wrote: post #12

We have a Sonos speaker in the Kitchen and I'm so done with it. We're going to renovate our kitchen in a few months and I plan to install a pair of speakers in the roof and hook them up to a Raspberry Pi with a Hifiberry amp and the HifiberryOS. I'm sure there will be issues but at least I'll be free of Sonos.

Why not just put your sound system on a shelf like everyone else so you don't need to renovate your kitchen next time you want to upgrade it.

Re: Sonos CEO Patrick Spence steps down after disastrous app launch

#133

Post by andrewla »

I see a number of suggestions here for alternatives to Sonos but I'm not sure they meet the requirements or expectations of what I have for Sonos.

I basically want anyone who is on my network to be able to use the music services that I have configured on my Sonos and queue music or set regions or whatever. Ideally this would be mostly unsecured but some light security would be fine -- I basically don't want it to be complicated.

The wifi streaming (as opposed to AirPlay or Casting or Bluetooth) is so that once I start the music playing I no longer have to deal with any continuity of the system I used to trigger the music.

The app changes have unfortunately transformed my Sonos setup into a mostly useless collection; I can still get it to work but it's so cumbersome and the search and playback functions are so broken that half the time it doesn't do what I want.

Are there any real alternatives? Homepods and wiim don't appear to meet these criteria -- is there anything out there that is actually a good Sonos replacement?

Re: Sonos CEO Patrick Spence steps down after disastrous app launch

#134

Post by nickburns »

itissid wrote: post #125
sjm-lbm wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone that an Android user, and has been a user (and formerly, major fan) of Sonos for about ten years now, it honestly seems worse than that. For a while, Sonos speakers appeared as Google Cast targets, which was a phenomenal (if slightly overcomplicated) way to use them without opening up the Sonos app. Then, the cast functionality became really unreliable. Then, it just went away one day. Then, the Sonos app…

Is there a good technical article for why casting has become unreliable over time? Is there like an issue with standardization across Manufacturer's APIs or is it more of an issue with Client SDKs being spotty in implementation?

The former. AirPlay and Google Cast (and Spotify Connect for that matter) are not actually standards at all. They're proprietary protocols subject to change in ways and for reasons not publicly known nor disclosed. But it can typically be safely assumed that any/all changes are made in order to maximize profits.

Re: Sonos CEO Patrick Spence steps down after disastrous app launch

#135

Post by dlcarrier »

mikeryan wrote: post #27
awnird wrote: post #11

Patrick destroyed a successful company, and will be receiving millions of dollars on exit. His current replacement was an executive at the failed Quibi service. Nothing in tech will improve until there are actual consequences for people like this. Serial failures just hop from job to job. ruining products and lives along the way.

Tom Conrad didn’t have anything to do with Quibi’s failure. The app was actually pretty cool. That was a bad business model which a good product couldn’t fix. He’s a product guy going back to being CTO at Pandora. He seems like a pretty good interim choice all things considered.

It had an unusually high minimum version number, which I calculated at the time meant that 10% of US phones and tablets in use at the time couldn't run it. When you've already limited your maximum possible user base to only that market, 10% makes big difference.

Re: Sonos CEO Patrick Spence steps down after disastrous app launch

#136

Post by jra_samba »

miah_ wrote: post #121
kristjansson wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? AFAIK the only speaker that’s fully useless is the Gen 1 Play:5. A few of the Connect / ZonePlayer home audio devices are also incompatible with S2. But everything else will still work, albeit with slightly higher friction setup processes on some?

I don't want to touch my phone to stream music in my home. I don't want a app involved, apart from maybe setup. I don't want 'cloud' involved _at all_. I want to point my music 'streaming' device at a NFS or SMB directory and play music. Would be better if it supported some OSS streaming protocol so I could just stream off my LAN (think mpd/dlna but I have no idea what protocols are "best" here). I'd love to open up…

I had 4 SONOS connect devices (S1 app only) doing exactly this. I recently (last month) replaced them all with BlueSound node nano devices. They do exactly what you require - point it at the SMB server and away they go.

Bonus is they do it over SMB2 allowing me to switch off SMB1 which I'd previously had to keep running for the SONOS devices.

The SONOS connects are going to goodwill.

Re: Sonos CEO Patrick Spence steps down after disastrous app launch

#137

Post by 93po »

Bhilai wrote: post #22

I’m not an audiophile, but after hearing Sonos at a friend’s house and being impressed, I decided to purchase a speaker for my kitchen, where I often listen to music while cooking. I opted for the Sonos Five, assuming that Bluetooth connectivity would be a standard feature on a standalone speaker, especially at this price point. To my surprise, a speaker costing nearly $600 doesn’t support Bluetooth—it only works via…

i got several "nice" sonos speaker for free, tried to stream to them via bluetooth, learned i couldn't, then promptly gave them away. what a garbage experience

Re: Sonos CEO Patrick Spence steps down after disastrous app launch

#138

Post by 93po »

sergioisidoro wrote: post #39
duxup wrote: post #19

They violated the "Things You Should Never Do, Part I" rule: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-... It's such a TEMPTING rule to violate... The amazing part was how BAD it went, supposedly engineers were raising every red flag possible that it wasn't ready and still they did it. Considering how bad it was I can't imagine having any faith in anyone up the chain of command having the power, or…

Basecamp violates that rule often and they are doing ok. If I remember right they even make it a strategy to re-write their whole application every few years. There's no hard rules in software engineering, and all best practices should be put into context. You don't know what monsters lurked in the old code base. So yes in some cases (but not often) re-write is a good / only choice.

basically every billion or trillion dollar company the started as a startup has rewritten their entire platform

Re: Sonos CEO Patrick Spence steps down after disastrous app launch

#139

Post by HelloMcFly »

spott wrote: post #110
HelloMcFly wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The app update was fucking terrible, but it's not the absolute mess it was originally (it's still sluggish at times, but I haven't had it outright fail me in a couple of months). Ultimately, I still find Sonos to be better for me than alternatives because the sound truly is good, and the ease of setting up a home theater wirelessly that I can also use to play my records is unmatched by any alternatives. As bad as Son…

The newer era speakers, and the five have audio in.

Ah, through USB-C? That didn't occur to me.

Re: Sonos CEO Patrick Spence steps down after disastrous app launch

#140

Post by PoppinFreshDo »

awnird wrote: post #11

Patrick destroyed a successful company, and will be receiving millions of dollars on exit. His current replacement was an executive at the failed Quibi service. Nothing in tech will improve until there are actual consequences for people like this. Serial failures just hop from job to job. ruining products and lives along the way.

Even more problematic are the invisible hordes of risk averse middle managers.
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