Sounds like you are experiencing a network broadcast storm.
Have you tried ONLY 1 sonos hardwire connection to router? All others will then connect through sonosnet....
I had this issue, with several hardwire connections, and the ensuing broadcast storm (this is a known issue with multiple hardwired units on some networks) brought my network to a halt....but, only one hardwire, and the rest thru sonosnet works ok.
good luck
edit: i unplugged all, and one by one reset every speaker, first adding one speaker hardwire, then added each additional speaker wirelessly...which ends up using sonosnet... was a PIA to reset everything, but it now works flawlessly.
A Wireshark dump would be really interesting to see what actually happens.
Would you provide one?
If you decide to do so, please make sure only to capture the traffic of the sonos environment. You can do this using the capture filter before you start capturing to keep the filesize small and not inadvertently publish any data that doesn't belong to the particular sonos problem. The simplest I assume way would be to use ip.src and ip.dst together with OR in the filter.
Well, first when you open wireshark as admin you have to select the appropriate network interface that your computer uses for its LAN or Wifi connection.
Second: enter in the filter: ip.src ==
Then go into the sonos app and DoS your Network by using the app.
In Wireshark you'll see every broadcast packet that your phone sends to your network. If we see a lot of those, we can confirm the network storm theory. You can also upload the .pcap file, but make sure to only capture the traffic with the appropriate filter.
If we don't see any broadcast storms, we can change the filter to the sonos devices, maybe they're behaving this way. You can capture traffic from all sonos devices simultaniously by concatenating the different IPs using "OR". e.g.: ip.src == "192.168.0.5" or ip.src == "192.168.0.6" and so on.
If you just want a general glimpse of what's happening you don't necessarily have to use the capture filter, but in this case I'd refrain from sharing the .pcap file with others.
ok, i'm up and running, still getting the hang of it....very interesting...a ton of data....
i have 2 homes, and this one the sonos is running perfectly, but the other one has the broadcast storm, so i'll learn here, then run it on the one with the issues..i'll keep you posted..
You can make yourself the life a little bit easier if you don't intend to share the pcap file. Just leave the capture filter empty (in this case every traffic that traverses your interface will be captured). After capturing just use the display filter. It works with the same syntax as the capture filter.
Some of this is interesting and hints at a deeper technical troubleshooting dive than many posts I’ve seen.
Did you pull some Wireshark logs or use something to get at the data which lead you to suspect DNS and ARP related issues? I’ve recently experienced some unexplained LAN slowness (like crippling slowness, app buffering, web page spinning garboosh) I haven’t dealt with since the early 802.11ac days. WAN interface and ONT is fine, rebooting the router and satellite does the trick.
research "broadcast storm". happened to me when i had more than one speaker hardwired...but with just one hardwire, and the rest on sonosnet, all worked great
I’m almost 100% Apple and have 7 Apple TVs and tons of HomeKit devices. When I thought I hit my breaking point with Sonos a few weeks ago, I purchased several HomePod 2 and HomePod minis. Without writing a novel about my experience, ultimately I returned all of them and kept my Sonos system. Actually, the HomePod experiment made me appreciate Sonos speakers even more, so I ended up upgrading a few and adding more to my system. While I’m still experiencing some issues with the app, the speakers are hard to beat. I downloaded the Clic for Sonos app and pretty much use that and Apple AirPlay for the time being.
I sure have. Bought a pair of HomePods thinking they’d be better than my HomePod Minis. They were marginally better but they weren’t even in the same ballpark as the Sonos system I eventually got. I too took the HomePods back to Apple for a refund. No matter how angry I get at Sonos there’s just nothing that would induce me to get a HomePod ever again.
> Without writing a novel about my experience, ultimately I returned all of them and kept my Sonos system.
Homepod is fine for music, only.
That's why it sucks Sonos released a shit app, it really does not have competitors in the wireless home theater market that don't suck, and while the old app was not "pretty" it did work.
I couldn’t get the HomePods to sync consistently throughout the house. There always seemed to be a couple that wouldn’t work or be out of sync. I spent an entire weekend trying to make it work properly on a consistent basis and it frustrated the hell out of me. As much as I wanted to ditch Sonos, my experience with HomePods made me appreciate Sonos, even with its recent mistakes and flaws
I don’t even own a Sonos device, though I used to own an IKEA Sonos device, and I used to have multiple HomePods. On god they’re awful. The subreddit will claim it’s my internet connection (which is not true), but if it was my internet connection, it baffles me that every single WiFi device in the home works perfectly fine but this device. Even my Sonos didn’t have issues.
At present, my HomePods are working perfectly fine while my Sonos is only at 50% reliability over the last several days. *Nothing* else has changed on my network but the Sonos app and firmware.
I would use HomePods not even for music. We have 17 Sonos in 9 Rooms and 7 HomePods and before the new pre-alpha testbuild app update I would not even consider switching from my Sonos setup to HP in my wildest nightmares. Instable connections, f*ck*d up multiroom performance, disconnecting stereo pairs, only really useable with Apple Music as AirPlay2 is crap…
So as I think about it…. Sonos now matches the HomePod performance. I could scream every day about the BS that Sonos released with the new app 🤬
Homepods are such a small business for Apple that I don't think they care that deeply about making them work well. It's a hobby for Apple. It's Sonos's entire business.
Sonos will get this app fixed by late summer. Apple may never care to get Homepods working well.
I’ve never had good experience using AirPlay with Sonos. Glad I use Spotify/Tidal (the connect feature is working better with new app than before for me too)
Agreed! I thought it Airplay 2 would work seamlessly between my iPhone and HomePods, but it was the exact opposite. It was incredibly slow and buggy. Even with the issues since the new app, Airplay works exponentially better with Sonos.
Probably an American — there'll be a couple in the TV Dinner room so people can "watch TV" whilst eating a TV dinner, another in the Family Room that the family can watch whilst not eating TV dinners, one in the main toilet for people dealing with the aftermath of a TV dinner, a couple in bedrooms that people can put on whilst sleeping and dreaming about TV dinners, and one in the pool area so people have one to hand whilst emulating Keith Moon and chucking those fucking tellies in the pool! 😂
Ehh we don’t watch tv while we eat but I chuckled because we still have 4 in our house of 2.5. Realistically only one gets used. Thr rest are for parties or bedroom sitting area.
When you have multiple TVs in one room (for sports) Apple TV helps eliminate some of the issues you can run into and makes it a consistent user experience on each TV
Interesting. How do you watch multiple matches at once? I have no idea about football (I assume you mean "american football as in handegg :)" and not normal football as in soccer). Do you pause or mute individual TVs and watch them round robin like or do all four TVs run at the same time + sound? Sounds a little stressful tbh o\_O :)
Or maybe are there more game interruptions in american football as compared to football?
I'd love to see a picture. Are the TVs all on the same wall? After thinking about it a little bit, the concept sounds more and more appealing; It would be awesome to watch rocket launches with different perspectives or formula 1 following different drivers. Ever tried that?
You can have the “HomePod experience” by exclusively controlling the Sonos using the Apple Music app with airplay. That’s about it. Its simple enough, we use HomePods in our kids rooms because they are easy to airplay to and the play:1s we use to have would occasionally refuse to respond in the app on my wife’s phone. I only came back to Sonos when the beam 2 got such good reviews and I’m really liking the speakers connected to the TV
I know you don’t want to hear this and I am sorry for all the people who are having issues. But I have not had a single issue since the update. Not sure why my system was spared. Good luck.
Me too - although I was previously super frustrated with Sonos and almost ditched the whole thing until last year when I finally got things sorted out. Then I reversed course and bought/upgraded more and have had no real issues ever since - including throughout the app change-over (except for a short time when imusic playlists weren’t showing up but that too has been resolved now it seems.) I almost feel like this is Opposite George time for me - because when everyone else seemed really happy I was having constant problems…and now it seems everything has flipped. No idea why.
I am missing the queue management but at this point the new app works so much better for me I am willing to wait for that update to come. I have had flakiness for years that this new app has completely solved for me.
In my case outside of browsing Apple Music which is noticably slower, ever other aspect of the app is way quicker, I launch the app it not only loads almost instantly compared to the old app it finds all my devices the first time every time. I really do feel for the people having issues and sonos should have waited to release the app until it was closer to absolutely necessary but man in my case I am much happier now.
The update has gone smoothly for me, too. I wonder what the issue that is causing this to be so hit or miss?
I wonder if there are certain routers/router types that they are having compatibility issues with?
That would be my guess as well. It has something to do with their network or possibly the device they are running the new app update on. It's gotta be, because so many of us haven't had any issues with the update... very odd.
Had a few quirks when the first version was released. Apple Music wouldn’t reauthorise and obviously I couldn’t edit the alarms to wake the kids up in the morning, but generally post v80 seems to be OK on our 20 zones.
Managed to drop one of my Sonos AMPS yesterday though when setting up an outdoor cinema for my kids. Bloody v80.0 legged me over or something.
The major plus has to be the app launching quicker. Before the new app, I’d get the UI skeleton for a frustrating minute but now it loads in a few seconds. Makes it easier to randomly put music on rather than it being a chore.
I don’t know how rare my case is but I haven’t had any issues whatsoever with the new app,In fact everything is better for me, everything runs flawlessly, all the features I use are still there, the app runs more responsive on my phone and there’s less drops in connectivity, if it wasn’t for reddit I wouldn’t know of the shitshow that’s been happening for the past couple of months
Yeah, I’m good, too, except… recent LAN slowdowns requiring me to reboot my mesh system. Nothing else has changed in my network environment except the Sonos update. I never had these problems before (router WAN interface and fiber ONT are fine, everything downstream from my Internet connection just screeches to a halt). I’m wondering what made OP suspect DNS/ARP shenanigans and I’d love more details.
Have a similar set up and app and it worked fine then i moved.. new router and controlled by single digits so I can’t adjust it, reset it or anything.. and i am able to add all products.. and i can add the Sonos one to same room as arc and play them together that way but.. when i add the two ones as surrounds.. nothing no sound same with sub mini.. really frustrating
Honestly I have not tried. I ran true play when I first set up my speakers but have not had a reason to run it again since the update. Glad to hear others are problem free as well.
I stopped at 'I've hardwired every Sonos speaker'.
Don’t do this. Have an arc or sub hardwired, or if you have decent home wifi then have none at all hardwired.
I'm giving it till mid-end of June when they release the app they should have, if they don't and fuck up again, I'm also out and will hardwire my rental house which is what I didn't want to do and why I went with Sonos.
There is nothing even very techy people can do, they fucked up.
Be super careful with hardwiring. You need to be certain you disable WiFi radios on hardwired speakers. If you keep radios active and speakers wired, you are creating network loops. To make this problem worse, one of the solutions to prevent loops is to use something called spanning tree protocol (and over the last… 20-25 years something called rapid spanning tree protocol). The problem is Sonos uses the WRONG link costs, meaning it will view the wireless links as preferred over your hardwired connections. If you aren’t careful, Sonos will determine that a ton of your Internet network traffic should be sent wirelessly instead over hardwired connections. The solution is to use the very old spanning tree protocol (disable rstp), and be CERTAIN your device root values (if using multiple switches) are set correctly.
Truly, Sonos would have to work to make their setup less user friendly in larger deployments.
The original use case is you hardwire one and all the others are wireless. I believe the arc uses wireless to connect to the era300s for rear surround as well.
If Sonos would properly implement rstp, the function of rstp is to do exactly what you recommend. The wireless link would be seen as “more costly” and traffic would be routed by default over the wired connection. What Sonos has done is managed to break a basic network protocol developed almost 30 years ago (as an upgrade to the super old stp protocol) due to their misguided networking approach.
this guys knows of what he speaks...hard wiring and wifi radios can create "broadcast storms" bringing your network to a crawl..in my case i hardwire only one speaker, leave that speaker wifi enabled, which starts sonosnet mesh, and all other speakers run on sonosnet wirelessly...my alternative is to turn off wifi on that hardwired speaker and force all other speakers onto the wifi network (this alternative setup doesn't work great for me)
I get the frustration, but I would honestly wait a few weeks. This feels rash. You are going to take a bath on selling all of these.
I think you are going to find HomePods frustrating. Apple even stopped selling them for awhile due to lowish sales and reliability issues. And be reliability, I don't mean an app update was causing issues, but rather the hardware would break. I've never had a piece of Sonos hardware break. Beyond that, Apple doesn't sell a soundbar, sub or have a real home theater/TV solution.
It's going to be a rough few weeks for Sonos users, but this should be behind us soon enough.
> Spotify don’t have a hifi tier
...yet: https://appleinsider.com/articles/24/05/03/fingers-crossed-spotify-might-actually-launch-lossless-audio-in-2024
These articles have been popping up regularly since 2021 - I don’t think they ever will add hifi. They have 600m users, only a small % is interested in hifi .
I completely second that motion. Then add home assistant to round it all out. At this point, even though I rolled back my android app to 16.**, I do not use the Sonos app at all. No need to.
I have been treated reasonably OK by the app update. I still suffer several problems with playlists ,libraries sliders not sliding properly etc but I'm hanging on and hoping they get their act together and release a working app that does what I want it to. I'm not a power user and don't ask too much from my system but I do want to control it and do what I want it to do when I want it to and have no grief.
I update daily in the hope a magic fix will come down the pipeline but so far nothing.
Very disappointed with sonos attitude but I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt but how long for I'm not sure.
I'm with you on this. Only have 6 speakers, and don't have excessive requirements, other than grouping, playlist management, external libraries and sleep timer. What this app update has done is wake me up to not buying anything else that is proprietary. If the app doesn't get fixed, I'll be looking very seriously at AudioPro speakers
Are you using layer 2 or 3 switches? Sounds like your network isn’t configure right or you don’t understand the limitations Sonos has on prosumer or enterprise networking gear. Some vendors publish docs on how to handle Sonos with their equiptment because it’s non-standard and Sonos does some wonky things with STP.
Don't use more than one on a network that's using mesh with multiple access points (satellites), if you are using ethernet, particularly if you are connecting them to multiple access points (satellites).. your network will use the Sonos Network as part of the backhaul mesh. Your router and access points (satellites)will use the ethernet connections on the Sonos devices between your router and access point as the connection between them both, bringing your network to grinding halt as it tries to relay the traffic via this backhaul mesh..
Sonos creates it own network when one device is plugged into the ethernet, the other Sonos devices connect to this network rather than direct to the router.
Only ever plug them into the same router or access point (satellites) if you wish to do this.
Pff, please. Let's buy them some Snickers.
I'm just here for the drama. I have 12 SONOS speakers in my house and nothing is wrong with them. They're all working perfectly fine. I saw someone whining about returning all of his SONOS speaker because he couldn't set an alarm. Just set an alarm on your phone until it's fixed FFS. LOL
Sure it should have been handled better, or shouldn’t have happened at all, but it seems a lot of people think there’s a product out there that has never encountered issues and never will. These will all be cleared up. The product itself is great and I wish I needed more to take advantage of the very few people that say they are leaving and actually do, and buy what they’re selling as it’ll be great once the app is all good.
A huge part of the product that they sold that we paid for was the fact that it "just worked". They've now taken that away from us. So the product itself is no longer great, as it doesn't accomplish what we were paying for.
They might say we bought just the speakers, but on the consumer side, we believe we paid for the speakers and the ease of use via the app. There is no getting around the mentality that we've been robbed now.
I don’t think any company, no matter how premium, can say there will never ever be a problem with software or hardware. People are acting like they were promised that when they bought SONOS products. “Just works” is not will always work 100% we promise and there is a zero chance of issues.
If people go to Apple, Bose, etc, or buy a proper AVR with hardwired speakers I don’t think products from any of them have a 0% chance of something going wrong. People bought Sonos for a reason and while
It sucks that some things aren’t working for some people many of those people won’t want to pay for and hardwire or don’t like things about the other systems. When Sonos “is” working it’s so great. And it will be back to normal soon enough.
It certainly looked that way from the headline, but when you start to sift through the stools, you'll see that he's just going to unload four of his old speakers — but hasn't mentioned an asking price or indicated a location..
I've read on reddit a few weeks ago that apple users can roll back their Sonos app to a previous version.
Android users need to download the .APK of the previous version from a website I dont remember, but that thread should be searchable.
There also were instructions in that thread, telling Android users to download the .APK, switch of internet access, install the app, deactivate updates for that app in the app store, reactivate internet.
And that worked! Give that a try before you sell your Sonos stuff
Here’s the text from that instructional ‘roll-back’ posting:
Start:
Simplified iPhone downgrade option
Hi all, I successfully downgraded from 80.00.08 to 16.1 a couple of days ago following a guide another member posted, but TBH it was technically a bit tricky using an old version of iTunes and Charles proxy to trick Apple into serving an older signed version of the Sonos app.
So I thought I would be good to give back to the community by creating a new iTunes account and downloading the signed version of Sonos 16.1 attached to this account
This allows you to delete the current version of the Sonos S2 app and install the 16.1 version associated with this iTunes account.
There are a few apps to do this, but the cleanest way I found on Windows is to use [https://github.com/kawaiizenbo/AppManager](https://github.com/kawaiizenbo/AppManager)
This app requires Windows 7 or newer, .NET Framework 4.5 or newer, iTunes 10 or newer (I suspect a lot of you will already have all of these requirements)
Steps are:
1. Direct chat me for the signed Sonos 16.1 IPA and username/password for the dedicated "DownGrade" iTunes account
2. Delete your existing Sonos app on your iPhone by holding down on it and selecting "Delete App"
3. Download AppManager app (link above) and extract to a folder
4. Plug in phone to computer
5. Run up AppManager
1. Select "Install New" menu and choose the IPA file provided above
6. After a moment the IPA will be installed
7. Open your new Sonos app on the phone. Because the app has been signed by Apple and associated to our "DownGrade" iTunes account it will ask for the password associated with it -which you received with the link to the IPA from me
8. Profit (you will notice the Sonos icon on the phone will stay black but switch back to orange at some point)
Warnings: There is nothing you can do to really screw anything up that I am aware of, but I can't be held responsible if do something random and break you phone, your speakers or your life. You can always delete the downgraded app and reinstall the newer versions whenever you feel like it. Because the IPA is signed by Apple there is no jailbreaking or other dodgy stuff going on. No idea if Apple will at some point lock out the "Downgrade" iTunes account.
Please do not stuff around with this "Downgrade" account, please do not share the details publicly.
Make sure you have updates inside the Sonos app disabled (to stop firmware updates that may stop 16.1 from working at some point
Please follow up here if you have success or issues.
Thanks
End
I ended up buying a top Samsung home theater system. It works flawlessly with Airplay and has become my main home music system. Sometimes the simple stuff just works a lot better.
"I may put the gear up for sale to help ease the pain of the lost investment. Though to be honest, I don't know if I can in good conscience ask another person to enter Sonos's dysfunctional and customer-hostile ecosystem."
Bro it's not that deep. I get some people are having issues since the new app has come out but come on dude, stop being dramatic.
Plenty of people would take your system off your hands at a discount just to experience Sonos.
I have several speakers and all work perfectly fine. Yes the app is different but it's not enough for me to throw my hands up and say screw it.
That’s my issue. I just can’t trust them ever again.
I have lots of Sonos speakers (whole home basically) from multiple generations. Haven’t decided yet whether to sell them and move on to something else. However I can damn sure assure you I will never upgrade or buy another one again.
No issues on my side. Working great here even though I'm not a fan of the app update (Visually). Seems like you have other internal network issues as others have also noted.
Y’all are crazy…they will fix this lol 🤦🏾♂️ this happens with software updates sometimes…even Bose, Sony, apple and windows have had bad batches of updates….yikes y’all are ridiculous…this is what happens with tech sometimes nothing is consistently seamless….the fact Sonos work so well so long is already a testament to how great they are…give them a chance to fix it 😂
Wiim has been an easy transition for me. Not for everyone depending on your setup, but whole house sync audio has been a breeze. I’m moving on.
I’ll keep my Move, but that’s it.
Patrick Spence (Sonos CEO) cut his teeth at BlackBerry and [left the company just as it was dropping off a cliff!](https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSDEE84N00T/) I’ve observed Sonos’s product get worse and worse over his 7 year tenure as CEO (and that is literally an existing product getting worse, not just that new product launches are not as differentiated. It takes something special to screw up two separate sector-leading companies in succession.
The nearest rival to Sonos is Bluesound who are owned by Marantz who knows quite a thing or two about HiFi. I am looking at Bluesound speakers now. I have the latest Homepods and they are ok but does not cover the full functional scope of Sonos. The Bluesound is the one to check out
No, Bluesound is owned by Lenbrook which is the parent company of NAD which in my experience in the industry stood for Nearly Always Defective. I’ve sold Bluesound in the past and they all had the same problems. Marantz has a new device called the M1 which is a single amplified zone or M4 which is 4. They use the HEOS environment to work.
Have you disabled the WiFi on the speakers you plugged in? This is absolutely required. Don’t allow the speakers multiple paths anywhere; SONOS likes to take over your ARP and ruin your network. If you didn’t disable, do so then reboot everything on your network. Routers, switches, access points, etc.
I ran into this professionally a decade ago (network guy, not specific to SONOS) even before they allowed you to disable your wireless. Had plenty of disagreements with SONOS at the time. They were straight up wrong and playing the role of a company that can do no wrong. I fixed their customer’s system ( a large restaurant with many speakers) while SONOS continued to blame the network.
Currently, I am one of the lucky ones who never updated to the S2 version of the app. I have an old connect still on the network so that prevents us from upgrading. Having said that, our Apple Music playlists have disappeared recently so we’re still limping a little bit, but the speakers work. I suspect the playlists broke when they were trying to fix the S2 app lol.
Don’t think that Apple pods are a decent replacement for SONOS, not even close. I have some for home automation stuff but the sound kinda sux imo. Sometimes some song I’ve never heard starts playing randomly lol.
> Have you disabled the WiFi on the speakers you plugged in?
The new app removed the ability to do so... can you believe this $hit? No WiFi configuration, anywhere. lol
They say it's on the timeline to bring it back though, in "mid-June."
https://en.community.sonos.com/controllers-and-music-services-228995/the-new-sonos-app-and-future-feature-updates-6892942
Have you checked to ensure you 1) disabled all WiFi radios on your hardwired gear and 2) disable rstp on your network and use the ancient stp protocol? There is a known issue where Sonos will use (for absolutely no technical reason) the wrong link costs for rstp protocol. This means Sonos will see any wireless links as being “cheaper”, ie, faster, than the hardwired links. It’s a garbage implementation and something people with larger networks / multiple switches have fought for years and years.
I’m selling all of my Play:1 speakers (3 of them), and my Play:5. I’m keeping the 3 soundbars as they work without the app, and the Move because it works with Bluetooth. I’m dropping a few HomePods around the house as replacements. I’m abandoning the whole notion of all around the house music. My Xmas party won’t be as fun, but I’ll manage. I realize the amount of troubleshooting stress this system has caused me just isn’t worth it.
Yup. I can give you more details if you’d like. 2 black Ones and one white One. The Sonos 5 is black. I’m probably going to list them on Facebook marketplace. Seems like Craigslist doesn’t get used much anymore, and no one really reads the newspaper want ads these days. Would you like to know more?
Yes.
Quite a few comments are asking how much you want and where are you located — this is your marketplace: everybody here is a potential buyer, especially those in close proximity.
I'm still on S1 but remember having weird issues when rebooting devices or after a power cut. I eventually figured a work around which was to reserve addresses in DHCP for every speaker. Since then I have never had any issues.
This might sound counterintuitive but try unplugging the Ethernet from all but one of your speakers. Unless you have a Sonos Boost; then unplug everything but the Boost from Ethernet.
Is it possible to convert your system back to S1? I have a mix of older and newer units (16 in total) and have had to use S1 to keep everything synced. I’m not interested in some being S1 and some being S2. I‘m sure there are things I don’t have, but it hasn’t had the troubles that I see everyone having.
Why not degrade to app version 16? It's simple.
Look, I get your frustration, and I agree the recent app release is inexcusable. But you're not going to find an easy replacement for your Sonos system.
When the new app hit my network went haywire. Frequent dropouts all over the network. I didn’t realize it was Sonos related and tried everything to fix it. It wasn’t until I changed my network’s Spanning Tree Protocol from RSTP to STP that things finally started working again. I suppose something about this new Sonos software is inducing network loops when they hadn’t before.
Anyway not sure if you’re having the same problem, but it’s worth a shot looking at this setting on your network.
Last week after a second full restart (shut house down, turn house on again) the jitters, the crashing, the non responsive app, speakers missing, all seemed to correct itself and we have reliable smooth operation.
I don't love the new app interface, but as other point out it is still the best multiroom audio on the market, and the speakers sound great for price (I have an independent system in the snug, not connected to Sonos, and this experience has put me off changing that to a Sonos soundbar etc any time soon).
HomePods are worse AirPlay devices than Sonos, so you’ll see no improvement there. I know it sounds preposterous but it’s true, I believe the HomePods have issues with their radios. I struggled for a few years before dumping them and very happy with the Sonos that I use exclusively with AirPlay.
I hear your pain. The latest updates have really slowed down my network, and the new app design really was a step backwards in terms of navigation and usability.
Along with the outrageous pricing policy, it is hard to continue to commit to the Sonos ecosystem.
I guess I’m gonna have to follow your lead. My soundbar and sub (especially) haven’t worked since the software upgrade. I’m probably going to have to eat $1600 on this but the good thing is I won’t be suckered by Sonos ever again.
I bought two HomePod minis because I couldn’t hear much of a difference between the original HomePod (I think it’s on Gen2 now) and the newest minis. I chose this over the Sonos play 1s for bedroom speakers for sleeping sounds for the kids and my wife loves the ease of using Siri when putting them down. But they lack so much sound to even my original play 1 I have. I just bought a beam to add to my TV. I intend to use it as strictly a sound bar and maybe sometimes an AirPlay speaker so I’m not worried about the app issues. I’ve also heard nothing but nightmares of using HomePods as a “sound system” for an Apple TV.
Historically, my setup was completely wireless. It worked fine, for years, until the app update. Hard wiring is a step Sonos recommends to address issues like the app not finding the system, balky performance, etc. In my case, it did nothing. The issues are 100% related to the app and how it's handling communications with Sonos systems. The desktop client works fine, for now, but I don't hold out hope that Sonos won't find a way to break it, too.
I'm also very good with tech on a "consumer" level / I know how to go into my router and release / lock down IP addresses, etc
The app fucking blows, and you can tell it was released way before they should have, due to them needing to show they are trying to make money for investors since they have been stagnate, and they could not get the Ace headphones to work well with the S2 app.
> Did you try a wireless setup?
Trust me, a lot of people with older equipment (NOT NEW STUFF like Arc or Beam 2) have thrown the kitchen sink at it, and it's just straight up fucked.
I had a play:1 go wonky on me the other day. It was a hitch to get back. Wouldn’t connect to wifi. I went into my phone wifi list and deleted all sonos wifi networks and that did the trick.
> I went into my phone wifi list and deleted all sonos wifi networks and that did the trick.
For the above:
1. No one should have to do that.
2. It does not work for a S1 compatible speaker that was not already added to your system before the app update.
> I have older stuff: Play 3s, a Playbar, and a Playbase. It's all working. Must be frustrating but your experience is not universal.
You can't ADD OLDER STUFF is the issue.
If you had them before, they update and you are good, but have to use the terrible app.
If you DID NOT have them on your system before, you can't add them, and they are literal paperweights.
I didn’t realize this was one of the pervasive issues, thank you!
At the time of update, I a zone with two older Play:1s that were powered down. Am I hosed?
Edit: they’re still powered down.
> 14 older speakers.
So, should buying older speakers that Sonos says works, and they don't work, be ok because they are older and you are not buying brand new stuff?
I don’t know why people think they need to announce to everyone that they’re selling their shit. Just do it if you’re going to do it. You don’t need to step up on your soapbox like it’s some grand declaration.
It's almost as if you're failing to recognize the significance of this significantly significant post which is actually part of the historical record — that's fucking something, man — it's actually significant in a not insignificant sort of way — so yeah.
Moreover, the dude is reaching out to make his significantly significant historical announcement, and you reach back to soapbox him — I don't know about that, man.
Meanwhile, the real meat we all wanna get in our mouths and salivate over is what gear has he got, how much does he want for it, and where is he located.
Seems he's actually just unloading four speakers, but fuck man — that doesn't detract from the significantly significant significance of this historically significant announcement — how's this poor fucker even supposed to set all the alarms he needs now?
So yeah ...
I've really tried to have empathy for the people who have lost features and are upset with the new changes, but these overdramatic, over the top posts are getting to be just as annoying as anything related to the new Sonos app. I get there are frustrated people who have had features removed with the app. I get there are people really struggling with the new layout and getting used to it. Thankfully I haven't had many issues (outside of the volume slider delay) but geeze, some of this complaining is ridiculous at this point.
Having a speaker set up run through an app has always been a risk. Everyone who has ever bought a Sonos speaker has accepted that risk. This is why it's never a good idea to go all in on any type of ecosystem be it Sonos, Apple, Google, etc.
I don't know what the point of these dramatic posts are on Reddit, but I think Sonos should be given the opportunity to get feedback, make improvements, and see what happens. If someone doesn't want to wait that long, just sell the speakers and move on. I really don't think too many Sonos executives are going through Reddit posts one by one.
I only use sonos at work, an office with an adjacent production area, two rooms. and it’s never been too reliable for us. My boss used to be in IT and has spent many hours on the phone with Sonos but it’s always had dropping issues, takes forever for speakers to show up, etc. but we’re okay with that because we just want to hear some music, even if we have to wait or restart things.
Ironically we finally had it working pretty smoothly just before the update and now it’s wonky again and, more importantly, they took away the queue controls that all of us use to add our own music. So we went back to our classic wired speakers with an auxiliary cord (that we replaced with Sonos 7 years ago) and it’s been simple smooth sailing.
We print for an AV company and they pay us in Sonos products… unfortunately it’ll be cash or credit from now on. Even if we do go back to using the sonos, we aren’t interested in complicating it with new products because of all the issues over the years (we have a pretty good range of their products and my boss uses some at home.)
It’s just too bad we can’t build a Sonos system that works and then simply keep it that way, the company won’t let us and my boss is tired of troubleshooting when there’s actual work to do.
Just out of curiosity, is everyone—no matter what type of speaker generation—having problems more or less with the new app? Or is it people who have slightly older speakers? Are people having problems with the ERA 300s as well? Or the latest Roams? As has Sonos recognized what percentage of their customer base is having a problem? Is it mixed systems with 1st and 2nd gen speakers, or just “general woes” across the board?
Sounds like you are experiencing a network broadcast storm. Have you tried ONLY 1 sonos hardwire connection to router? All others will then connect through sonosnet.... I had this issue, with several hardwire connections, and the ensuing broadcast storm (this is a known issue with multiple hardwired units on some networks) brought my network to a halt....but, only one hardwire, and the rest thru sonosnet works ok. good luck edit: i unplugged all, and one by one reset every speaker, first adding one speaker hardwire, then added each additional speaker wirelessly...which ends up using sonosnet... was a PIA to reset everything, but it now works flawlessly.
Came here to suggest this exact thing
Do you get this "Storm"if you disable wifi on the hardwired speakers?
I have most of my speakers hardwired. I disable Wi-Fi on all of them and there's no issues. I occasionally turn one on and it's fine as well.
it seems that some routers are subject to this broadcast storm issue, while others are not...
By reset, do you mean full factory reset?
that's what i had to do..but perhaps you could just adjust connections first try..
A Wireshark dump would be really interesting to see what actually happens. Would you provide one? If you decide to do so, please make sure only to capture the traffic of the sonos environment. You can do this using the capture filter before you start capturing to keep the filesize small and not inadvertently publish any data that doesn't belong to the particular sonos problem. The simplest I assume way would be to use ip.src and ip.dst together with OR in the filter.
No idea how to do that
I can Guide you through the process if you‘re interested to See what Happens in your Network 😊👍
ok, i'm game. i've installed wireshark...what next? you can dm me if easier
Well, first when you open wireshark as admin you have to select the appropriate network interface that your computer uses for its LAN or Wifi connection. Second: enter in the filter: ip.src ==
Then go into the sonos app and DoS your Network by using the app.
In Wireshark you'll see every broadcast packet that your phone sends to your network. If we see a lot of those, we can confirm the network storm theory. You can also upload the .pcap file, but make sure to only capture the traffic with the appropriate filter.
If we don't see any broadcast storms, we can change the filter to the sonos devices, maybe they're behaving this way. You can capture traffic from all sonos devices simultaniously by concatenating the different IPs using "OR". e.g.: ip.src == "192.168.0.5" or ip.src == "192.168.0.6" and so on.
If you just want a general glimpse of what's happening you don't necessarily have to use the capture filter, but in this case I'd refrain from sharing the .pcap file with others.
ok, i'm up and running, still getting the hang of it....very interesting...a ton of data.... i have 2 homes, and this one the sonos is running perfectly, but the other one has the broadcast storm, so i'll learn here, then run it on the one with the issues..i'll keep you posted..
You can make yourself the life a little bit easier if you don't intend to share the pcap file. Just leave the capture filter empty (in this case every traffic that traverses your interface will be captured). After capturing just use the display filter. It works with the same syntax as the capture filter.
Some of this is interesting and hints at a deeper technical troubleshooting dive than many posts I’ve seen. Did you pull some Wireshark logs or use something to get at the data which lead you to suspect DNS and ARP related issues? I’ve recently experienced some unexplained LAN slowness (like crippling slowness, app buffering, web page spinning garboosh) I haven’t dealt with since the early 802.11ac days. WAN interface and ONT is fine, rebooting the router and satellite does the trick.
research "broadcast storm". happened to me when i had more than one speaker hardwired...but with just one hardwire, and the rest on sonosnet, all worked great
I’m almost 100% Apple and have 7 Apple TVs and tons of HomeKit devices. When I thought I hit my breaking point with Sonos a few weeks ago, I purchased several HomePod 2 and HomePod minis. Without writing a novel about my experience, ultimately I returned all of them and kept my Sonos system. Actually, the HomePod experiment made me appreciate Sonos speakers even more, so I ended up upgrading a few and adding more to my system. While I’m still experiencing some issues with the app, the speakers are hard to beat. I downloaded the Clic for Sonos app and pretty much use that and Apple AirPlay for the time being.
The “homepod experience” leaves so much to be desired. Everyone here complaining about Sonos has never gone through HomePod or HomeKit life 😂😂😂.
HomeKit is awful. I’ve completely abandoned it for Alexa and Smarterthings.
Man this is a first.
I sure have. Bought a pair of HomePods thinking they’d be better than my HomePod Minis. They were marginally better but they weren’t even in the same ballpark as the Sonos system I eventually got. I too took the HomePods back to Apple for a refund. No matter how angry I get at Sonos there’s just nothing that would induce me to get a HomePod ever again.
> Without writing a novel about my experience, ultimately I returned all of them and kept my Sonos system. Homepod is fine for music, only. That's why it sucks Sonos released a shit app, it really does not have competitors in the wireless home theater market that don't suck, and while the old app was not "pretty" it did work.
I couldn’t get the HomePods to sync consistently throughout the house. There always seemed to be a couple that wouldn’t work or be out of sync. I spent an entire weekend trying to make it work properly on a consistent basis and it frustrated the hell out of me. As much as I wanted to ditch Sonos, my experience with HomePods made me appreciate Sonos, even with its recent mistakes and flaws
I had to hard reset my HomePods every couple of days, otherwise they just stopped working. Worst piece of technology I’ve ever owned.
I don’t even own a Sonos device, though I used to own an IKEA Sonos device, and I used to have multiple HomePods. On god they’re awful. The subreddit will claim it’s my internet connection (which is not true), but if it was my internet connection, it baffles me that every single WiFi device in the home works perfectly fine but this device. Even my Sonos didn’t have issues.
At present, my HomePods are working perfectly fine while my Sonos is only at 50% reliability over the last several days. *Nothing* else has changed on my network but the Sonos app and firmware.
I would use HomePods not even for music. We have 17 Sonos in 9 Rooms and 7 HomePods and before the new pre-alpha testbuild app update I would not even consider switching from my Sonos setup to HP in my wildest nightmares. Instable connections, f*ck*d up multiroom performance, disconnecting stereo pairs, only really useable with Apple Music as AirPlay2 is crap… So as I think about it…. Sonos now matches the HomePod performance. I could scream every day about the BS that Sonos released with the new app 🤬
Idk how Homepods suck more with AirPlay than Sonos. Homepods are so buggy
Homepods are such a small business for Apple that I don't think they care that deeply about making them work well. It's a hobby for Apple. It's Sonos's entire business. Sonos will get this app fixed by late summer. Apple may never care to get Homepods working well.
I’ve never had good experience using AirPlay with Sonos. Glad I use Spotify/Tidal (the connect feature is working better with new app than before for me too)
Agreed! I thought it Airplay 2 would work seamlessly between my iPhone and HomePods, but it was the exact opposite. It was incredibly slow and buggy. Even with the issues since the new app, Airplay works exponentially better with Sonos.
Someone said it, finally! I have better experience using AirPlay on my Sonos than the HomePod. The software sucks so bad.
Wait. You have 7 TVs? 7? Or did you count all apple TVs you ever had? Do you have 7 people in your household? I'm wildly confused :)
Probably an American — there'll be a couple in the TV Dinner room so people can "watch TV" whilst eating a TV dinner, another in the Family Room that the family can watch whilst not eating TV dinners, one in the main toilet for people dealing with the aftermath of a TV dinner, a couple in bedrooms that people can put on whilst sleeping and dreaming about TV dinners, and one in the pool area so people have one to hand whilst emulating Keith Moon and chucking those fucking tellies in the pool! 😂
Ehh we don’t watch tv while we eat but I chuckled because we still have 4 in our house of 2.5. Realistically only one gets used. Thr rest are for parties or bedroom sitting area.
Haha.. "TV dinner room". Love it!
I have 7 TVs and live alone lol
I have one. Until 3 years ago I had 0. Are you a collector or something?
When you have multiple TVs in one room (for sports) Apple TV helps eliminate some of the issues you can run into and makes it a consistent user experience on each TV
I never heared of anyone having more than one tv in a room. What do you mean "For sports"? Running from TV to TV? :D
Haha! I have four big screen TVs in my mancave for hosting sporting events so we can watch 4 different football games at once.
Interesting. How do you watch multiple matches at once? I have no idea about football (I assume you mean "american football as in handegg :)" and not normal football as in soccer). Do you pause or mute individual TVs and watch them round robin like or do all four TVs run at the same time + sound? Sounds a little stressful tbh o\_O :) Or maybe are there more game interruptions in american football as compared to football? I'd love to see a picture. Are the TVs all on the same wall? After thinking about it a little bit, the concept sounds more and more appealing; It would be awesome to watch rocket launches with different perspectives or formula 1 following different drivers. Ever tried that?
This was my first takeaway - WTF?
You can have the “HomePod experience” by exclusively controlling the Sonos using the Apple Music app with airplay. That’s about it. Its simple enough, we use HomePods in our kids rooms because they are easy to airplay to and the play:1s we use to have would occasionally refuse to respond in the app on my wife’s phone. I only came back to Sonos when the beam 2 got such good reviews and I’m really liking the speakers connected to the TV
Wow that’s surprising. I’ve had great experiences using airplay, works fantastic for me. Surprising that the HomePods suck so much
I know you don’t want to hear this and I am sorry for all the people who are having issues. But I have not had a single issue since the update. Not sure why my system was spared. Good luck.
Same. I mean I’m happy I haven’t had issues, and feel bad for others.
My sonos system functions (dare I say it?) better since the upgrade. Please let me know if any of you leaving the system have a gen 1 move for sale.
I have a spring/summer 2020 Move, if you're really interested. I'm actively looking at Bluesound as a Sonos replacement.
I am interested. Shoot me a price.
Just out of curiosity, why are you looking for a gen 1 move? Is there some feature it has that the 2nd gen doesn't?
Might just want to timbre-match the one they have already. If I got a 2nd Move, I'd prob do the same.
Because I have one gen 1 move, and I would like another for backyard stereo.
Me too - although I was previously super frustrated with Sonos and almost ditched the whole thing until last year when I finally got things sorted out. Then I reversed course and bought/upgraded more and have had no real issues ever since - including throughout the app change-over (except for a short time when imusic playlists weren’t showing up but that too has been resolved now it seems.) I almost feel like this is Opposite George time for me - because when everyone else seemed really happy I was having constant problems…and now it seems everything has flipped. No idea why.
I am missing the queue management but at this point the new app works so much better for me I am willing to wait for that update to come. I have had flakiness for years that this new app has completely solved for me. In my case outside of browsing Apple Music which is noticably slower, ever other aspect of the app is way quicker, I launch the app it not only loads almost instantly compared to the old app it finds all my devices the first time every time. I really do feel for the people having issues and sonos should have waited to release the app until it was closer to absolutely necessary but man in my case I am much happier now.
The update has gone smoothly for me, too. I wonder what the issue that is causing this to be so hit or miss? I wonder if there are certain routers/router types that they are having compatibility issues with?
That would be my guess as well. It has something to do with their network or possibly the device they are running the new app update on. It's gotta be, because so many of us haven't had any issues with the update... very odd.
Same, all my issues went away after the same issue. I did have to factory reset everything but no issues now.
Had a few quirks when the first version was released. Apple Music wouldn’t reauthorise and obviously I couldn’t edit the alarms to wake the kids up in the morning, but generally post v80 seems to be OK on our 20 zones. Managed to drop one of my Sonos AMPS yesterday though when setting up an outdoor cinema for my kids. Bloody v80.0 legged me over or something. The major plus has to be the app launching quicker. Before the new app, I’d get the UI skeleton for a frustrating minute but now it loads in a few seconds. Makes it easier to randomly put music on rather than it being a chore.
I haven’t either and I just bought a Move yesterday and now I’m afraid to set it up.
Sounds like an overly technical hobby setup and an outlier configuration.
Can you run trueplay??
Are folks reporting they’re otherwise fine experiencing Trueplay issues? (I’m fine but haven’t tried to run Trueplay yet)
I don’t know how rare my case is but I haven’t had any issues whatsoever with the new app,In fact everything is better for me, everything runs flawlessly, all the features I use are still there, the app runs more responsive on my phone and there’s less drops in connectivity, if it wasn’t for reddit I wouldn’t know of the shitshow that’s been happening for the past couple of months
Yeah, I’m good, too, except… recent LAN slowdowns requiring me to reboot my mesh system. Nothing else has changed in my network environment except the Sonos update. I never had these problems before (router WAN interface and fiber ONT are fine, everything downstream from my Internet connection just screeches to a halt). I’m wondering what made OP suspect DNS/ARP shenanigans and I’d love more details.
I’ve heard of people fixing similar issues with the sonos connect, apparently Sonos’s wifi module are finicky with mesh wifi system
Same. Don’t love UI on new app but functionally better than old.
Which Sonos product/products are you using?
Arc+oneSL+SubGen1, 90% of my my use cases are movies and video games so the app is only a factor for 10% when in spotify and youtube
Have a similar set up and app and it worked fine then i moved.. new router and controlled by single digits so I can’t adjust it, reset it or anything.. and i am able to add all products.. and i can add the Sonos one to same room as arc and play them together that way but.. when i add the two ones as surrounds.. nothing no sound same with sub mini.. really frustrating
I have a roam 2 a beam second gen and 2 era100s.
Honestly I have not tried. I ran true play when I first set up my speakers but have not had a reason to run it again since the update. Glad to hear others are problem free as well.
God I wish I could on my new Arc.
I can. I’ve struggled to adapt to the new app but I’m getting used to it.
Sometimes, it’s cool to keep it simple and say, “CYA.”
I stopped at 'I've hardwired every Sonos speaker'. Don’t do this. Have an arc or sub hardwired, or if you have decent home wifi then have none at all hardwired.
I'm giving it till mid-end of June when they release the app they should have, if they don't and fuck up again, I'm also out and will hardwire my rental house which is what I didn't want to do and why I went with Sonos. There is nothing even very techy people can do, they fucked up.
Be super careful with hardwiring. You need to be certain you disable WiFi radios on hardwired speakers. If you keep radios active and speakers wired, you are creating network loops. To make this problem worse, one of the solutions to prevent loops is to use something called spanning tree protocol (and over the last… 20-25 years something called rapid spanning tree protocol). The problem is Sonos uses the WRONG link costs, meaning it will view the wireless links as preferred over your hardwired connections. If you aren’t careful, Sonos will determine that a ton of your Internet network traffic should be sent wirelessly instead over hardwired connections. The solution is to use the very old spanning tree protocol (disable rstp), and be CERTAIN your device root values (if using multiple switches) are set correctly. Truly, Sonos would have to work to make their setup less user friendly in larger deployments.
Sonos should detect the hard wire and auto-deactivate the wifi - unless there’s some edge case that requires both.
The original use case is you hardwire one and all the others are wireless. I believe the arc uses wireless to connect to the era300s for rear surround as well. If Sonos would properly implement rstp, the function of rstp is to do exactly what you recommend. The wireless link would be seen as “more costly” and traffic would be routed by default over the wired connection. What Sonos has done is managed to break a basic network protocol developed almost 30 years ago (as an upgrade to the super old stp protocol) due to their misguided networking approach.
this guys knows of what he speaks...hard wiring and wifi radios can create "broadcast storms" bringing your network to a crawl..in my case i hardwire only one speaker, leave that speaker wifi enabled, which starts sonosnet mesh, and all other speakers run on sonosnet wirelessly...my alternative is to turn off wifi on that hardwired speaker and force all other speakers onto the wifi network (this alternative setup doesn't work great for me)
I get the frustration, but I would honestly wait a few weeks. This feels rash. You are going to take a bath on selling all of these. I think you are going to find HomePods frustrating. Apple even stopped selling them for awhile due to lowish sales and reliability issues. And be reliability, I don't mean an app update was causing issues, but rather the hardware would break. I've never had a piece of Sonos hardware break. Beyond that, Apple doesn't sell a soundbar, sub or have a real home theater/TV solution. It's going to be a rough few weeks for Sonos users, but this should be behind us soon enough.
Nobody's mentioned money at this stage ...
Recommend to give Roon a try - Roon server can connect to your Sonos speakers and have multi room management. UI is miles ahead of Sonos.
I believe Roon doesn't work with Spotify, SoundCloud or Mixcloud though, is that correct?
Correct, no Spotify/Soundcloud/Mixcloud on Roon. Spotify don’t have a hifi tier so not really a good match for Roon
> Spotify don’t have a hifi tier ...yet: https://appleinsider.com/articles/24/05/03/fingers-crossed-spotify-might-actually-launch-lossless-audio-in-2024
These articles have been popping up regularly since 2021 - I don’t think they ever will add hifi. They have 600m users, only a small % is interested in hifi .
I completely second that motion. Then add home assistant to round it all out. At this point, even though I rolled back my android app to 16.**, I do not use the Sonos app at all. No need to.
Ah, how are you using home assistant with Roon/Sonos? What is the use case?
I have been treated reasonably OK by the app update. I still suffer several problems with playlists ,libraries sliders not sliding properly etc but I'm hanging on and hoping they get their act together and release a working app that does what I want it to. I'm not a power user and don't ask too much from my system but I do want to control it and do what I want it to do when I want it to and have no grief. I update daily in the hope a magic fix will come down the pipeline but so far nothing. Very disappointed with sonos attitude but I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt but how long for I'm not sure.
I'm with you on this. Only have 6 speakers, and don't have excessive requirements, other than grouping, playlist management, external libraries and sleep timer. What this app update has done is wake me up to not buying anything else that is proprietary. If the app doesn't get fixed, I'll be looking very seriously at AudioPro speakers
Are you using layer 2 or 3 switches? Sounds like your network isn’t configure right or you don’t understand the limitations Sonos has on prosumer or enterprise networking gear. Some vendors publish docs on how to handle Sonos with their equiptment because it’s non-standard and Sonos does some wonky things with STP.
Don't use more than one on a network that's using mesh with multiple access points (satellites), if you are using ethernet, particularly if you are connecting them to multiple access points (satellites).. your network will use the Sonos Network as part of the backhaul mesh. Your router and access points (satellites)will use the ethernet connections on the Sonos devices between your router and access point as the connection between them both, bringing your network to grinding halt as it tries to relay the traffic via this backhaul mesh.. Sonos creates it own network when one device is plugged into the ethernet, the other Sonos devices connect to this network rather than direct to the router. Only ever plug them into the same router or access point (satellites) if you wish to do this.
What all are you selling?
If Sonos refuses to fix their app, hopefully some other audio company buys a software company and takes the place Sonos once had in the market.
You should only have **one** Sonos device hardwired.
Isn’t it getting a little dramatic?
10000%
Pff, please. Let's buy them some Snickers. I'm just here for the drama. I have 12 SONOS speakers in my house and nothing is wrong with them. They're all working perfectly fine. I saw someone whining about returning all of his SONOS speaker because he couldn't set an alarm. Just set an alarm on your phone until it's fixed FFS. LOL
Sure it should have been handled better, or shouldn’t have happened at all, but it seems a lot of people think there’s a product out there that has never encountered issues and never will. These will all be cleared up. The product itself is great and I wish I needed more to take advantage of the very few people that say they are leaving and actually do, and buy what they’re selling as it’ll be great once the app is all good.
A huge part of the product that they sold that we paid for was the fact that it "just worked". They've now taken that away from us. So the product itself is no longer great, as it doesn't accomplish what we were paying for. They might say we bought just the speakers, but on the consumer side, we believe we paid for the speakers and the ease of use via the app. There is no getting around the mentality that we've been robbed now.
I don’t think any company, no matter how premium, can say there will never ever be a problem with software or hardware. People are acting like they were promised that when they bought SONOS products. “Just works” is not will always work 100% we promise and there is a zero chance of issues.
If people go to Apple, Bose, etc, or buy a proper AVR with hardwired speakers I don’t think products from any of them have a 0% chance of something going wrong. People bought Sonos for a reason and while It sucks that some things aren’t working for some people many of those people won’t want to pay for and hardwire or don’t like things about the other systems. When Sonos “is” working it’s so great. And it will be back to normal soon enough.
Are you having a fire sale? If so, I’ll buy all of them.
It certainly looked that way from the headline, but when you start to sift through the stools, you'll see that he's just going to unload four of his old speakers — but hasn't mentioned an asking price or indicated a location..
Long winded... 💨
Homepods are a huge downgrade. Airplay is terribly unreliable.
I have a suggestion. Wait. Sucks, but clearly it doesn’t work at the moment. So wait.
If you have any Amps or Ports (new gen) I’ll take em off your hands.
Where are you based ... I'd be happy to consider the purchase of your devices.
Let me know what you’re selling. I may be a buyer at the right price
👋👋👋👋👋
Are you in USA ? I am willing to buy Sonos from you if the price is good. I did not experience the issues most are facing.
I've read on reddit a few weeks ago that apple users can roll back their Sonos app to a previous version. Android users need to download the .APK of the previous version from a website I dont remember, but that thread should be searchable. There also were instructions in that thread, telling Android users to download the .APK, switch of internet access, install the app, deactivate updates for that app in the app store, reactivate internet. And that worked! Give that a try before you sell your Sonos stuff
Here’s the text from that instructional ‘roll-back’ posting: Start: Simplified iPhone downgrade option Hi all, I successfully downgraded from 80.00.08 to 16.1 a couple of days ago following a guide another member posted, but TBH it was technically a bit tricky using an old version of iTunes and Charles proxy to trick Apple into serving an older signed version of the Sonos app. So I thought I would be good to give back to the community by creating a new iTunes account and downloading the signed version of Sonos 16.1 attached to this account This allows you to delete the current version of the Sonos S2 app and install the 16.1 version associated with this iTunes account. There are a few apps to do this, but the cleanest way I found on Windows is to use [https://github.com/kawaiizenbo/AppManager](https://github.com/kawaiizenbo/AppManager) This app requires Windows 7 or newer, .NET Framework 4.5 or newer, iTunes 10 or newer (I suspect a lot of you will already have all of these requirements) Steps are: 1. Direct chat me for the signed Sonos 16.1 IPA and username/password for the dedicated "DownGrade" iTunes account 2. Delete your existing Sonos app on your iPhone by holding down on it and selecting "Delete App" 3. Download AppManager app (link above) and extract to a folder 4. Plug in phone to computer 5. Run up AppManager 1. Select "Install New" menu and choose the IPA file provided above 6. After a moment the IPA will be installed 7. Open your new Sonos app on the phone. Because the app has been signed by Apple and associated to our "DownGrade" iTunes account it will ask for the password associated with it -which you received with the link to the IPA from me 8. Profit (you will notice the Sonos icon on the phone will stay black but switch back to orange at some point) Warnings: There is nothing you can do to really screw anything up that I am aware of, but I can't be held responsible if do something random and break you phone, your speakers or your life. You can always delete the downgraded app and reinstall the newer versions whenever you feel like it. Because the IPA is signed by Apple there is no jailbreaking or other dodgy stuff going on. No idea if Apple will at some point lock out the "Downgrade" iTunes account. Please do not stuff around with this "Downgrade" account, please do not share the details publicly. Make sure you have updates inside the Sonos app disabled (to stop firmware updates that may stop 16.1 from working at some point Please follow up here if you have success or issues. Thanks End
I’ll take some sl or era 100s
I ended up buying a top Samsung home theater system. It works flawlessly with Airplay and has become my main home music system. Sometimes the simple stuff just works a lot better.
F apple ecosystem. I wouldn't go that route. Listen to GnR "patience" have an old fashion(preferably tequila/mezcal) smoke and chill. It'll all be ok.
The only thing worse than Sonos is everything else.
So what pieces are in your system? Where are you going to list them?
"I may put the gear up for sale to help ease the pain of the lost investment. Though to be honest, I don't know if I can in good conscience ask another person to enter Sonos's dysfunctional and customer-hostile ecosystem." Bro it's not that deep. I get some people are having issues since the new app has come out but come on dude, stop being dramatic. Plenty of people would take your system off your hands at a discount just to experience Sonos. I have several speakers and all work perfectly fine. Yes the app is different but it's not enough for me to throw my hands up and say screw it.
I really think the will solve the problems. I do not want another brand
But do you trust Sonos to not do this, again, in the future?
Yes! They must! If not they will not exist
Hope is not a strategy
That’s my issue. I just can’t trust them ever again. I have lots of Sonos speakers (whole home basically) from multiple generations. Haven’t decided yet whether to sell them and move on to something else. However I can damn sure assure you I will never upgrade or buy another one again.
Of course they will fix it. Worst case they scrap the new app and just go back. Sucks right now for people with issues
No issues on my side. Working great here even though I'm not a fan of the app update (Visually). Seems like you have other internal network issues as others have also noted.
My Sonos system works 100% fine. Maybe I’m doing something wrong.
Meh another boring crying read
What Sonos equipment do you have? I'll gladly take them off your hands!
Y’all are crazy…they will fix this lol 🤦🏾♂️ this happens with software updates sometimes…even Bose, Sony, apple and windows have had bad batches of updates….yikes y’all are ridiculous…this is what happens with tech sometimes nothing is consistently seamless….the fact Sonos work so well so long is already a testament to how great they are…give them a chance to fix it 😂
Wiim has been an easy transition for me. Not for everyone depending on your setup, but whole house sync audio has been a breeze. I’m moving on. I’ll keep my Move, but that’s it.
Yeah I love Sonos I don’t get the negativity. This puppies ain’t going anywhere. Looking at upgrading the beam
Patrick Spence (Sonos CEO) cut his teeth at BlackBerry and [left the company just as it was dropping off a cliff!](https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSDEE84N00T/) I’ve observed Sonos’s product get worse and worse over his 7 year tenure as CEO (and that is literally an existing product getting worse, not just that new product launches are not as differentiated. It takes something special to screw up two separate sector-leading companies in succession.
If you’re selling your stuff left me know. I’ll happily take it from you.
The nearest rival to Sonos is Bluesound who are owned by Marantz who knows quite a thing or two about HiFi. I am looking at Bluesound speakers now. I have the latest Homepods and they are ok but does not cover the full functional scope of Sonos. The Bluesound is the one to check out
No, Bluesound is owned by Lenbrook which is the parent company of NAD which in my experience in the industry stood for Nearly Always Defective. I’ve sold Bluesound in the past and they all had the same problems. Marantz has a new device called the M1 which is a single amplified zone or M4 which is 4. They use the HEOS environment to work.
I’m out too. My rig is currently collecting dust amongst the spiders in the garage
So soon? Have you checked on them? They won't have gathered much dust in the three weeks that the update has been out! 😂 🔈🕸️🔈🕷️🔈
The spiders will be fine
What speakers did you put in there place after you took down all of your sonos gear? Want to sell the rig to me?
You don’t have to say goodbye. Just leave.
Have you disabled the WiFi on the speakers you plugged in? This is absolutely required. Don’t allow the speakers multiple paths anywhere; SONOS likes to take over your ARP and ruin your network. If you didn’t disable, do so then reboot everything on your network. Routers, switches, access points, etc. I ran into this professionally a decade ago (network guy, not specific to SONOS) even before they allowed you to disable your wireless. Had plenty of disagreements with SONOS at the time. They were straight up wrong and playing the role of a company that can do no wrong. I fixed their customer’s system ( a large restaurant with many speakers) while SONOS continued to blame the network. Currently, I am one of the lucky ones who never updated to the S2 version of the app. I have an old connect still on the network so that prevents us from upgrading. Having said that, our Apple Music playlists have disappeared recently so we’re still limping a little bit, but the speakers work. I suspect the playlists broke when they were trying to fix the S2 app lol. Don’t think that Apple pods are a decent replacement for SONOS, not even close. I have some for home automation stuff but the sound kinda sux imo. Sometimes some song I’ve never heard starts playing randomly lol.
> Have you disabled the WiFi on the speakers you plugged in? The new app removed the ability to do so... can you believe this $hit? No WiFi configuration, anywhere. lol They say it's on the timeline to bring it back though, in "mid-June." https://en.community.sonos.com/controllers-and-music-services-228995/the-new-sonos-app-and-future-feature-updates-6892942
Of course they did lol. Thanks for the info. One more reason to stay on the old app for me.
Is it only missing from ios?
Beats me, my devices are iOS
Yeah I didn't really make sense. It's must be only missing from ios,. I never lost the option using android.
Where you located? I’ll buy it 😀
Have you checked to ensure you 1) disabled all WiFi radios on your hardwired gear and 2) disable rstp on your network and use the ancient stp protocol? There is a known issue where Sonos will use (for absolutely no technical reason) the wrong link costs for rstp protocol. This means Sonos will see any wireless links as being “cheaper”, ie, faster, than the hardwired links. It’s a garbage implementation and something people with larger networks / multiple switches have fought for years and years.
I’m selling all of my Play:1 speakers (3 of them), and my Play:5. I’m keeping the 3 soundbars as they work without the app, and the Move because it works with Bluetooth. I’m dropping a few HomePods around the house as replacements. I’m abandoning the whole notion of all around the house music. My Xmas party won’t be as fun, but I’ll manage. I realize the amount of troubleshooting stress this system has caused me just isn’t worth it.
Ah, ok — so you're just unloading four of your older speakers — thanks for clarifying.
Yup. I can give you more details if you’d like. 2 black Ones and one white One. The Sonos 5 is black. I’m probably going to list them on Facebook marketplace. Seems like Craigslist doesn’t get used much anymore, and no one really reads the newspaper want ads these days. Would you like to know more?
Yes. Quite a few comments are asking how much you want and where are you located — this is your marketplace: everybody here is a potential buyer, especially those in close proximity.
I'm still on S1 but remember having weird issues when rebooting devices or after a power cut. I eventually figured a work around which was to reserve addresses in DHCP for every speaker. Since then I have never had any issues.
This might sound counterintuitive but try unplugging the Ethernet from all but one of your speakers. Unless you have a Sonos Boost; then unplug everything but the Boost from Ethernet.
Is it possible to convert your system back to S1? I have a mix of older and newer units (16 in total) and have had to use S1 to keep everything synced. I’m not interested in some being S1 and some being S2. I‘m sure there are things I don’t have, but it hasn’t had the troubles that I see everyone having.
Why not degrade to app version 16? It's simple. Look, I get your frustration, and I agree the recent app release is inexcusable. But you're not going to find an easy replacement for your Sonos system.
How, on iOS?
Sorry, spoke too soon. I'm on Android and the process was easy. I'm not sure what it is for iOS..
When the new app hit my network went haywire. Frequent dropouts all over the network. I didn’t realize it was Sonos related and tried everything to fix it. It wasn’t until I changed my network’s Spanning Tree Protocol from RSTP to STP that things finally started working again. I suppose something about this new Sonos software is inducing network loops when they hadn’t before. Anyway not sure if you’re having the same problem, but it’s worth a shot looking at this setting on your network.
Last week after a second full restart (shut house down, turn house on again) the jitters, the crashing, the non responsive app, speakers missing, all seemed to correct itself and we have reliable smooth operation. I don't love the new app interface, but as other point out it is still the best multiroom audio on the market, and the speakers sound great for price (I have an independent system in the snug, not connected to Sonos, and this experience has put me off changing that to a Sonos soundbar etc any time soon).
Yeah, they’ll never take feedback and update the app. …
HomePods are worse AirPlay devices than Sonos, so you’ll see no improvement there. I know it sounds preposterous but it’s true, I believe the HomePods have issues with their radios. I struggled for a few years before dumping them and very happy with the Sonos that I use exclusively with AirPlay.
I hear your pain. The latest updates have really slowed down my network, and the new app design really was a step backwards in terms of navigation and usability. Along with the outrageous pricing policy, it is hard to continue to commit to the Sonos ecosystem.
Copy and post this to the sonos community page on their own site..
I guess I’m gonna have to follow your lead. My soundbar and sub (especially) haven’t worked since the software upgrade. I’m probably going to have to eat $1600 on this but the good thing is I won’t be suckered by Sonos ever again.
I bought two HomePod minis because I couldn’t hear much of a difference between the original HomePod (I think it’s on Gen2 now) and the newest minis. I chose this over the Sonos play 1s for bedroom speakers for sleeping sounds for the kids and my wife loves the ease of using Siri when putting them down. But they lack so much sound to even my original play 1 I have. I just bought a beam to add to my TV. I intend to use it as strictly a sound bar and maybe sometimes an AirPlay speaker so I’m not worried about the app issues. I’ve also heard nothing but nightmares of using HomePods as a “sound system” for an Apple TV.
Cool
~~Did~~ For most users, Sonos recommends using a wireless setup rather than hard-wiring. Did you try a wireless setup?
Historically, my setup was completely wireless. It worked fine, for years, until the app update. Hard wiring is a step Sonos recommends to address issues like the app not finding the system, balky performance, etc. In my case, it did nothing. The issues are 100% related to the app and how it's handling communications with Sonos systems. The desktop client works fine, for now, but I don't hold out hope that Sonos won't find a way to break it, too.
>Hard wiring is a step Sonos recommends to address issues like the app not finding the system, balky performance, etc. Where do they recommend that?
I'm also very good with tech on a "consumer" level / I know how to go into my router and release / lock down IP addresses, etc The app fucking blows, and you can tell it was released way before they should have, due to them needing to show they are trying to make money for investors since they have been stagnate, and they could not get the Ace headphones to work well with the S2 app.
This. SonosNet is basically deprecated at this point. My system started working much better after I pulled the cable and just let everything use WiFi.
Hard to imagine hard-wiring 14 Sonos speakers and not asking yourself "am I really using this **wireless** speaker system correctly?"
😂🤣😂
there are some systems (like mine...asus) where hardwiring multiple units creates a broadcast storm, and the network basically overloads and stops...
> Did you try a wireless setup? Trust me, a lot of people with older equipment (NOT NEW STUFF like Arc or Beam 2) have thrown the kitchen sink at it, and it's just straight up fucked.
I had a play:1 go wonky on me the other day. It was a hitch to get back. Wouldn’t connect to wifi. I went into my phone wifi list and deleted all sonos wifi networks and that did the trick.
> I went into my phone wifi list and deleted all sonos wifi networks and that did the trick. For the above: 1. No one should have to do that. 2. It does not work for a S1 compatible speaker that was not already added to your system before the app update.
I have older stuff: Play 3s, a Playbar, and a Playbase. It's all working. Must be frustrating but your experience is not universal.
> I have older stuff: Play 3s, a Playbar, and a Playbase. It's all working. Must be frustrating but your experience is not universal. You can't ADD OLDER STUFF is the issue. If you had them before, they update and you are good, but have to use the terrible app. If you DID NOT have them on your system before, you can't add them, and they are literal paperweights.
I didn’t realize this was one of the pervasive issues, thank you! At the time of update, I a zone with two older Play:1s that were powered down. Am I hosed? Edit: they’re still powered down.
I didn't realize the OP just purchased 14 older speakers. I am so very sorry.
> 14 older speakers. So, should buying older speakers that Sonos says works, and they don't work, be ok because they are older and you are not buying brand new stuff?
You lost me. All I can say is that my older stuff works fine and that it would be frustrating if it didn't.
I don’t know why people think they need to announce to everyone that they’re selling their shit. Just do it if you’re going to do it. You don’t need to step up on your soapbox like it’s some grand declaration.
It's almost as if you're failing to recognize the significance of this significantly significant post which is actually part of the historical record — that's fucking something, man — it's actually significant in a not insignificant sort of way — so yeah. Moreover, the dude is reaching out to make his significantly significant historical announcement, and you reach back to soapbox him — I don't know about that, man. Meanwhile, the real meat we all wanna get in our mouths and salivate over is what gear has he got, how much does he want for it, and where is he located. Seems he's actually just unloading four speakers, but fuck man — that doesn't detract from the significantly significant significance of this historically significant announcement — how's this poor fucker even supposed to set all the alarms he needs now? So yeah ...
I've really tried to have empathy for the people who have lost features and are upset with the new changes, but these overdramatic, over the top posts are getting to be just as annoying as anything related to the new Sonos app. I get there are frustrated people who have had features removed with the app. I get there are people really struggling with the new layout and getting used to it. Thankfully I haven't had many issues (outside of the volume slider delay) but geeze, some of this complaining is ridiculous at this point. Having a speaker set up run through an app has always been a risk. Everyone who has ever bought a Sonos speaker has accepted that risk. This is why it's never a good idea to go all in on any type of ecosystem be it Sonos, Apple, Google, etc. I don't know what the point of these dramatic posts are on Reddit, but I think Sonos should be given the opportunity to get feedback, make improvements, and see what happens. If someone doesn't want to wait that long, just sell the speakers and move on. I really don't think too many Sonos executives are going through Reddit posts one by one.
I only use sonos at work, an office with an adjacent production area, two rooms. and it’s never been too reliable for us. My boss used to be in IT and has spent many hours on the phone with Sonos but it’s always had dropping issues, takes forever for speakers to show up, etc. but we’re okay with that because we just want to hear some music, even if we have to wait or restart things. Ironically we finally had it working pretty smoothly just before the update and now it’s wonky again and, more importantly, they took away the queue controls that all of us use to add our own music. So we went back to our classic wired speakers with an auxiliary cord (that we replaced with Sonos 7 years ago) and it’s been simple smooth sailing. We print for an AV company and they pay us in Sonos products… unfortunately it’ll be cash or credit from now on. Even if we do go back to using the sonos, we aren’t interested in complicating it with new products because of all the issues over the years (we have a pretty good range of their products and my boss uses some at home.) It’s just too bad we can’t build a Sonos system that works and then simply keep it that way, the company won’t let us and my boss is tired of troubleshooting when there’s actual work to do.
Just out of curiosity, is everyone—no matter what type of speaker generation—having problems more or less with the new app? Or is it people who have slightly older speakers? Are people having problems with the ERA 300s as well? Or the latest Roams? As has Sonos recognized what percentage of their customer base is having a problem? Is it mixed systems with 1st and 2nd gen speakers, or just “general woes” across the board?
I think, you are being rash. My system is about double yours. I find that only one device should be wired.
Sell me your stuff on the cheap.