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I am rooting for Sonos. They paved the way for Wi-Fi speakers years ago and built some fantastic products. Their UX can be poor, but they’re getting better with

by ttul 3y ago

I am rooting for Sonos. They paved the way for Wi-Fi speakers years ago and built some fantastic products. Their UX can be poor, but they’re getting better with each release. For instance, setting up the latest subwoofer product, the Sub Mini, uses a combination of Bluetooth, WiFi and NFC to make the process fast and easy. A pro tip for making your life so much easier with Sonos: plug one of the speakers in to Ethernet and then the others will use the proprietary Sonos Net wireless protocol instead of WiFi. It’s apparently much more reliable.

lalaland1125 3y ago
Why would you root for an anti-competitive company that would rather sue their competition than build a better product?
- bryanrasmussen 3y ago
  They said something about the company paving the way...
- ttul 3y ago
  While I understand the perspective on their legal actions, Sonos's commitment to their product and their continued development of the multi-room audio space deserves some credit. Yes, they have had a number of high-profile lawsuits, but this isn't just a move to stifle competition, it's also about protecting their intellectual property. If a company doesn't protect its IP, it essentially undermines the value of their own innovation. Competition can be fierce, and sometimes legal battles are a part of that landscape.
Larrikin 3y ago
I'm thousands of dollars into their ecosystem and am looking for the off ramp and will switch if there ever is a viable competitor. Their mobile apps were never great but seem particularly bad lately. My initial setup in 2019 was awful and involved eventually moving my sound bar to a different room to plug into my router directly. Then I discovered that true play, one of their selling features, was an iOS only feature and Android users were just screwed. Luckily, I had an iPad, only to discover they had also disabled the ability on there too and my only course of action was to have a friend come over and use their phone. In 2022 when I was setting up my sub, I found this still to be the case. Once it was all setup however it worked amazingly well. Speaker in the bedroom, in the bathroom, and the living room. All sounded amazing and moving sound around in sync was so good. But it seems like the software just keeps further diving into crap. After changing routers (and going through the hell of setting them up again) and adding a couple more speakers it just seems like a fifty percent chance if the app will show my speakers with a little wrench next to them and not play from my phone. My sub currently has a long ugly Ethernet cable going to my router and it seemed to not have helped at all. The latest forced update this week, showed me no speakers for a day. I currently have a Bluetooth speaker on top of my Sonos speaker in the bathroom because it's just a waste of time in the morning to want to listen to the news or music and the speaker not show up or constantly time out. I'm also tired of having my app choice for podcasts, ebooks, and music completely dictated by whether they have the resources to do a specific integration into Sonos. There's a lot of good open source apps out there for Android, where the authors just don't want to do an implementation because they don't own the speakers and it's actually a pain in the ass to integrate. I've read about esphome and home assistant custom speakers to recreate a Sonos experience, but I'd just like to switch to a competitor if there is a viable alternative.

by ttul 3y ago

lalaland1125 3y ago

Why would you root for an anti-competitive company that would rather sue their competition than build a better product?

bryanrasmussen 3y ago
They said something about the company paving the way...
ttul 3y ago
While I understand the perspective on their legal actions, Sonos's commitment to their product and their continued development of the multi-room audio space deserves some credit. Yes, they have had a number of high-profile lawsuits, but this isn't just a move to stifle competition, it's also about protecting their intellectual property. If a company doesn't protect its IP, it essentially undermines the value of their own innovation. Competition can be fierce, and sometimes legal battles are a part of that landscape.

Larrikin 3y ago

I'm thousands of dollars into their ecosystem and am looking for the off ramp and will switch if there ever is a viable competitor. Their mobile apps were never great but seem particularly bad lately. My initial setup in 2019 was awful and involved eventually moving my sound bar to a different room to plug into my router directly. Then I discovered that true play, one of their selling features, was an iOS only feature and Android users were just screwed. Luckily, I had an iPad, only to discover they had also disabled the ability on there too and my only course of action was to have a friend come over and use their phone. In 2022 when I was setting up my sub, I found this still to be the case. Once it was all setup however it worked amazingly well. Speaker in the bedroom, in the bathroom, and the living room. All sounded amazing and moving sound around in sync was so good. But it seems like the software just keeps further diving into crap. After changing routers (and going through the hell of setting them up again) and adding a couple more speakers it just seems like a fifty percent chance if the app will show my speakers with a little wrench next to them and not play from my phone. My sub currently has a long ugly Ethernet cable going to my router and it seemed to not have helped at all. The latest forced update this week, showed me no speakers for a day. I currently have a Bluetooth speaker on top of my Sonos speaker in the bathroom because it's just a waste of time in the morning to want to listen to the news or music and the speaker not show up or constantly time out. I'm also tired of having my app choice for podcasts, ebooks, and music completely dictated by whether they have the resources to do a specific integration into Sonos. There's a lot of good open source apps out there for Android, where the authors just don't want to do an implementation because they don't own the speakers and it's actually a pain in the ass to integrate. I've read about esphome and home assistant custom speakers to recreate a Sonos experience, but I'd just like to switch to a competitor if there is a viable alternative.