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Sonos CEO steps down after app update debacle

441 points by saaaaaam 2y ago

alienallys 2y ago
Why does a single commodity product company have a stock when that says said commodity is not even the top spot in the category?
- causality0 2y ago
  It's strange. Tech journalism also has a bizarre fixation on them. There are tons of smart speaker companies out there but every time Sonos releases a product or really does anything they get tons of articles written about them.
saaaaaam 2y ago
No surprises here. Sonos has become pretty much unusable since the app "upgrade". I wanted to start some music playing via Sonos in another room for my dogs earlier while I was on a call. It took nearly two minutes for the app to update and be able to select my "calming cello music for dogs" playlist.
- billforsternz 2y ago
  Do your dogs have favourite composers and/or cello soloists?
  - saaaaaam 2y ago
    Vivaldi and Bach mainly. Elgar’s Cello Concerto in C Minor seems to be a favourite right now. They like Delius in the right mood, but unfortunately I do not. Their favourite is Jaap Ter Linden’s recording of Bach’s Cello Suites, I think because it’s a little richer sounding than Yo-Yo Ma. I read somewhere that dogs love cello music because it has the same tones as the human voice, and it certainly seems to calm them more than any other music.
    - billforsternz 2y ago
      Thanks for this, excellent. Sorry I posted and forgot to check back for a reply.
      - saaaaaam 2y ago
        You’re very welcome!
ellieh 2y ago
I've spent a bunch of money on Sonos products in the past, and this app update basically killed it for me. Hopefully they can recover what they once had.
- itslennysfault 2y ago
  Did you stop using it? For me it seems like a huge improvement now. I was really excited for the app update because the old app was really unstable. Then the update happened and it was like 10x worse than the old app. Then in the past few months it's gotten really solid (for me anyway) and I'm pretty happy with it.
gnabgib 2y ago
Discussion (71 points, 6 hours ago, 118 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42683753 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42683753
unstatusthequo 2y ago
I’m happily enjoying my move to Denon and HEOS. It was that bad that bad that I liquidated all my Sonos gear.
jgrowl 2y ago
> The company said it would cost between $20 million and $30 million to fix these issues and decided to cut about 6% of its staff. > Spence, in October, had acknowledged mistakes surrounding the app's release and said that he and seven other company leaders would forgo their bonuses. People out of a job because of you and you're gonna forgo your bonuses. > Spence, whose total compensation was $5.19 million in fiscal 2023, took a roughly $72,000 cash bonus.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- x0x0 2y ago
  > People out of a job because of you and you're gonna forgo your bonuses. Well, the board seems to have fired him too?
  - soperj 2y ago
    are you really fired when you get nearly $2 million in severance?
    - elp 2y ago
      For a CEO of a public company this is about as close to a perp walk with your stuff in a cardboard box as it gets.
      - beezlebroxxxxxx 2y ago
        Don't worry, they'll fail upwards like many other executives who leave dumpster fires behind them. Remember, though, conveniently, according to other executives, there's "only a limited number of people with the skills to be CEOs! So we have to pay them so much!"
        Wolfenstein98k 2y ago
        CEOs who resign in disgrace do not actually do that well. Even on PR terms alone, it's a bad look to hire one as your CEO, even if they can make a good case that they "fell on their sword" rather than actually caused the catastrophe.
GeertJohan 2y ago
I recently switched my system to the S2 app and protocol. I was still on the old S1 app for the past years which worked fine, but I wanted to add new Sonos devices that only supported the S2-protocol/app. I had checked the compatibility lists and found that one of my older sonos devices wouldnt be supported. But I accepted that as I really wanted to get a new Sonos Sub 4 (S2-only) to connect with my existing Sonos Playbar (which supports updating to S2). The upgrade process was bad, had to restart and reset devices a couple of times.. but after a while I got all my existing Sonos devices onto S2. When I added the Sub to the system, the app told me that I couldnt pair it with the playbar. The app adviced me to get one of the newer Sonos soundbars.. I'm very disappointed that they did this.. I fully understand that some devices dont work with a new protocol, but after consulting the compatibility list I expected my Sonos Playbar would be able to pair with all other S2 devices.. what is even weirder is that it is possible to link the playbar with the older Subwoofer devices on the S2 network, so why couldnt a newer device be able to do the same thing.. I returned the Sub and will be ditching Sonos (and probably any other system where you "buy into" the system only to be left with uncompatible gear after a while..
- GeertJohan 2y ago
  I think from now on I will separate the "smart" from the "hifi" so I can combine and upgrade as I please.. will probably give Dante a try for networked audio, they have a good track record with quality and compatibility. Its quite prosumer though. Perhaps not as user-friendly as Sonos (was).
frenchmajesty 2y ago
Interesting but I don't think the app is the only reason. The main reason is really the strong declining sales since last year. As CEO of a public company you get about 3 quarters down before you're out.
- threeseed 2y ago
  But surely the main reason for declining sales is the app. And not just the app itself but the fact that despite mounting criticism from the community they didn't immediately revert it. Thus demonstrating that they don't really care about their own, up until that point, very loyal customers.
  - massysett 2y ago
    Even as a Sonos owner and former fan who detests the app, I doubt the app is the reason for declining sales. Competition is. Sonos has been around for many years now. When it launched, smartphones weren’t dominant. To control a Sonos you had to buy a controller specifically for it. It had its own wireless networking because WiFi wasn’t dominant. To use it with WiFi you needed to buy a separate bridge. Online music services weren’t a thing like they are now. Music collections were on your local hard drive. Back then the main competition for Sonos was paying a pro to hard-wire a speaker system into your house. I saw one of these about five years ago. Built into the wall in the kitchen was a cassette tape deck. All that has changed. Now there are wireless speakers from JBL, Apple, Amazon, Bose, Google, and at least a dozen others. There’s Bluetooth. There’s AirPlay. The Sonos app was ok for its time, but it’s an outdated model now. But at least the app used to be good at controlling Sonos. Now it’s not even great for that. Without that outdated app model, there’s no reason to buy Sonos. Just pick from…anybody else. Many are cheaper and sound just as good. They don’t rely on an app, which is good-just use Airplay or Bluetooth. As bad as the app is, it’s not a trigger of the decline of Sonos. Is just a symptom of it. The company has no future. Thus its release of headphones that don’t even integrate well with the Sonos system. These are just as pointless as its speakers. I doubt Sonos is around in a few years’ time.
    - s__s 2y ago
richardlblair 2y ago
When I was building my home back in 2022 the builder's audio person insisted I use Sonos. I said no. Then I said no another 100 times as this person just pushed and pushed and pushed. I eventually explained I didn't want to be vendor locked. Technology changes, and I don't want to be caught up in the BS. I ended up designing the system myself. Wired in speakers, down to the basement where all the receivers are. I'm really happy with the result, and grateful I didn't get bullied into a specific Vendor. Not everyone has this luxury. Once the drywall is up, it's really hard to get a decent whole home system and Sonos was the way to do that. My Dad and my father-in-law are in deep with Sonos. I can feel their anger and frustration when we're over. They really did their customers dirty.
- skrebbel 2y ago
  I'm mostly impressed that your builder has an "audio person", must be a pretty fancy outfit!
  - richardlblair 2y ago
    Our home is pretty typical, with a few touches for my partner and I. It was definitely a more modest project for this particular builder, who typically builds homes 3x the size of ours.
cibyr 2y ago
If the new app is such a disaster, why can't they just re-release the old one?
- cpuguy83 2y ago
  IIRC seem to recall they changed the infra and software on the devices and it just wasn't possible.... take that marketing messaging as you will.
  - brycethornton 2y ago
    Yeah, I believe the firmware on all compatible devices was auto-updated to the new architecture and apparently they can't go back to the old firmware for some reason. What a mess.
flyinglizard 2y ago
I bought a Sonos Move 2 and it's a good speaker for what it is, but the connectivity is abysmal. AirPlay only works after I open the Sonos app, and sometimes wouldn't start at all until I put my phone into airplane mode and back on. I thought I was buying into something sure, but it's really disappointing. Meanwhile, although twice the price, the Naim Mu-So Qb 2 I also bought recently is simply a marvel. Highly recommended.
simlevesque 2y ago
Sonos is dead. You can get a better sounding and cheaper multi-room setup with WiiM devices.
- kjkjadksj 2y ago
  Or just buy an old marantz or something similar and an old airport express and be done with it for life.
  - Ringz 2y ago
    Sold my great Onkyo and try to exactly revert it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42689139 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42689139
- WXLCKNO 2y ago
  I've been wondering for a while what the alternatives are. I've got a Denon amp which has Heos, had random Alexa/Google Home devices previously, random amps with just Bluetooth or line in whatever. Thought there must be a way to sync these things, think previously there was the Google Chrome audio? The WiiM devices seem nice but is that the price of entry to sync various unrelated audio ecosystems then? Edit: had only seen the price of the highest end ultra device, this is actually very reasonable..
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - notatoad 2y ago
    Yeah, the wiim mini is very reasonable. The other option for multi-room sync is AirPlay, on any device where that is possible (including wiim), so it’s pretty easy to solve multi-room audio these days. Chromecast Audio lost the ability to do multi-room sync in a patent dispute with sonos
    - mfkp 2y ago
      Unfortunately the wiim mini doesn't support the google cast ecosystem, only the more expensive devices. But the more expensive devices don't support airplay, which seems like an odd choice.
crooked-v 2y ago
It's less the app, more the business decision to tell people who had spent thousands and thousands of dollars on elaborate sound systems to go throw it all in the trash and start over, all at once. Even Apple has never been that bad. They drop support for things over time but even their roughest transitions (x86, Apple Silicon) have come with extensive day 1 support for previous functionality.
- kjkjadksj 2y ago
  Well that is basically the model of the home stereo today. People don’t realize sound was solved decades ago. How they could get the same stereo their grandfather could have ordered from the sears catalog and some cabinets from that sears catalog and that would be better sound than they are capable of ever perceiving, and how it would last them their entire life on that one stereo and probably the lives of multiple generations of family members. With IO that has always been a standard and always will be a standard. And a stereo like this isn’t even terribly expensive. A couple hundred up front for never having to make another home audio equipment purchase in your life is some serious savings. Instead they are sold soundbars and other crap tiny speakers that are not built to last, and might use specific io to connect over open standards that have been around for decades. They end up spending quite a lot more money for a shit experience that they are none the wiser that there are even alternatives to, without becoming audiophiles themselves consuming hundreds of pages of relevant media in that niche. What a cash cow of an industry.
  - kd913 2y ago
    I think there can be a difference here. Was looking recently at the power requirements of an amp + subwoofer + 5 5.1 JBL surround speakers. The setup was done decade ago, and the power needed for it was nuts. Something like 500W for a Denon amp and 250W for a JBL subwoofer? For reference something like a OG HomePod consumes what 45W? The Sony srs xg500 boombox can last 30hours and is a giant room shaking boombox. The difference in power efficiency between these old and new setups are nuts. Nevermind compatibility with AirPlay, streaming etc…
    - 2y ago
runxel 2y ago
It's the story of good hardware but bad software all over again. I always wondered why except for Apple nobody gets this right. I know, it's somewhat totally different, but man, it surely can't be that hard (especially not effing 30 million bucks hard). Luckily I only use my Sonos IKEA lamp only with Air Play, but the few times I have to use their app? Bonkers. Absolutely trash.
- mandibles 2y ago
  Most hardware shops don't understand that the software is also the product.
  - duskwuff 2y ago
    See also: automotive manufacturers. (They're slowly figuring it out, but it's taken a long time.)
niek_pas 2y ago
Can someone explain to me what kind of bugfixes cost between $20 and $30 million to fix?
- Jtsummers 2y ago
  Bugs for systems with piss poor documentation, testing, and build infrastructure. If you've done even a halfway decent job in those three categories, then it's very hard to have such expensive system maintenance/sustainment activities unless it's a very large system.
hbarka 2y ago
My Sonos app experience is probably the worst of any smart devices I’ve owned. Dropped connections, unable to connect or stream, just all-around inconsistencies. Great speaker when it’s hardwired but the “smart” app is bad. Why did it take years for the chickens to come home to roost?
- yurishimo 2y ago
  Well, it didn’t used to be bad. OG Sonos was awesome. If the ceo kept leading investors on with “just one more quarter/we are almost ready to launch the big fixes/etc” then I can understand why it took so long. AFAIK this is the first ceo that Sonos has ever ousted so I think it’s a pretty big deal. Hoping the new one will have more foresight to not screw over existing customers in the face of the new shiny. In other news, I hear Framework is looking to get into other hardware niches… if they ever made a networked speaker, I’d buy it.
- ryanianian 2y ago
  FWIW there are several third-party mobile applications that work just fine to operate Sonos equipment. The speakers expose a few SOAP-based APIs to any clients on the LAN. Those allow for track control, grouping, etc. They don't allow adding new music services, but they can do the vast majority of daily interaction. These APIs continue to work nearly flawlessly even for my Play:1 devices that are 10 years old. Streaming via AirPlay is indeed hit-or-miss, but it hasn't gotten worse in the past couple years. I control my Sonos from a jQuery-based web application I wrote nearly 10 years ago that runs on a raspberry pi in my closet. I have not had to change anything in several years, and I use my 15+device Sonos system all the time. The new app is indeed a dumpster fire. Somehow the company managed to make their first-party application worse than any of the third-party applications.
  - mandibles 2y ago
    Any links to good third-party apps?
    - fidotron 2y ago
newprint 2y ago
Ah, the app to connect to your Sonos speakers, but wants all the permissions from your phone, incl. your geo-location, otherwise it will not work.
- wmf 2y ago
  Every app that uses Bluetooth needs location permission AFAIK. It's unfortunate.
  - wnissen 2y ago
    No, on iOS Sonos requires actual location services, and precise must be turned on. Pairing a basic Bluetooth device does not require that. I went to Sonos tech support, escalated, and they confirmed you can't just bluetooth pair to activate the speakers. Once you've done that you can turn off the location services, but I feel like it's a blatant violation of my privacy. I returned $800 worth of speakers.
    - sork_hn 2y ago
      I hated that I had to enable precise location. I didn’t return mine, but damn that pissed me off.
- Drew_ 2y ago
  Iirc, this is because the network access required to control the speakers could be used to determine your location. So it is really the OS that is letting you know what you’re risking, not the app requesting too much.
ChrisArchitect 2y ago
[dupe] Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42683753 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42683753
jamesy0ung 2y ago
I hate these stupid ‘smart’ devices. Personally, I just have some decent quality speakers hooked up to an good quality old school amp with an AirPort Express feeding into the line in.
- cheeze 2y ago
  I do this with WiiM. For me, the biggest thing is that I have speakers that are >20 years old that still work perfectly. Why replace what already works well? I looked at the Sonos ecosystem for this, but their non-speaker devices are absurdly priced. The network audio streamer is 449 and the amp is 699. WiiM amps are either 299 or 379 and their network streamer ranges from 149 to 329. I have a few of the network streamers which were 149. They connect into my receiver, into an old amp I have, etc. and work perfectly.
  - omnimus 2y ago
    Also WiiM software just works better than Sonos so why go Sonos?
- tomaskafka 2y ago
  Same. Denon receiver, some capable speakers, and Airport Express for Airplay (which I would love to replace for something with a bit less connection delay - come on, Apple)! Only the last part is dependent on a modern stack ,the first two will last decades.
flyingzucchini 2y ago
Spence apparently was ex BlackBerry. Hmmm.
Ringz 2y ago
I, like an idiot, sold my Onkyo Integra amplifier, radio tuner, tape deck, Canton and KEF speakers for next to nothing and switched to Sonos. I deeply regret it. In my kitchen, there’s an old Grundig radio and a Sonos speaker. Guess which one gets turned on in the morning and evening during meals?
- johncalvinyoung 2y ago
  now if only I could find someone making a similarly bad decision. I've been looking to upgrade to a midrange KEF stereo pair. :)
- mitjam 2y ago
  Canton speakers are legendary, I wish I had the money back then. A good friend of mine still has his and won‘t give them away for any new smart speaker.
- matwood 2y ago
  I’m old so maybe that’s why I never understood the Sonos fascination. Sonos was also crazy expensive for what it was. Around covid I sold my almost 20 year old floor standing Paradigms and bought some KEFs because I needed something smaller. I glanced at Sonos, but thought no way do those sound as good or last 20 years.
  - Nursie 2y ago
    Go back 13 or so years when I bought in - Speakers with decent sound (sure, your separates system is going to sound better, but pretty decent). They have some really fancy wireless mesh tech in an era where that's unheard of. They pick up your local music collection and have a controller application on most OS's that allows you to build stereo pairs or tv surround systems wirelessly, arbitrarily group together rooms in your house, stream music from wherever to wherever and generally just have music in the places you want it with little hassle. I still have some Sonos play:1 speakers I got in 2012 that are going strong, even though they live mostly outdoors now. Now, if those aren't your use-cases, and you really do care about high fidelity sound (I don't), then it's probably not for you. But it has been great for me and I've built up quite a lot of speakers. Unfortunately (and here's the subject of TFA) - in the middle of last year they screwed the pooch, and half the time their app doesn't even load any more :/
yalogin 2y ago
TIL. I am actually considering moving to Sonos and this got me rethinking. Sonos is what came up as the reliable option for wireless speaker systems. I am not an audiophile and so don't care too much about fidelity. Ease of use is the main functionality for me, and Sonos came up as the best option. I will wait for a bit to see how things pan out before deciding.
- eawgewag 2y ago
  I've owned Sonos for 10+ years, and I would not consider their products easy to use. They cater to a very specific use case (homeowners with distinct closed door spaces, 100% investment in their ecosystem, low interop outside of the ecosystem including with other Music streaming systems) and if you fit that narrow mold, you will have a great time. But if you don't, you will find yourself with a lot of overpriced equipment for what it is. In the 10 years I've owned them, I've used the app less than 10 total times. I much rather prefer just using them as an over priced surround system and use my Playstation to play music through the TV/sonos.
  - qsi 2y ago
    I suspect that mold is not as narrow as you think. I bought most of my Sonos setup over a decade ago and it's still going strong because I never upgraded from the S1 app. It's the newer S2 app that has been horrendous. I would not buy or recommend new Sonos products now. Occasionally I do think about adding to my setup but since the update debacle that's no longer an option. Over the years my Sonos has been pretty reliable, and very importantly, the wife and kids can use it easily. We just want "Play X in Room Y." It works very well for that. Even my nerdy self is OK with that... I have plenty of other things to nerd/worry about and I just want my music to play. I did have a period of instability after I moved some Sonos speakers around, and I must say their tech support was pretty good (this was maybe four years ago). They looked at my logs and told me it was a weak signal issue, which I thought was ridiculous and initially dismissed... but after digging some more and troubleshooting my home signals, it turns out they were right. Old Sonos with old S1 app is still great for me! It really pains me to see how far they have fallen.
quirkot 2y ago
That app update screwed me up for weeks. Feeling that sweet sweet vindication right now
limitedfrom 2y ago
Glad to be using the Sonos speakers as just AirPlay 2 speakers. No issues, no app to deal with (never even opened them past setup), perfectly synchronized with non-Sonos AirPlay speakers as well.
- rconti 2y ago
  "Perfectly synchronized?" I airplay to 6 sonos speakers using airplay2 (not grouping in the app) multiple times a day, and I can practically predict what will happen if I try to add speakers too quickly, or too slowly. You'll add 2, then a 3rd, then you'll notice one isn't actually playing, and when you add the 4th, all the rest drop out, and you get to re-add them again. It's such a chore to keep a multi-speaker airplay setup working right. A lot of this could be solved if Apple put some basic engineering effort into the airplay UI, such as adding aliased groups. Every time I want to play to my effing speakers it's a 60 second ordeal. Sometimes the little banner pops up from the top of the screen helpfully letting me to play to all of the speakers like I was before. Other times it not-so-helpfully suggests just playing to ONE speaker for some incomprehensible reason. Still other times, the banner covers what I'm trying to see, and swiping it away seems to activate airplay even when I don't want to.
  - limitedfrom 2y ago
    Unfortunate that's your experience. Personally, at least with my 3-4 speaker setup (multiple Sonos and 2nd gen AirPort Express feeding non-Sonos speakers), I've never really had issues (maybe out of sync once or twice a year). Your mileage may vary I guess.
aaronbrethorst 2y ago
The app is so bad that I'm about chuck three Sonos Ones in the trash (metaphorically) and replace them with HomePod Minis or whatever—and I would certainly never go back to Sonos products after that. Huge failure. The CEO should've been dumped months ago.
- SethTro 2y ago
  The board likely kept him till most of the bad PR had subsided so the new CEO can have a friendlier reception.
- omnimus 2y ago
  Maybe just get separate speakers and streamer like WiiM. You wont regret it if the streamer dies you will still have speakers and just replace the streamer.
  - werdnapk 2y ago
    This is the route I took. I did not want to get involved in the sonos ecosystem even though most people were telling me sonos was "so easy" to setup. My setup... passive speakers, an amp and a wiim streamer and I can swap out any of the pieces with any nother from another manufacturer at any time if I want.
eximius 2y ago
It has been bizarre watching this debacle from the sidelines. I must have bought just on the recent side of whatever demarcation of problems are being complained about. My app works fine. My speakers work fine. The worst problem we have is rarely the music pauses, we're unsure why, and we just hit play again. I'm wondering if there is some functionality I am not aware I'm missing or if it is limited to older models that I am simply not experiencing the problems with?
- cheeze 2y ago
  Do you use the Sonos app itself? Most of my friends with Sonos just use Spotify/Apple music and skip the Sonos app altogether. It sounds like the app update was pretty horrible though - no ability to even _queue music_. But easily sidestepped by just using Spotify.
  - eximius 2y ago
    We have multi-room, so I use the Sonos app for EQ between speakers. Sometimes for starting a station from Pandora or playlist from Spotify. If we need more control over the music, we go to the Pandora or Spotify apps themselves, but Sonos for the speakers. I guess I didn't use the old one so I don't know what I'm supposedly missing.
- supernovae 2y ago
  I spent truckloads of money on home theater and audio systems and have been quite happy with my Sonos. I have the Sub, The original big play bar and some 1s and I have a record player that plays to sonos and then upstairs I have an Arc. I've probably got 10 years on this system now and couldn't be happier. I remember having to replace my receivers 2-3 times in a 10 year time frame from failed circuits to needing HDMI to needing a newer HDMI and all that jazz. My play bar has just been optical out from the TV and it's supported 5.1 audio realy well. I use the spotify play direct. I'm not a huge fan of the newer app and I wasn't impressed with them EOL'ing products. With that said, it's been wife and kid approved. Everyone in the house knows how to use it and its been problem free. No wires for my cat to chew on.
hilti 2y ago
I‘m extremely happy about my 50 year old WEGA speakers that sound way better than any Homepod or Sonos that I had before. And I paid $90 for the used LB3541.
rmm 2y ago
I never really use the app other than when building system which was hit or miss. But pleas make it work accross vlans without having to run seperate services to handle it!
gregwebs 2y ago
Sonos couples the digital music selection to the sound system, trapping you in an ecosystem that can then brick your devices. The Wiim Pro is a great digital receiver that you can hook up to any sound system. Use Spotify or whatever you want for digital music selection.
dguido 2y ago
Please stop putting salespeople in charge of highly technical product companies like Sonos. I'm so glad that Tom Conrad is an engineer by training. I hope he can turn this mess around. The key technical change that broke Sonos was abandoning their reliable UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) system for device discovery in favor of mDNS, while also shifting from direct device communication to a cloud-based API approach. This new architecture made all network traffic encrypted and routed through Sonos cloud servers (even for local operations), adding significant overhead and latency, especially for older Sonos devices with limited processing power. They also switched from native platform-specific UX frameworks to a JavaScript-based interface while moving music service interactions through their cloud instead of direct SMAPI calls, resulting in slower performance and reduced functionality. For a more extended discussion, see this excellent LinkedIn post from Andy Pennell, a principal engineer at Microsoft with a deep technical understanding of Sonos systems. He created one of the most successful third-party Sonos apps for Windows Phone and worked directly with Sonos on their official Windows Phone 8 app. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-happened-sonos-app-technical-analysis-andy-pennell-wigwc/?trackingId=kSfNh0CXT2OTCTbZ%2FYpQrA%3D%3D https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-happened-sonos-app-techn...
- stuff4ben 2y ago
  It's not like the salesy-CEO was writing the code, there was still a bunch of engineers who said "hey this sounds like a great idea". Personally I want my CEOs to be on the sales side, make more money for the company. That being said you best have a good CTO/CIO that aren't sales-oriented.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - rachofsunshine 2y ago
    One imagines a lot of the engineers going "yay!" are just people who want to have a job tomorrow.
  - magicalhippo 2y ago
    Our company makes B2B for a rather technical niche. We got a sales-oriented CEO who knows when to listen to us developers. It has worked very well for our company. Being more sales-oriented he's found good business models and knows our customers well, and hence what our products are worth to our clients so we're not selling our products too cheap. This was the case before he took over from a more technical CEO. While a CEO with an engineer background can certainly do well too, I think it's probably easier to find a good sales-based CEO that simply knows when to listen to their technical team. At least in theory...
knowitnone 2y ago
he still got paid millions just for the title CEO
jmyeet 2y ago
I used to be a fan of Sonos and bought one of their speakers. The state of speakers to play music is actually pretty sad now: you're basically relegated to Sonos or a smart speaker (which I do not want). I believe my (rather old) Sonos is now not supported and there's really no reason for that. It's such a Google move (eg earlier Nests aren't Matter-compatible for really no reason). Even when I was using it, there were basic issues that plague most network-connected devices: they're usually really bad with dealing with transient network issues. Like if my Internet hiccups, I don't want the Internet radio station I'm playing to stop and have to be manually restarted. Also, Sonos insists (or it did when I last looked into it) of creating it's own 2.4GHz mesh network. There was really no way of forcing it to use your existing network. You could kind of turn off the internal mesh network and force it to use Ethernet but not entirely. As a user, I want to play my Spotify or Apple Music and have that synced across multiple speakers. That's the real value proposition of something like Sonos. It shouldn't be that hard. Particularly with music, you get fetch the whole song. There's really no reason for a network interruption at all. I don't necessarily want to use a dedicated app either. I want to treat my Sonos as just another output choice on Spotify like headphones or a Bluetooth speaker. Fault tolerance and ease of setup is what something like Sonos should be about. And that's hard because you have to deal with a long-tail of issues like packet loss, token expiry with third-party providers and so on. I have no idea what Sonos have been doing isntead.
- recursive 2y ago
  > you're basically relegated to Sonos or a smart speaker (which I do not want). I use dumb bookshelf speakers with Bluetooth support. Mine are "Edifier" brand, but there are others. Works perfectly. (at least as "perfect" as BT can ever get) No apps or smart stuff, beyond BT. On the other hand, when I'm trying to comprehend how to get audio from a TV into them, then I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. I found one of the few remaining TVs with a headphone out, so I can use that. Next time my TV breaks, I guess I'll have to learn what is actually going with HDMI. Connecting arbitrary speakers to a TV seems like an arcane mystery.
  - jmyeet 2y ago
    The problem with Bluetooth is it doesn't have a really good audio codec. I really like the Sonos model of being a server that doesn't require a connected device to work as well.
stuff4ben 2y ago
Outside of initially setting up my Sonos speakers, I never venture into their app. I happily stream via Airplay2 from my iPhone or iPad. Everything has been working just great on my stereo-paired Sonos Ones in my den, a separate Sonos One in the kitchen, and a Sonos Era 300 paired to a Sonos Sub mini in my living room. No complaints here and if anyone is thinking about throwing theirs away, I'll gladly take them off your hands for free.
aljgz 2y ago
I got a sonos device as my welcome gift to my previous company. It's good that I can just simply stream spotify to it, but: 1- I don't like the sound processing. I mean, I understand that for most folks it's great, but they don't even come close to my Genelec setup. So I mostly use it to listen to podcasts, but for serious music/movies, I only use proper high fidelity sound setup 2- I don't like the all or nothing approach: if I don't like my current audio streaming setup, I can keep the speakers and the subwoofer, and just get new electronics. But with Sonos, I have to throw everything out. A hardware company should not be able to brick products that can "in principle" work for a ling time.
- mrsuprawsm 2y ago
  What's your Genelec setup, and do you use it in a living room/home theatre room, or as a PC speaker setup? I recently bought a pair of Genelec monitors (8330) and a sub (7350), and am interested in replacing my Sonos arc soundbar, sub, and satellite ones with a proper Genelec-based 5.1 based setup. But my only concerns are price (it'd be at least 5k), and the distance to the monitors - my sofa is ~4.2m away from the television, and the maximum distance where direct sounds dominate (green in this image from https://www.genelec.com/correct-monitors https://www.genelec.com/correct-monitors: https://images.ctfassets.net/4zjnzn055a4v/3SiwbzysMQkGR6oN470H5Q/972968e655d56d85953d27f518f191c4/correct-monitors-direct_sound_dominance-chart.jpg?w=930 https://images.ctfassets.net/4zjnzn055a4v/3SiwbzysMQkGR6oN47...) is 3m for all but the most expensive monitors. So I'm curious if it works well for you.
petepete 2y ago
Fingers crossed we get RSTP support soon. It's only been out 25 years.
JonChesterfield 2y ago
The combination of must use an app, the app mostly doesn't work, the speaker needs factory reset frequently makes it a paperweight on the way towards electronics recycling. Firing the CEO seems good but insufficient. Liquidate the company, use the assets to try to offset the environmental damage done by the mass manufacture of e-waste. Or I suppose fix the software stack to bring the speakers back to usefulness, perhaps by throwing away everything done for the last few years in reset --hard fashion.
nemo44x 2y ago
Wherever they teach product management and design this saga will be a case study.
belval 2y ago
Over the holidays we played a game called Hitster which has a very simple premise of listening to music and guessing the release year. My in-laws have a Sonos system and it was so laughably bad connectivity-wise with the wrong song playing, no song playing, songs not stopping, etc... I jokingly said that a 100$ bluetooth speaker would have been better, which was not super well received. Bottomline is: It does not matter how good your sound system is if it's not reliable.
alistairSH 2y ago
Good. System architecture aside, the UX alone was a disaster. Less discoverable, more layers of menus. Plus flaky pairing and system discovery (from iPhones, at least). Wife’s new iPhone couldn’t connect, even though my older iPhone was running the same app version just fine. It was bad enough I bought HomePods for the bedroom to replace the Sonos 1s we’d used for years. I still have them in another room, just someplace that they don’t get used as often.
TheMagicHorsey 2y ago
I'd love to read a post-mortem from a SONOS engineer about what happened here so we can all learn. Has anyone seen any blog or Blind posts about this?
- aisio 2y ago
  Not a sonos engineer, but its a good external analysis https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-happened-sonos-app-technical-analysis-andy-pennell-wigwc/ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-happened-sonos-app-techn...
NelsonMinar 2y ago
I have some Sonos systems installed in 2008 that are still working great. No hardware failures, app still does what it always did. That being said they feel clunky and worse year after year, the UI is old fashioned, it's not quite as reliable. And of course the whole thing is orphaned. I'll never buy another set of several thousand dollars of Sonos v2 or whatever they want me to do.
- NoPicklez 2y ago
  This is my experience as well, the hardware is still excellent but the app experience has really deteriorated, even in the latest app
crmd 2y ago
In my living room I have a pair of loudspeakers, an 18 watt stereo tube amp that I service myself, an analog rotary mixer, a pair of turntables, and an IKEA Kallax full of records. 10 years ago my friends called me a hipster for doing this instead of cloud-based music, but not so much any more. When I hear these horror stories of enshitified HiFi platforms it makes me feel like I made the right investment decision.
arusahni 2y ago
The fact that, many months after this app update, I still don't have play controls in the notification shade is appalling. God forbid I need to pause my music or need to skip a track. Someone had to make a decision as to when the updated app would ship. They did not make a wise choice.
bborud 2y ago
I never understood why people bought Sonos products. They were fairly poor in terms of usability even before any shenanigans. My first and only Sonos ended up in a rubbish bin (well recycling bin) when it turned out it couldn’t reliably Play back audio books at 1.5x speed. I never even considered giving it away because that would be a dick move. Got a Teenage Engineering designed BT speaker instead.
- ehsankia 2y ago
  I was blown away when I found out this expensive Sonos device I was setting up for my mother-in-law didn't support basic bluetooth pairing. Like what? The cheapest 20$ wireless speaker supports bluetooth...
  - recursive 2y ago
    Kind of like how iPods didn't support direct copying of songs as files, whereas the cheapest hardware audio players could do it. Actually, it's exactly like that. It's a path out of the walled garden.
midtake 2y ago
This would be a perfect time for Apple to step in and offer HomePods for the Home Theater. In a better configuration than "stereo pair".
sureIy 2y ago
Why are speakers so hard? It's insanely old technology and they're still charging hundreds for a baseline handheld speaker. I'm dearly holding onto my Marshall Acton that can be connect to WiFi without an app and stream directly from Spotify. No smart nothing. Nothing like this seems to exist anymore, not for the $200 I paid this years ago anyway. Before this I had tried a smaller but $250 Sonos speaker and it sounded like crap, with far worse UX.
- jimmydoe 2y ago
  SONOS prices a premium for its network features. No one wants a few Chinese wifi device at home, otherwise SONOS would be gone.
  - sureIy 2y ago
    > No one wants a few Chinese wifi device at home Oh you are so wrong. I'd say no one wants to pay double when two products look the same on paper, and thus people end up with Chinese WiFi devices.
- danielmarkbruce 2y ago
  It's a fundamentally awful business. If you make a good product and just sell it you get a one time payment and you have a brand that one one cares about because you are a one time decision every x years. You don't "consume" it, there is no "new fashion". One time payment, and not a big one. So, companies try to avoid this fate by doing things which make for a better business - but invariably are bad for customers. In most cases, if you come across something awful like this, it's because just doing the right thing for customers doesn't make any money in that particular business due to the nature of the product and buying process.
  - sureIy 2y ago
    Look at Bang & Olufsen. You can definitely produce high quality goods that last decades and update them regularly because they're simply beautiful. My father's 1995 model is still in use to this day. Granted, they're insanely high priced, but that means they also sell very few. There must be a middle ground.
lippihom 2y ago
The app update has been so bad I basically stopped listening to music completely. Decision making opposite of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"... went from truly one of the best app experiences to now the worst.
jimmydoe 2y ago
been using SONOS for 6 years, never feel their app is best, imho v2 app is ok. you don't have to use app in many cases.
Always42 2y ago
Glad to see this here. I have a couple sonos speakers in my kitchen and I am still scared to update to the latest app. I was fortunate enough to check the sub-reddit prior to updating.
tsunamifury 2y ago
He tried to turn Sonos into Juicero
faramarz 2y ago
I sure hope they are already well into fixing the issues and that the resignation is just for posterity and shareholder appeasement, otherwise, any significant change will take half a year at minimum! I’m now annoyingly used opening my Sonos app once, closing it, opening it again to get the damn ui to load current streams on any of the speakers.
jauntywundrkind 2y ago
First big case of a tech company taking a major dive for not respecting Local First. Things used to work without the cloud. Then the cloud got added and latency shot up, connectivity went down, and systems behaved worse.
neya 2y ago
Good. I hate "smart" speakers that need internet access to do a simple task. This is just market correction in my opinion and was bound to happen regardless of who the CEO was. As a speaker builder myself, it blows my mind people are ok with putting in spyware into their everyday home appliances like coffee-makers and speakers. I absolutely detest this trend.
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tticvs 2y ago
FWIW I have 4 sonos devices in my home and I've got basically zero problems. I guess I mostly use Airplay to control them but I do occasionally use the app and it's fine. I'm really not sure what all the fuss is about.
- lifeinthevoid 2y ago
  What are you trying to say, that everyone's wrong?
alkonaut 2y ago
Did they switch apps again, or is this still about the debacle when they switched from their original app to the second gen (S2) app many many years ago? Because while that was a shitshow, that's ancient history by now. Did they screw up another generational switch?
- Nursie 2y ago
  Yep, there was a big update mid last year. They didn't orpahn any players this time, and a lot of people hate the UX but that's pretty subjective and people fear change, so lets ignore that. What they did that's not subjective - - Wreck some folks systems so that they can't add new devices or discover their existing ones. - Force everything to go via their cloud servers, which adds round-trip latency and server-reliability problems to everything you try to do The latter one there means that, for instance, if I try to use the app to change volume or skip a track then it might work, or it might take several seconds and then change the volume, or it might not do it at all. Maybe you press the button again ... Then after thirty seconds it might apply all the interactions and skip half an album or get deafeningly loud. But also the app may just not load properly, with half the interface staying blank. It may claim to have started the music but nothing's actually happening. It may not load the state of the speaker so you can't see what's playing or control it. It might not list all the speakers. Early on after the release we also got lots of tracks that would fail half-way through and skip to the next one. It's an absolute shitshow, and when people started to complain they were told the problems were clearly with their network setup and that they were at fault, even though everything had been fine before. They started saying things like "Oh starlink isn't really supported because of the latency it introduces", which was only a problem because of their decision to make the whole system terminally online. So yeah, they screwed the pooch again.
aquaticsunset 2y ago
I'm clearly in the minority, but the new app is leaps and bounds more usable and stable for me. The functionality gaps don't affect me - those features weren't things I used. And it's way, way more responsive and consistent than the old one. Perhaps it's just my specific network situation. The old app was a constant headache of inconsistent state - music playing while it showed nothing playing, pressing commands (like skipping a track or pausing) but those commands never happening on the device. It also took a very long time to show my entire device list. Never quite worked with the Roam like it should have.
- Nursie 2y ago
  So your experience is the exact mirror of mine. Old app was flawless and pretty low latency. As soon as the new one came along I had the issues you describe with control latency - volume or track changes would either take a random amount of time, or do nothing, or sometimes queue up and all apply at once. Also had inconsistent state, the app showing music as playing while nothing happened, or the reverse. The app's home screen only partially loading, all sorts of crap, with the same issues present on android or iOS. And apparently I'm one of the lucky ones - some people can't add new products or find existing ones. Maybe one day they'll release a version that works for both of us :)
RobMurray 2y ago
I hate my sonos setup now. It sounds great, but everything else has got worse since I bought them. The Sonos connect isn't supported by s2, the latency of changing volume got worse to the point that it is way too loud before you even notice it changing, There is something completely broken between Spotify/Sonos/Alexa making it only play Spotify free through sonos even though I have a subscription. Then there's the things that were always shit, like no low latency streaming except through the analogue inputs on the Sonos connect and a closed protocol blocking open source improvements.
vlmutolo 2y ago
Has anyone had a good experience with bluesound? Sends like they offer a similar product but with less big-corporate headache. Haven’t tried them myself, though. https://www.bluesound.com/ https://www.bluesound.com/
solardev 2y ago
Finally! About time. Thank you, Sonos, for doing the right thing eventually. As an owner of several thousand dollars' worth of Sonos equipment, I swore I'd never buy another piece again unless Patrick was gone AND they rolled back the app. At least we have one of the two now. The new app is still flaky, unfortunately, but not as bad as it was a few months ago. I still get random disconnections and errors, and some features still don't work like it used to. I hope the new CEO creates a new culture there.
up2isomorphism 2y ago
Imaging a normal employee messed up 1/100 of this case and only need to “forgo” his/her bonus. He likely gets fired the next day.
mr_tristan 2y ago
Software problems almost never seem to actually impact brands, but this was so egregious it actually managed to. Even Crowdstrike increased revenue over the last year. So… I’m not shocked at the timing. Sales have tanked, and proved the CEO couldn’t be relied on to right the ship. It’s just one example of how long serious problems can fester in an organization. There’s likely deep cultural problems throughout the company’s decision making apparatus. We’ll see, but I don’t see Sonos capable of being a trusted brand again.
acchow 2y ago
> He’ll remain an adviser to the Sonos board through June and get paid $7,500 per month until then. He’ll be paid a cash severance of about $1.9 million, and his unvested shares in Sonos will vest. Incredible vesting schedule
tacker2000 2y ago
Every couple of months I go to my fathers holiday home and upon arrival i will have to update the damn sonos device and the app and whatnot… its just a chore and rarely is anything different from when he first got the speakers years ago. I just want to stream my spotify playlist to it and thats it. To be honest I miss the oldschool BT pairing speakers and I will probably get him one of these soon since Im just done with sonos and I cant see how normal non IT people can even put up with this and figure this whole update mess out.
kennu 2y ago
My impression is that the current Sonos app becomes unusable when your home Internet connection is unstable. It usually works fine here, but when our 5G starts switching channels due to a snowstorm, the Sonos app becomes erratic. I understand there's also issues with mDNS discovery and maybe other things, but the worst mistake seems to be the assumption that everybody has a stable Internet connection all the time. There are other apps that have made a similar mistake. E.g. Ubiquiti's UniFi management app has problems connecting to the local LAN console if you originally signed in using a cloud account and Internet becomes unstable. One app that handles this right is the Home Assistant Companion app. It detects when you're using a local WiFi SSID and connects directly to the internal LAN address which always works, and otherwise uses the cloud connection or public WAN address.
fennecbutt 2y ago
Dude got paid like 5m$ a year, and now he's left he'll just go somewhere else and get paid the same or more. These people don't earn that money. But keep defending ludicrous exec salaries.

441 points by saaaaaam 2y ago

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

causality0 2y ago
It's strange. Tech journalism also has a bizarre fixation on them. There are tons of smart speaker companies out there but every time Sonos releases a product or really does anything they get tons of articles written about them.

saaaaaam 2y ago

No surprises here. Sonos has become pretty much unusable since the app "upgrade". I wanted to start some music playing via Sonos in another room for my dogs earlier while I was on a call. It took nearly two minutes for the app to update and be able to select my "calming cello music for dogs" playlist.

billforsternz 2y ago
Do your dogs have favourite composers and/or cello soloists?
- saaaaaam 2y ago
  Vivaldi and Bach mainly. Elgar’s Cello Concerto in C Minor seems to be a favourite right now. They like Delius in the right mood, but unfortunately I do not. Their favourite is Jaap Ter Linden’s recording of Bach’s Cello Suites, I think because it’s a little richer sounding than Yo-Yo Ma. I read somewhere that dogs love cello music because it has the same tones as the human voice, and it certainly seems to calm them more than any other music.
  - billforsternz 2y ago
    Thanks for this, excellent. Sorry I posted and forgot to check back for a reply.
    - saaaaaam 2y ago
      You’re very welcome!

ellieh 2y ago

I've spent a bunch of money on Sonos products in the past, and this app update basically killed it for me. Hopefully they can recover what they once had.

itslennysfault 2y ago
Did you stop using it? For me it seems like a huge improvement now. I was really excited for the app update because the old app was really unstable. Then the update happened and it was like 10x worse than the old app. Then in the past few months it's gotten really solid (for me anyway) and I'm pretty happy with it.

gnabgib 2y ago

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

unstatusthequo 2y ago

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

jgrowl 2y ago

> The company said it would cost between $20 million and $30 million to fix these issues and decided to cut about 6% of its staff. > Spence, in October, had acknowledged mistakes surrounding the app's release and said that he and seven other company leaders would forgo their bonuses. People out of a job because of you and you're gonna forgo your bonuses. > Spence, whose total compensation was $5.19 million in fiscal 2023, took a roughly $72,000 cash bonus.

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x0x0 2y ago
> People out of a job because of you and you're gonna forgo your bonuses. Well, the board seems to have fired him too?
- soperj 2y ago
  are you really fired when you get nearly $2 million in severance?
  - elp 2y ago
    For a CEO of a public company this is about as close to a perp walk with your stuff in a cardboard box as it gets.
    - beezlebroxxxxxx 2y ago
      Don't worry, they'll fail upwards like many other executives who leave dumpster fires behind them. Remember, though, conveniently, according to other executives, there's "only a limited number of people with the skills to be CEOs! So we have to pay them so much!"
      - Wolfenstein98k 2y ago
        CEOs who resign in disgrace do not actually do that well. Even on PR terms alone, it's a bad look to hire one as your CEO, even if they can make a good case that they "fell on their sword" rather than actually caused the catastrophe.

GeertJohan 2y ago

I recently switched my system to the S2 app and protocol. I was still on the old S1 app for the past years which worked fine, but I wanted to add new Sonos devices that only supported the S2-protocol/app. I had checked the compatibility lists and found that one of my older sonos devices wouldnt be supported. But I accepted that as I really wanted to get a new Sonos Sub 4 (S2-only) to connect with my existing Sonos Playbar (which supports updating to S2). The upgrade process was bad, had to restart and reset devices a couple of times.. but after a while I got all my existing Sonos devices onto S2. When I added the Sub to the system, the app told me that I couldnt pair it with the playbar. The app adviced me to get one of the newer Sonos soundbars.. I'm very disappointed that they did this.. I fully understand that some devices dont work with a new protocol, but after consulting the compatibility list I expected my Sonos Playbar would be able to pair with all other S2 devices.. what is even weirder is that it is possible to link the playbar with the older Subwoofer devices on the S2 network, so why couldnt a newer device be able to do the same thing.. I returned the Sub and will be ditching Sonos (and probably any other system where you "buy into" the system only to be left with uncompatible gear after a while..

GeertJohan 2y ago
I think from now on I will separate the "smart" from the "hifi" so I can combine and upgrade as I please.. will probably give Dante a try for networked audio, they have a good track record with quality and compatibility. Its quite prosumer though. Perhaps not as user-friendly as Sonos (was).

frenchmajesty 2y ago

Interesting but I don't think the app is the only reason. The main reason is really the strong declining sales since last year. As CEO of a public company you get about 3 quarters down before you're out.

threeseed 2y ago
But surely the main reason for declining sales is the app. And not just the app itself but the fact that despite mounting criticism from the community they didn't immediately revert it. Thus demonstrating that they don't really care about their own, up until that point, very loyal customers.
- massysett 2y ago
  Even as a Sonos owner and former fan who detests the app, I doubt the app is the reason for declining sales. Competition is. Sonos has been around for many years now. When it launched, smartphones weren’t dominant. To control a Sonos you had to buy a controller specifically for it. It had its own wireless networking because WiFi wasn’t dominant. To use it with WiFi you needed to buy a separate bridge. Online music services weren’t a thing like they are now. Music collections were on your local hard drive. Back then the main competition for Sonos was paying a pro to hard-wire a speaker system into your house. I saw one of these about five years ago. Built into the wall in the kitchen was a cassette tape deck. All that has changed. Now there are wireless speakers from JBL, Apple, Amazon, Bose, Google, and at least a dozen others. There’s Bluetooth. There’s AirPlay. The Sonos app was ok for its time, but it’s an outdated model now. But at least the app used to be good at controlling Sonos. Now it’s not even great for that. Without that outdated app model, there’s no reason to buy Sonos. Just pick from…anybody else. Many are cheaper and sound just as good. They don’t rely on an app, which is good-just use Airplay or Bluetooth. As bad as the app is, it’s not a trigger of the decline of Sonos. Is just a symptom of it. The company has no future. Thus its release of headphones that don’t even integrate well with the Sonos system. These are just as pointless as its speakers. I doubt Sonos is around in a few years’ time.
  - s__s 2y ago

richardlblair 2y ago

When I was building my home back in 2022 the builder's audio person insisted I use Sonos. I said no. Then I said no another 100 times as this person just pushed and pushed and pushed. I eventually explained I didn't want to be vendor locked. Technology changes, and I don't want to be caught up in the BS. I ended up designing the system myself. Wired in speakers, down to the basement where all the receivers are. I'm really happy with the result, and grateful I didn't get bullied into a specific Vendor. Not everyone has this luxury. Once the drywall is up, it's really hard to get a decent whole home system and Sonos was the way to do that. My Dad and my father-in-law are in deep with Sonos. I can feel their anger and frustration when we're over. They really did their customers dirty.

skrebbel 2y ago
I'm mostly impressed that your builder has an "audio person", must be a pretty fancy outfit!
- richardlblair 2y ago
  Our home is pretty typical, with a few touches for my partner and I. It was definitely a more modest project for this particular builder, who typically builds homes 3x the size of ours.

cibyr 2y ago

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

cpuguy83 2y ago
IIRC seem to recall they changed the infra and software on the devices and it just wasn't possible.... take that marketing messaging as you will.
- brycethornton 2y ago
  Yeah, I believe the firmware on all compatible devices was auto-updated to the new architecture and apparently they can't go back to the old firmware for some reason. What a mess.

flyinglizard 2y ago

I bought a Sonos Move 2 and it's a good speaker for what it is, but the connectivity is abysmal. AirPlay only works after I open the Sonos app, and sometimes wouldn't start at all until I put my phone into airplane mode and back on. I thought I was buying into something sure, but it's really disappointing. Meanwhile, although twice the price, the Naim Mu-So Qb 2 I also bought recently is simply a marvel. Highly recommended.

simlevesque 2y ago

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

kjkjadksj 2y ago
Or just buy an old marantz or something similar and an old airport express and be done with it for life.
- Ringz 2y ago
  Sold my great Onkyo and try to exactly revert it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42689139 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42689139
WXLCKNO 2y ago
I've been wondering for a while what the alternatives are. I've got a Denon amp which has Heos, had random Alexa/Google Home devices previously, random amps with just Bluetooth or line in whatever. Thought there must be a way to sync these things, think previously there was the Google Chrome audio? The WiiM devices seem nice but is that the price of entry to sync various unrelated audio ecosystems then? Edit: had only seen the price of the highest end ultra device, this is actually very reasonable..
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- notatoad 2y ago
  Yeah, the wiim mini is very reasonable. The other option for multi-room sync is AirPlay, on any device where that is possible (including wiim), so it’s pretty easy to solve multi-room audio these days. Chromecast Audio lost the ability to do multi-room sync in a patent dispute with sonos
  - mfkp 2y ago
    Unfortunately the wiim mini doesn't support the google cast ecosystem, only the more expensive devices. But the more expensive devices don't support airplay, which seems like an odd choice.

crooked-v 2y ago

It's less the app, more the business decision to tell people who had spent thousands and thousands of dollars on elaborate sound systems to go throw it all in the trash and start over, all at once. Even Apple has never been that bad. They drop support for things over time but even their roughest transitions (x86, Apple Silicon) have come with extensive day 1 support for previous functionality.

kjkjadksj 2y ago
Well that is basically the model of the home stereo today. People don’t realize sound was solved decades ago. How they could get the same stereo their grandfather could have ordered from the sears catalog and some cabinets from that sears catalog and that would be better sound than they are capable of ever perceiving, and how it would last them their entire life on that one stereo and probably the lives of multiple generations of family members. With IO that has always been a standard and always will be a standard. And a stereo like this isn’t even terribly expensive. A couple hundred up front for never having to make another home audio equipment purchase in your life is some serious savings. Instead they are sold soundbars and other crap tiny speakers that are not built to last, and might use specific io to connect over open standards that have been around for decades. They end up spending quite a lot more money for a shit experience that they are none the wiser that there are even alternatives to, without becoming audiophiles themselves consuming hundreds of pages of relevant media in that niche. What a cash cow of an industry.
- kd913 2y ago
  I think there can be a difference here. Was looking recently at the power requirements of an amp + subwoofer + 5 5.1 JBL surround speakers. The setup was done decade ago, and the power needed for it was nuts. Something like 500W for a Denon amp and 250W for a JBL subwoofer? For reference something like a OG HomePod consumes what 45W? The Sony srs xg500 boombox can last 30hours and is a giant room shaking boombox. The difference in power efficiency between these old and new setups are nuts. Nevermind compatibility with AirPlay, streaming etc…
  - 2y ago

runxel 2y ago

It's the story of good hardware but bad software all over again. I always wondered why except for Apple nobody gets this right. I know, it's somewhat totally different, but man, it surely can't be that hard (especially not effing 30 million bucks hard). Luckily I only use my Sonos IKEA lamp only with Air Play, but the few times I have to use their app? Bonkers. Absolutely trash.

mandibles 2y ago
Most hardware shops don't understand that the software is also the product.
- duskwuff 2y ago
  See also: automotive manufacturers. (They're slowly figuring it out, but it's taken a long time.)

niek_pas 2y ago

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

Jtsummers 2y ago
Bugs for systems with piss poor documentation, testing, and build infrastructure. If you've done even a halfway decent job in those three categories, then it's very hard to have such expensive system maintenance/sustainment activities unless it's a very large system.

hbarka 2y ago

My Sonos app experience is probably the worst of any smart devices I’ve owned. Dropped connections, unable to connect or stream, just all-around inconsistencies. Great speaker when it’s hardwired but the “smart” app is bad. Why did it take years for the chickens to come home to roost?

yurishimo 2y ago
Well, it didn’t used to be bad. OG Sonos was awesome. If the ceo kept leading investors on with “just one more quarter/we are almost ready to launch the big fixes/etc” then I can understand why it took so long. AFAIK this is the first ceo that Sonos has ever ousted so I think it’s a pretty big deal. Hoping the new one will have more foresight to not screw over existing customers in the face of the new shiny. In other news, I hear Framework is looking to get into other hardware niches… if they ever made a networked speaker, I’d buy it.
ryanianian 2y ago
FWIW there are several third-party mobile applications that work just fine to operate Sonos equipment. The speakers expose a few SOAP-based APIs to any clients on the LAN. Those allow for track control, grouping, etc. They don't allow adding new music services, but they can do the vast majority of daily interaction. These APIs continue to work nearly flawlessly even for my Play:1 devices that are 10 years old. Streaming via AirPlay is indeed hit-or-miss, but it hasn't gotten worse in the past couple years. I control my Sonos from a jQuery-based web application I wrote nearly 10 years ago that runs on a raspberry pi in my closet. I have not had to change anything in several years, and I use my 15+device Sonos system all the time. The new app is indeed a dumpster fire. Somehow the company managed to make their first-party application worse than any of the third-party applications.
- mandibles 2y ago
  Any links to good third-party apps?
  - fidotron 2y ago

newprint 2y ago

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

wmf 2y ago
Every app that uses Bluetooth needs location permission AFAIK. It's unfortunate.
- wnissen 2y ago
  No, on iOS Sonos requires actual location services, and precise must be turned on. Pairing a basic Bluetooth device does not require that. I went to Sonos tech support, escalated, and they confirmed you can't just bluetooth pair to activate the speakers. Once you've done that you can turn off the location services, but I feel like it's a blatant violation of my privacy. I returned $800 worth of speakers.
  - sork_hn 2y ago
    I hated that I had to enable precise location. I didn’t return mine, but damn that pissed me off.
Drew_ 2y ago
Iirc, this is because the network access required to control the speakers could be used to determine your location. So it is really the OS that is letting you know what you’re risking, not the app requesting too much.

ChrisArchitect 2y ago

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

jamesy0ung 2y ago

I hate these stupid ‘smart’ devices. Personally, I just have some decent quality speakers hooked up to an good quality old school amp with an AirPort Express feeding into the line in.

cheeze 2y ago
I do this with WiiM. For me, the biggest thing is that I have speakers that are >20 years old that still work perfectly. Why replace what already works well? I looked at the Sonos ecosystem for this, but their non-speaker devices are absurdly priced. The network audio streamer is 449 and the amp is 699. WiiM amps are either 299 or 379 and their network streamer ranges from 149 to 329. I have a few of the network streamers which were 149. They connect into my receiver, into an old amp I have, etc. and work perfectly.
- omnimus 2y ago
  Also WiiM software just works better than Sonos so why go Sonos?
tomaskafka 2y ago
Same. Denon receiver, some capable speakers, and Airport Express for Airplay (which I would love to replace for something with a bit less connection delay - come on, Apple)! Only the last part is dependent on a modern stack ,the first two will last decades.

flyingzucchini 2y ago

Spence apparently was ex BlackBerry. Hmmm.

Ringz 2y ago

I, like an idiot, sold my Onkyo Integra amplifier, radio tuner, tape deck, Canton and KEF speakers for next to nothing and switched to Sonos. I deeply regret it. In my kitchen, there’s an old Grundig radio and a Sonos speaker. Guess which one gets turned on in the morning and evening during meals?

johncalvinyoung 2y ago
now if only I could find someone making a similarly bad decision. I've been looking to upgrade to a midrange KEF stereo pair. :)
mitjam 2y ago
Canton speakers are legendary, I wish I had the money back then. A good friend of mine still has his and won‘t give them away for any new smart speaker.
matwood 2y ago
I’m old so maybe that’s why I never understood the Sonos fascination. Sonos was also crazy expensive for what it was. Around covid I sold my almost 20 year old floor standing Paradigms and bought some KEFs because I needed something smaller. I glanced at Sonos, but thought no way do those sound as good or last 20 years.
- Nursie 2y ago
  Go back 13 or so years when I bought in - Speakers with decent sound (sure, your separates system is going to sound better, but pretty decent). They have some really fancy wireless mesh tech in an era where that's unheard of. They pick up your local music collection and have a controller application on most OS's that allows you to build stereo pairs or tv surround systems wirelessly, arbitrarily group together rooms in your house, stream music from wherever to wherever and generally just have music in the places you want it with little hassle. I still have some Sonos play:1 speakers I got in 2012 that are going strong, even though they live mostly outdoors now. Now, if those aren't your use-cases, and you really do care about high fidelity sound (I don't), then it's probably not for you. But it has been great for me and I've built up quite a lot of speakers. Unfortunately (and here's the subject of TFA) - in the middle of last year they screwed the pooch, and half the time their app doesn't even load any more :/

yalogin 2y ago

TIL. I am actually considering moving to Sonos and this got me rethinking. Sonos is what came up as the reliable option for wireless speaker systems. I am not an audiophile and so don't care too much about fidelity. Ease of use is the main functionality for me, and Sonos came up as the best option. I will wait for a bit to see how things pan out before deciding.

eawgewag 2y ago
I've owned Sonos for 10+ years, and I would not consider their products easy to use. They cater to a very specific use case (homeowners with distinct closed door spaces, 100% investment in their ecosystem, low interop outside of the ecosystem including with other Music streaming systems) and if you fit that narrow mold, you will have a great time. But if you don't, you will find yourself with a lot of overpriced equipment for what it is. In the 10 years I've owned them, I've used the app less than 10 total times. I much rather prefer just using them as an over priced surround system and use my Playstation to play music through the TV/sonos.
- qsi 2y ago
  I suspect that mold is not as narrow as you think. I bought most of my Sonos setup over a decade ago and it's still going strong because I never upgraded from the S1 app. It's the newer S2 app that has been horrendous. I would not buy or recommend new Sonos products now. Occasionally I do think about adding to my setup but since the update debacle that's no longer an option. Over the years my Sonos has been pretty reliable, and very importantly, the wife and kids can use it easily. We just want "Play X in Room Y." It works very well for that. Even my nerdy self is OK with that... I have plenty of other things to nerd/worry about and I just want my music to play. I did have a period of instability after I moved some Sonos speakers around, and I must say their tech support was pretty good (this was maybe four years ago). They looked at my logs and told me it was a weak signal issue, which I thought was ridiculous and initially dismissed... but after digging some more and troubleshooting my home signals, it turns out they were right. Old Sonos with old S1 app is still great for me! It really pains me to see how far they have fallen.

quirkot 2y ago

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

limitedfrom 2y ago

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

rconti 2y ago
"Perfectly synchronized?" I airplay to 6 sonos speakers using airplay2 (not grouping in the app) multiple times a day, and I can practically predict what will happen if I try to add speakers too quickly, or too slowly. You'll add 2, then a 3rd, then you'll notice one isn't actually playing, and when you add the 4th, all the rest drop out, and you get to re-add them again. It's such a chore to keep a multi-speaker airplay setup working right. A lot of this could be solved if Apple put some basic engineering effort into the airplay UI, such as adding aliased groups. Every time I want to play to my effing speakers it's a 60 second ordeal. Sometimes the little banner pops up from the top of the screen helpfully letting me to play to all of the speakers like I was before. Other times it not-so-helpfully suggests just playing to ONE speaker for some incomprehensible reason. Still other times, the banner covers what I'm trying to see, and swiping it away seems to activate airplay even when I don't want to.
- limitedfrom 2y ago
  Unfortunate that's your experience. Personally, at least with my 3-4 speaker setup (multiple Sonos and 2nd gen AirPort Express feeding non-Sonos speakers), I've never really had issues (maybe out of sync once or twice a year). Your mileage may vary I guess.

aaronbrethorst 2y ago

The app is so bad that I'm about chuck three Sonos Ones in the trash (metaphorically) and replace them with HomePod Minis or whatever—and I would certainly never go back to Sonos products after that. Huge failure. The CEO should've been dumped months ago.

SethTro 2y ago
The board likely kept him till most of the bad PR had subsided so the new CEO can have a friendlier reception.
omnimus 2y ago
Maybe just get separate speakers and streamer like WiiM. You wont regret it if the streamer dies you will still have speakers and just replace the streamer.
- werdnapk 2y ago
  This is the route I took. I did not want to get involved in the sonos ecosystem even though most people were telling me sonos was "so easy" to setup. My setup... passive speakers, an amp and a wiim streamer and I can swap out any of the pieces with any nother from another manufacturer at any time if I want.

eximius 2y ago

It has been bizarre watching this debacle from the sidelines. I must have bought just on the recent side of whatever demarcation of problems are being complained about. My app works fine. My speakers work fine. The worst problem we have is rarely the music pauses, we're unsure why, and we just hit play again. I'm wondering if there is some functionality I am not aware I'm missing or if it is limited to older models that I am simply not experiencing the problems with?

cheeze 2y ago
Do you use the Sonos app itself? Most of my friends with Sonos just use Spotify/Apple music and skip the Sonos app altogether. It sounds like the app update was pretty horrible though - no ability to even _queue music_. But easily sidestepped by just using Spotify.
- eximius 2y ago
  We have multi-room, so I use the Sonos app for EQ between speakers. Sometimes for starting a station from Pandora or playlist from Spotify. If we need more control over the music, we go to the Pandora or Spotify apps themselves, but Sonos for the speakers. I guess I didn't use the old one so I don't know what I'm supposedly missing.
supernovae 2y ago
I spent truckloads of money on home theater and audio systems and have been quite happy with my Sonos. I have the Sub, The original big play bar and some 1s and I have a record player that plays to sonos and then upstairs I have an Arc. I've probably got 10 years on this system now and couldn't be happier. I remember having to replace my receivers 2-3 times in a 10 year time frame from failed circuits to needing HDMI to needing a newer HDMI and all that jazz. My play bar has just been optical out from the TV and it's supported 5.1 audio realy well. I use the spotify play direct. I'm not a huge fan of the newer app and I wasn't impressed with them EOL'ing products. With that said, it's been wife and kid approved. Everyone in the house knows how to use it and its been problem free. No wires for my cat to chew on.

hilti 2y ago

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

rmm 2y ago

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

gregwebs 2y ago

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

dguido 2y ago

Please stop putting salespeople in charge of highly technical product companies like Sonos. I'm so glad that Tom Conrad is an engineer by training. I hope he can turn this mess around. The key technical change that broke Sonos was abandoning their reliable UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) system for device discovery in favor of mDNS, while also shifting from direct device communication to a cloud-based API approach. This new architecture made all network traffic encrypted and routed through Sonos cloud servers (even for local operations), adding significant overhead and latency, especially for older Sonos devices with limited processing power. They also switched from native platform-specific UX frameworks to a JavaScript-based interface while moving music service interactions through their cloud instead of direct SMAPI calls, resulting in slower performance and reduced functionality. For a more extended discussion, see this excellent LinkedIn post from Andy Pennell, a principal engineer at Microsoft with a deep technical understanding of Sonos systems. He created one of the most successful third-party Sonos apps for Windows Phone and worked directly with Sonos on their official Windows Phone 8 app. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-happened-sonos-app-technical-analysis-andy-pennell-wigwc/?trackingId=kSfNh0CXT2OTCTbZ%2FYpQrA%3D%3D https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-happened-sonos-app-techn...

stuff4ben 2y ago
It's not like the salesy-CEO was writing the code, there was still a bunch of engineers who said "hey this sounds like a great idea". Personally I want my CEOs to be on the sales side, make more money for the company. That being said you best have a good CTO/CIO that aren't sales-oriented.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- rachofsunshine 2y ago
  One imagines a lot of the engineers going "yay!" are just people who want to have a job tomorrow.
- magicalhippo 2y ago
  Our company makes B2B for a rather technical niche. We got a sales-oriented CEO who knows when to listen to us developers. It has worked very well for our company. Being more sales-oriented he's found good business models and knows our customers well, and hence what our products are worth to our clients so we're not selling our products too cheap. This was the case before he took over from a more technical CEO. While a CEO with an engineer background can certainly do well too, I think it's probably easier to find a good sales-based CEO that simply knows when to listen to their technical team. At least in theory...

knowitnone 2y ago

he still got paid millions just for the title CEO

jmyeet 2y ago

I used to be a fan of Sonos and bought one of their speakers. The state of speakers to play music is actually pretty sad now: you're basically relegated to Sonos or a smart speaker (which I do not want). I believe my (rather old) Sonos is now not supported and there's really no reason for that. It's such a Google move (eg earlier Nests aren't Matter-compatible for really no reason). Even when I was using it, there were basic issues that plague most network-connected devices: they're usually really bad with dealing with transient network issues. Like if my Internet hiccups, I don't want the Internet radio station I'm playing to stop and have to be manually restarted. Also, Sonos insists (or it did when I last looked into it) of creating it's own 2.4GHz mesh network. There was really no way of forcing it to use your existing network. You could kind of turn off the internal mesh network and force it to use Ethernet but not entirely. As a user, I want to play my Spotify or Apple Music and have that synced across multiple speakers. That's the real value proposition of something like Sonos. It shouldn't be that hard. Particularly with music, you get fetch the whole song. There's really no reason for a network interruption at all. I don't necessarily want to use a dedicated app either. I want to treat my Sonos as just another output choice on Spotify like headphones or a Bluetooth speaker. Fault tolerance and ease of setup is what something like Sonos should be about. And that's hard because you have to deal with a long-tail of issues like packet loss, token expiry with third-party providers and so on. I have no idea what Sonos have been doing isntead.

recursive 2y ago
> you're basically relegated to Sonos or a smart speaker (which I do not want). I use dumb bookshelf speakers with Bluetooth support. Mine are "Edifier" brand, but there are others. Works perfectly. (at least as "perfect" as BT can ever get) No apps or smart stuff, beyond BT. On the other hand, when I'm trying to comprehend how to get audio from a TV into them, then I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. I found one of the few remaining TVs with a headphone out, so I can use that. Next time my TV breaks, I guess I'll have to learn what is actually going with HDMI. Connecting arbitrary speakers to a TV seems like an arcane mystery.
- jmyeet 2y ago
  The problem with Bluetooth is it doesn't have a really good audio codec. I really like the Sonos model of being a server that doesn't require a connected device to work as well.

stuff4ben 2y ago

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

aljgz 2y ago

I got a sonos device as my welcome gift to my previous company. It's good that I can just simply stream spotify to it, but: 1- I don't like the sound processing. I mean, I understand that for most folks it's great, but they don't even come close to my Genelec setup. So I mostly use it to listen to podcasts, but for serious music/movies, I only use proper high fidelity sound setup 2- I don't like the all or nothing approach: if I don't like my current audio streaming setup, I can keep the speakers and the subwoofer, and just get new electronics. But with Sonos, I have to throw everything out. A hardware company should not be able to brick products that can "in principle" work for a ling time.

mrsuprawsm 2y ago
What's your Genelec setup, and do you use it in a living room/home theatre room, or as a PC speaker setup? I recently bought a pair of Genelec monitors (8330) and a sub (7350), and am interested in replacing my Sonos arc soundbar, sub, and satellite ones with a proper Genelec-based 5.1 based setup. But my only concerns are price (it'd be at least 5k), and the distance to the monitors - my sofa is ~4.2m away from the television, and the maximum distance where direct sounds dominate (green in this image from https://www.genelec.com/correct-monitors https://www.genelec.com/correct-monitors: https://images.ctfassets.net/4zjnzn055a4v/3SiwbzysMQkGR6oN470H5Q/972968e655d56d85953d27f518f191c4/correct-monitors-direct_sound_dominance-chart.jpg?w=930 https://images.ctfassets.net/4zjnzn055a4v/3SiwbzysMQkGR6oN47...) is 3m for all but the most expensive monitors. So I'm curious if it works well for you.

petepete 2y ago

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

JonChesterfield 2y ago

The combination of must use an app, the app mostly doesn't work, the speaker needs factory reset frequently makes it a paperweight on the way towards electronics recycling. Firing the CEO seems good but insufficient. Liquidate the company, use the assets to try to offset the environmental damage done by the mass manufacture of e-waste. Or I suppose fix the software stack to bring the speakers back to usefulness, perhaps by throwing away everything done for the last few years in reset --hard fashion.

nemo44x 2y ago

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

belval 2y ago

Over the holidays we played a game called Hitster which has a very simple premise of listening to music and guessing the release year. My in-laws have a Sonos system and it was so laughably bad connectivity-wise with the wrong song playing, no song playing, songs not stopping, etc... I jokingly said that a 100$ bluetooth speaker would have been better, which was not super well received. Bottomline is: It does not matter how good your sound system is if it's not reliable.

alistairSH 2y ago

Good. System architecture aside, the UX alone was a disaster. Less discoverable, more layers of menus. Plus flaky pairing and system discovery (from iPhones, at least). Wife’s new iPhone couldn’t connect, even though my older iPhone was running the same app version just fine. It was bad enough I bought HomePods for the bedroom to replace the Sonos 1s we’d used for years. I still have them in another room, just someplace that they don’t get used as often.

TheMagicHorsey 2y ago

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

aisio 2y ago
Not a sonos engineer, but its a good external analysis https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-happened-sonos-app-technical-analysis-andy-pennell-wigwc/ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-happened-sonos-app-techn...

NelsonMinar 2y ago

I have some Sonos systems installed in 2008 that are still working great. No hardware failures, app still does what it always did. That being said they feel clunky and worse year after year, the UI is old fashioned, it's not quite as reliable. And of course the whole thing is orphaned. I'll never buy another set of several thousand dollars of Sonos v2 or whatever they want me to do.

NoPicklez 2y ago
This is my experience as well, the hardware is still excellent but the app experience has really deteriorated, even in the latest app

crmd 2y ago

In my living room I have a pair of loudspeakers, an 18 watt stereo tube amp that I service myself, an analog rotary mixer, a pair of turntables, and an IKEA Kallax full of records. 10 years ago my friends called me a hipster for doing this instead of cloud-based music, but not so much any more. When I hear these horror stories of enshitified HiFi platforms it makes me feel like I made the right investment decision.

arusahni 2y ago

The fact that, many months after this app update, I still don't have play controls in the notification shade is appalling. God forbid I need to pause my music or need to skip a track. Someone had to make a decision as to when the updated app would ship. They did not make a wise choice.

bborud 2y ago

I never understood why people bought Sonos products. They were fairly poor in terms of usability even before any shenanigans. My first and only Sonos ended up in a rubbish bin (well recycling bin) when it turned out it couldn’t reliably Play back audio books at 1.5x speed. I never even considered giving it away because that would be a dick move. Got a Teenage Engineering designed BT speaker instead.

ehsankia 2y ago
I was blown away when I found out this expensive Sonos device I was setting up for my mother-in-law didn't support basic bluetooth pairing. Like what? The cheapest 20$ wireless speaker supports bluetooth...
- recursive 2y ago
  Kind of like how iPods didn't support direct copying of songs as files, whereas the cheapest hardware audio players could do it. Actually, it's exactly like that. It's a path out of the walled garden.

midtake 2y ago

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

sureIy 2y ago

Why are speakers so hard? It's insanely old technology and they're still charging hundreds for a baseline handheld speaker. I'm dearly holding onto my Marshall Acton that can be connect to WiFi without an app and stream directly from Spotify. No smart nothing. Nothing like this seems to exist anymore, not for the $200 I paid this years ago anyway. Before this I had tried a smaller but $250 Sonos speaker and it sounded like crap, with far worse UX.

jimmydoe 2y ago
SONOS prices a premium for its network features. No one wants a few Chinese wifi device at home, otherwise SONOS would be gone.
- sureIy 2y ago
  > No one wants a few Chinese wifi device at home Oh you are so wrong. I'd say no one wants to pay double when two products look the same on paper, and thus people end up with Chinese WiFi devices.
danielmarkbruce 2y ago
It's a fundamentally awful business. If you make a good product and just sell it you get a one time payment and you have a brand that one one cares about because you are a one time decision every x years. You don't "consume" it, there is no "new fashion". One time payment, and not a big one. So, companies try to avoid this fate by doing things which make for a better business - but invariably are bad for customers. In most cases, if you come across something awful like this, it's because just doing the right thing for customers doesn't make any money in that particular business due to the nature of the product and buying process.
- sureIy 2y ago
  Look at Bang & Olufsen. You can definitely produce high quality goods that last decades and update them regularly because they're simply beautiful. My father's 1995 model is still in use to this day. Granted, they're insanely high priced, but that means they also sell very few. There must be a middle ground.

lippihom 2y ago

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

jimmydoe 2y ago

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

Always42 2y ago

Glad to see this here. I have a couple sonos speakers in my kitchen and I am still scared to update to the latest app. I was fortunate enough to check the sub-reddit prior to updating.

tsunamifury 2y ago

He tried to turn Sonos into Juicero

faramarz 2y ago

I sure hope they are already well into fixing the issues and that the resignation is just for posterity and shareholder appeasement, otherwise, any significant change will take half a year at minimum! I’m now annoyingly used opening my Sonos app once, closing it, opening it again to get the damn ui to load current streams on any of the speakers.

jauntywundrkind 2y ago

First big case of a tech company taking a major dive for not respecting Local First. Things used to work without the cloud. Then the cloud got added and latency shot up, connectivity went down, and systems behaved worse.

neya 2y ago

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

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

tticvs 2y ago

FWIW I have 4 sonos devices in my home and I've got basically zero problems. I guess I mostly use Airplay to control them but I do occasionally use the app and it's fine. I'm really not sure what all the fuss is about.

lifeinthevoid 2y ago
What are you trying to say, that everyone's wrong?

alkonaut 2y ago

Did they switch apps again, or is this still about the debacle when they switched from their original app to the second gen (S2) app many many years ago? Because while that was a shitshow, that's ancient history by now. Did they screw up another generational switch?

Nursie 2y ago
Yep, there was a big update mid last year. They didn't orpahn any players this time, and a lot of people hate the UX but that's pretty subjective and people fear change, so lets ignore that. What they did that's not subjective - - Wreck some folks systems so that they can't add new devices or discover their existing ones. - Force everything to go via their cloud servers, which adds round-trip latency and server-reliability problems to everything you try to do The latter one there means that, for instance, if I try to use the app to change volume or skip a track then it might work, or it might take several seconds and then change the volume, or it might not do it at all. Maybe you press the button again ... Then after thirty seconds it might apply all the interactions and skip half an album or get deafeningly loud. But also the app may just not load properly, with half the interface staying blank. It may claim to have started the music but nothing's actually happening. It may not load the state of the speaker so you can't see what's playing or control it. It might not list all the speakers. Early on after the release we also got lots of tracks that would fail half-way through and skip to the next one. It's an absolute shitshow, and when people started to complain they were told the problems were clearly with their network setup and that they were at fault, even though everything had been fine before. They started saying things like "Oh starlink isn't really supported because of the latency it introduces", which was only a problem because of their decision to make the whole system terminally online. So yeah, they screwed the pooch again.

aquaticsunset 2y ago

I'm clearly in the minority, but the new app is leaps and bounds more usable and stable for me. The functionality gaps don't affect me - those features weren't things I used. And it's way, way more responsive and consistent than the old one. Perhaps it's just my specific network situation. The old app was a constant headache of inconsistent state - music playing while it showed nothing playing, pressing commands (like skipping a track or pausing) but those commands never happening on the device. It also took a very long time to show my entire device list. Never quite worked with the Roam like it should have.

Nursie 2y ago
So your experience is the exact mirror of mine. Old app was flawless and pretty low latency. As soon as the new one came along I had the issues you describe with control latency - volume or track changes would either take a random amount of time, or do nothing, or sometimes queue up and all apply at once. Also had inconsistent state, the app showing music as playing while nothing happened, or the reverse. The app's home screen only partially loading, all sorts of crap, with the same issues present on android or iOS. And apparently I'm one of the lucky ones - some people can't add new products or find existing ones. Maybe one day they'll release a version that works for both of us :)

RobMurray 2y ago

I hate my sonos setup now. It sounds great, but everything else has got worse since I bought them. The Sonos connect isn't supported by s2, the latency of changing volume got worse to the point that it is way too loud before you even notice it changing, There is something completely broken between Spotify/Sonos/Alexa making it only play Spotify free through sonos even though I have a subscription. Then there's the things that were always shit, like no low latency streaming except through the analogue inputs on the Sonos connect and a closed protocol blocking open source improvements.

vlmutolo 2y ago

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

solardev 2y ago

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

up2isomorphism 2y ago

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

mr_tristan 2y ago

Software problems almost never seem to actually impact brands, but this was so egregious it actually managed to. Even Crowdstrike increased revenue over the last year. So… I’m not shocked at the timing. Sales have tanked, and proved the CEO couldn’t be relied on to right the ship. It’s just one example of how long serious problems can fester in an organization. There’s likely deep cultural problems throughout the company’s decision making apparatus. We’ll see, but I don’t see Sonos capable of being a trusted brand again.

acchow 2y ago

> He’ll remain an adviser to the Sonos board through June and get paid $7,500 per month until then. He’ll be paid a cash severance of about $1.9 million, and his unvested shares in Sonos will vest. Incredible vesting schedule

tacker2000 2y ago

Every couple of months I go to my fathers holiday home and upon arrival i will have to update the damn sonos device and the app and whatnot… its just a chore and rarely is anything different from when he first got the speakers years ago. I just want to stream my spotify playlist to it and thats it. To be honest I miss the oldschool BT pairing speakers and I will probably get him one of these soon since Im just done with sonos and I cant see how normal non IT people can even put up with this and figure this whole update mess out.

kennu 2y ago

My impression is that the current Sonos app becomes unusable when your home Internet connection is unstable. It usually works fine here, but when our 5G starts switching channels due to a snowstorm, the Sonos app becomes erratic. I understand there's also issues with mDNS discovery and maybe other things, but the worst mistake seems to be the assumption that everybody has a stable Internet connection all the time. There are other apps that have made a similar mistake. E.g. Ubiquiti's UniFi management app has problems connecting to the local LAN console if you originally signed in using a cloud account and Internet becomes unstable. One app that handles this right is the Home Assistant Companion app. It detects when you're using a local WiFi SSID and connects directly to the internal LAN address which always works, and otherwise uses the cloud connection or public WAN address.

fennecbutt 2y ago

Dude got paid like 5m$ a year, and now he's left he'll just go somewhere else and get paid the same or more. These people don't earn that money. But keep defending ludicrous exec salaries.