PSA: new Sonos controller app: avoid at all costs

[telemark]

Whatever you do, don't update to the latest version of the Sonos controller. The short version is that there are many missing and broken features (not even good quality for a beta release). For the whole sad story read

https://en.community.sonos.com/general- ... pp-6892527

[BillyV001]

telemark: Thanks for posting this! Prolly saved me from wasting a lot of time and effort!

[Rex66]

The problem is once you have invested in sonos, you are kinda stuck

They just keep screwing up their product

[Bh1984]

Reason 5 million while I won't get rid of my android device. I could install the old version of an app.

[SwiftKey]

Whatever you do, don't update to the latest version of the Sonos controller. The short version is that there are many missing and broken features (not even good quality for a beta release). For the whole sad story read

https://en.community.sonos.com/general- ... pp-6892527

Yup. Made that mistake, now I can’t toggle my sub off at night when my neighbor is home

[telemark]

Reason 5 million while I won't get rid of my android device. I could install the old version of an app.

Yes, I may end up buying a cheap Android tablet and side loading the older version of the app. At this point my iPad is an expensive volume control, and not even a good one: one of the features they removed was the numbers on the volume control.

[heartwood]

I use the Sonos S1 app (pixel phone, android tablet and chromebooks. It works for my system that's over 10 yrs old. And since it's on google I can talk to it with my Home devices. Sonos keeps trying, for several years, to get me to update to the "new" app. It will not work on older systems, you need to add/change something in the hardware? Yo uinstall and then it says it's not compatible with your system.

Try the old S1 app, see the 2nd section here: https://support.sonos.com/en-us/downloads

The one labelled "Sonos S1 Controller app"

I see that S1 has a latest version too, "Current version: 11.14 Last updated: 3/13/2024"

Seems to be still working for me.

[telemark]

I use the Sonos S1 app (pixel phone, android tablet and chromebooks. It works for my system that's over 10 yrs old. And since it's on google I can talk to it with my Home devices. Sonos keeps trying, for several years, to get me to update to the "new" app. It will not work on older systems, you need to add/change something in the hardware? Yo uinstall and then it says it's not compatible with your system.

Try the old S1 app, see the 2nd section here: https://support.sonos.com/en-us/downloads

The one labelled "Sonos S1 Controller app"

I see that S1 has a latest version too, "Current version: 11.14 Last updated: 3/13/2024"

Seems to be still working for me.

The new software doesn't run on older hardware. I believe the issue is not enough memory. As luck would have it, I recently bought some newer hardware so that I could finally switch to the newer system. It turns out that Connects built after 2015 can run the new system, so I bought a used one on eBay and a pair of new One SLs from Best Buy: Sonos doesn't sell these anymore, but other retailers still have them at a discount. Going back to the S1 system is an option, but it's kind of a nuisance: you have to factory reset all the speakers and then add them back, and I'm not sure if that will even work with the Ones. I could dig my old Play:5s out of the closet, but they don't sound as good as the Ones.

And yes, it's stupid for the app to nag you to "upgrade" to software that your hardware can't run, but then this is Sonos we're talking about.

[telemark]

As a followup, I spent most of Saturday digging older equipment out of the closet and "downgrading", as Sonos describes it, my system to the original S1 software. Am now kicking myself for not having done this much sooner: no more speakers dropping in and out, the volume control responds instantly for all grouped speakers, I can use the iPad again. On the downside, I had to reconfigure my Samba server to the insecure NT1 level, spent a frustrating couple of hours getting it to work, and for whatever reason only the Play:3 can actually play tracks from it. The others can index it but run into permission problems. But I can live with that: still a vast improvement over the new software. Oh, and the S1 app doesn't keep trying to sell me on new products: gosh, what a shame.

For the future, I'm looking into WiiM. Maybe replace the two Play:5s in the living room with an M20 pair from Q Acoustics...