I can assure you streaming music from the Apple Music app to Sonos will be lossless but not Spatial. You can see this beneath the artwork.
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Sonos CEO Steps Down Following Disastrous App Redesign
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Makes me think that perhaps the CEO was an iPhone user as well. I have some Sonos speakers and only ever used their app when setting them up & tuning with TruePlay.
First, they could also roll back the firmware, and second, there are third party apps that seem to have no trouble using speakers that have the updated firmware - for instance, SonoPhone works much more like the old app (faster response, ability to see streaming URLs, etc.).
You're buying into the company's "we can't go back" message when what they really mean is "we don't want to put in the effort to go back, because it would cost us money and admit defeat, so we're going to keep digging this hole".
It's not low expectations, it's the randomness of the problems. Everyone's home network is different, people have lots of different configurations of speakers, and people use them in lots of different ways (home theater, "whole home" audio, Airplay targets, etc.).
The old app and firmware could handle an enormous number of different combinations of the above factors. The new app and firmware can only handle a small subset of those combinations. If you happen to have one of the supported combinations of factors, then things work just fine.
But there are tens of thousands of users out there with systems that have gone flaky, or developed major problems (and some that just plain don't work), since they rolled out the new app and firmware last May (and this is without even addressing the issue that the new app was feature incomplete, dropping support for all sorts of features it previously had, in order to meet a self-imposed deadline, and then they only agreed to put out a timetable for adding the missing features after enormous backlash).
I have an Arc, two Play:1 surrounds, and a Sub, and it all works fantastic, because I'm one of the fortunate ones. Apparently so are you. The ones that are aggravating (not you, and mostly not here) are the users (particularly on the r/sonos subreddit) who say, "well, my system works perfect, so it's your fault that yours' isn't working - you probably have a bad network (and also stop posting that you're having problems because that's inconveniencing me)" - ignoring the fact that the vast majority of the people complaining are ones who had perfectly working Sonos systems on their existing networks, with the old app and firmware.
Sonos has managed to take an extremely loyal customer base, who were their best ambassadors for selling more speakers, and turn many of them against the company. And all of this was apparently because they wanted to ship a new set of headphones (that few people wanted) on a self-imposed deadline, and wanted the new app/firmware in order to support that. The deadline appears to have been tied to a shareholder's meeting (and I still have the feeling that some upper management person must have gotten a "shipped on time" bonus out of it). So they shipped a major software release with inadequate testing and missing a whole bunch of features that were there the day before (from the users' perspective), and just... hoped that nobody would notice. And when people did, Sonos massively downplayed it and tried to gaslight their (loyal) customer base, until it couldn't be ignored. One of their early statements on the matter referenced having the "courage" to make changes - Apple fans know how well that word works (and when Apple used it for things like the headphone jack, they generally were dragging people into the future).
What they should have done is to either delay the product (the headphones) until the software was fully tested and feature complete, or they should have tacitly admitted defeat initially, by shipping the headphones with a special "headphone edition" of the app, so that only those using the headphones would have had problems, leaving the large loyal customer base using the existing apps and firmware until the new one was ready for prime time, and then release it to everyone. Alternatively, they could have rolled back everything, two weeks after it went live. Both of these would have made the company look bad, but it would have been front loaded, and we'd be long past that now. Instead, they chose to drag their customers, and their company's reputation, through the mud, for an extended time. And now their stock price is down and many customers are looking for alternatives.
(Vaguely related, Sonos is one of the few companies that I wish Apple would buy - they both make upscale electronics that "Just Work", Apple would get an instant foothold in multichannel home theater, like how they got an established headphone line when they bought Beats, and they'd be able to combine their expertise - we'd get Apple TVs and Siri that were fully aware of our home theater systems.)
Apple is developing its own line of smart speakers. Don’t see this happening.
I used to love the app for being able to build playlists from multiple music sources, but solid airplay support got rid of that. The app hasn’t been great for a while, but I don’t use it except maybe for settings once a year. So all my Sonos products still work great.
I humbly disagree, my App Store settings are configured to prevent automatic app updates, and despite this, my Sonos speakers and the older app continue to function flawlessly, even after the firmware update. It seems the CTO simply presumed that everyone would automatically update their app and passively accept the changes—a significant oversight.
The decision to mandate the update was ill-advised, laying the blame squarely on the CTO, with the CEO and the Board also at fault for not providing proper oversight and questioning this decision.
A more prudent approach would have been to launch a new, separate app while preserving the original, especially since the original app included critical features, such as the alarm function, that the new app initially lacked but has since incorporated.
I'm particularly curious about the nature of the firmware update—what was so crucial about it? I'm inclined to speculate that it addressed an undisclosed zero-day security vulnerability, though this is purely an assumption on my part.
I haven't seen any direct connections between the app issues to the drop in sales (like returns for example). It's just as easy to read it the other way, the company has been floundering under increase competition, hasn't released any new products, and tried to release a botched app to improve. The CEO wasn't fired because of an app, but failing to steer the company through the competition.
Speaking of, Sonos is expensive and competition is only getting better. Better app or not, they will continue to struggle.
Although Sonos sells a bunch of soundbars and home theater setups, their claim to fame is distributed audio and you need to use the app a lot for that.
I've gone back to S1, and I'll stay there until the online consensus is that S2 and the new app are finally worth coming back to. I'm back to loving my Sonos stuff, but this is only possible because my gear is relatively old and I was able to downgrade to S1.
It may be a long time before I (and people like me) are willing to risk buying newer hardware requiring S2. It may be a really long time before I'm confident enough to recommend Sonos to others again; and those things can't be good for Sonos.
Sonos, learn your lessons...
It may be a long time before I (and people like me) are willing to risk buying newer hardware requiring S2. It may be a really long time before I'm confident enough to recommend Sonos to others again; and those things can't be good for Sonos.
Sonos, learn your lessons...
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Agreed. I have a lot of Sonos products throughout my house, not just in my TV room, that I bought to play various audio throughout my house, particularly my large digital library. The app really diminished my use cases. Admittedly the home theater functions are still fine, but the other functions — that Sonos promoted their products on and enticed me to spend a lot of money — worked poorly with the new app, and in some cases were removed entirely. They still haven’t restored all the functionality. AirPlay doesn’t work with my older products (the majority), and the S1 app doesn’t work with the newer ones, but they all worked great before the controversial update.
I find it a little bizarre that some people say users like me are overstating the problem, especially when they use the product in a limited way, such as only for home theater. When this many people are dissatisfied, and the company itself has acknowledged the problem, I think a rational person should accept there really is a problem. I invested a lot of money in their products based on how the system worked for me at the time, and Sonos hobbled it suddenly and without warning, with an update that presented itself just like all the prior, benign, incremental updates. For them to break my system, removing functions I relied on after I bought the products, made me rethink my decision to invest in their product.
Good. Now chop some others out!
I have Beam with Sub plus five other speakers. The system worked perfectly for years until this update. Since all the 'fixes' playing music is possible 50% of the time and the other 50% the app 'cannot find my system'. The only thing which works all the time is the Beam as that just plays the TV sound via a wire.
If I can find better alternative I will replace it all. The kids just listen to music direct from their phones now as the speakers in their rooms 'cannot be found'.
I have Beam with Sub plus five other speakers. The system worked perfectly for years until this update. Since all the 'fixes' playing music is possible 50% of the time and the other 50% the app 'cannot find my system'. The only thing which works all the time is the Beam as that just plays the TV sound via a wire.
If I can find better alternative I will replace it all. The kids just listen to music direct from their phones now as the speakers in their rooms 'cannot be found'.
You guys are mad about the app but not mad about a series of $600+++ for a single speaker with OK audio quality until you apply volume…
Feel audio quality is good. Nowadays volume only annoys the neighbours but probably true old hifi stereos boxes had better sound quality turning up volume. My ears were better in those days too.
If not Sonos, what house system speakers do the people reading this thread like and recommend? Bluetooth is out of the question; signal drop is ridiculous. Wifi seems like the best way to go. I want to be able to use the speakers in concert and independently by multiple users.
If I replace my sonos gear, it's going to be with the unifi amps and walling off my TV sonos stuff from the internet.
Could still airplay to the TV Sonos stuff through the AppleTV, and through the the unifi amps-- and airplay 2 supports multiple speakers in concert.
My mistake: iPhone 7 sep 2016
AirPods December 2016
I'd say that's a screwed up schedule.