What happened to the Sonos app? A technical analysis by Andy Pennel, Sonos fanboy/hacker
Posted by jpluimers on 2024/08/16
Four years ago, there was a [Wayback/Archive] Sonos U-turn over ‘bricking’ its smart speakers (BBC) after which hell broke loose in their community.
It was the main reason that I put my wish for Sonos speakers to sleep (and concentrate on surviving cancer).
Since a few weeks Sonos has released new apps that perform way worse and causes great turmoil in their community again, see for instance [Wayback/Archive] reddit/r/sonos: Anyone else worried about Sonos’s future? : sonos and [Wayback/Archive] The disaster known as The New Sonos App – vowe dot net.
I expect this this time Sonos won’t make a U-Turn: [Wayback/Archive] What happened to the Sonos app? A technical analysis is clear about what happened (“data-grab for AI purposes”) and the up-side for Sonos shareholders.
It however is making people that appreciate the former Sonos aim for quality to look for alternatives, which leads me to a post (plus thread) that pointed me to the above technical analysis: [Wayback/Archive] Kris: “Currently 11 Sonos devices. Time for an exit strategy. …” – chaos.social.
Kristian Köhntopp, having a long lasting habit of getting things working by being technically very knowledgeable then keep these things working, is a person I really trust on this: when he wants to bail out, be prepared to yourself.
I also really wonder whether IKEA selling SYMFONISK speakers based on the Sonos architecture but at a cheaper price point (right before Sonos started bricking their speakers) is an effect or a cause of this sudden change in the Sonos app behaviour.
If you dare to get into the Apple ecosystem, and not have Sonos equipment yet, this might be a direction to go: [Wayback/Archive] What I really want is for someone to crack the Sonos S1 protocol — the one that … | Hacker News
- What I really want is for someone to crack the Sonos S1 protocol — the one that allows for low-latency P2P sharing – and then to use one of these Airplay 2 bridges with it. Right now the best I can do is to pipe an icecast stream to one which adds seconds of latency. That would allow my older S1 Sonos gear (which I spent thousands on) to have basically unlimited life.
- …
- While probably not an ideal solution for the parent poster, who understandably wants to make things work with their existing Sonos gear, the A1392 is an outstanding value at this point because there are absolute truckloads of them on eBay for ~$20.
Assuming you’re okay with AirPlay (which, admittedly, rules a lot of HN folks out) this is a $20-per-room device that gives you full lossless multiroom streaming including your choice of analog or optical out. Really great.
Back to the “new” Sonos app: they made it bad for everyone, including the visually impaired.
[Wayback/Archive] Jakob Rosin: “Sonos made an update. THis tur…” – Universeodon Social Media
jakobrosin Jakob Rosin @jakobrosin Sonos made an update. THis turned accessibility completely around. The sonos app has become from fantastically accessible app to nearly completely inaccessible one. In the heist of digital equality, I really wish that the recent EU DEA package would’ve forced apple to make it possible to roll back updates, instead of making it possible to release shady third party appstores.
--jeroen
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