School me on SONOS and other home streaming systems

between Spotify and sonos im kinda getting over the idea of listening to music at all anymore tbh

I splurged on the Sonos Ace headphones – my old pair died, I've never owned a "really nice" pair of headphones, and there was a discount available to me.

How are they so far?

I like them... the sound is nice, and the settings can be adjusted thru the Sonos app – even when they're paired with a different device – or by fiddling with the side button. The app has an EQ with three sliders, which suits me fine. Apparently they'll do the Sonos Wifi thing only with a soundbar (which I don't have), so for my purposes they just work like standard headphones.

The pads are the kind that fully enclose your ears, which I find a little weird (my last pair sort of rested on top of my ears). They're metal but lightweight, and seem nicely put together.

Surprising so many people use the Sonos app. I've had Sonos for years and exclusively use Apple Music app to control it. Works fine.

Opposite for me; I’m always surprised to see how many people buy Sonos speakers only to use Airplay instead of the app! Getting away from all of the limitations of Airplay was one of the primary reasons I went with Sonos.

sonos earphones don’t integrate with rest of your sonos system so you can’t hand off from one to another ?

Apparently they couldn't build wifi into them without killing the battery life. So it's kinda just like buying whatever other pricey wireless headphones?

Yeah you can hand off TV audio from your soundbar, but that’s it for now. Supposedly the soundbar connection does use WiFi though, so there’s speculation that there could potentially be more integration with the system down the line.

I primarily use the Sonos app to connect my turntable to my Sonos speakers, which is run through a Connect. The app redesign unfortunately makes this completely unintuitive and pushes streaming apps to the forefront.

Getting away from all of the limitations of Airplay was one of the primary reasons I went with Sonos.

Hmmm...what are the limitations? Maybe I should move to the app.

Well the app sucks now so maybe wait a few months

I still use an old-ass Sonos speaker with the old-ass android app, works fine most of the time. I mean sometimes it stops working entirely but then it's time to put on a record.

Anyone use the Windows desktop app? Do the recent updates cripple it as much as the mobile app? I've been scared to update mine since it seems to be the only way to properly manage my queue.

for some reason the app likes to lose track of my Amp (I've got an Amp driving my old speakers connected to my tv) which sometimes knocks out the surround sound (two Play:1 speakers) on the other side of the room. so the app lets me stream directly to those and a couple other speakers I have but the room's no longer coordinated

might be a me problem. restarting my router makes everything speak again so it might be forgetting how to route between the wired device and the wifi ones

Well the app sucks now so maybe wait a few months

yeah they REALLY fucked it up. I want to beat up everybody who was at the meeting where they ok'd it

Hmmm...what are the limitations? Maybe I should move to the app

Depending on how you use the system, Airplay might not be a limitation for you. Like if it’s just you using it, Airplay might be fine, or if you’re Airplaying from a computer rather than a phone. The big thing for me is that when you use the app the speakers themselves are handling the streaming, rather than your phone pulling the stream and then sending it to the speakers. With the app your phone is basically just a remote control for the streamer rather than being the streamer itself. For family use especially this makes some things possible that you can’t easily do with Airplay:

- At night I can start a stream of rain sounds in one kid’s room, white noise in another kid’s room, and music in my room.

- My wife and I are often listening to music together; either one of us can drop a song that we suddenly want to hear into the queue from our own devices without interrupting the rest of the queue.

- If I start playing music in the morning that the family is listening to I can leave home with my phone to pick up breakfast without the music being interrupted. Or during a party I can walk out of WiFi range in the yard and the music doesn’t stop.

- Any one of us can adjust the volume of the room that we’re in regardless of who started the stream.

That stuff is useful for me on pretty much a daily basis, but probably doesn’t matter for a lot of people. Other perks are not using up phone battery power, and Apple Music streams lossless through the app which Airplay can’t do (though I think it might be getting that in iOS 18 later this year?). But I should add that I still have the older S2 app on my phone which has always worked great for me; my wife updated to the new app and as DJP said it’s got some issues.

I primarily use the Sonos app to connect my turntable to my Sonos speakers, which is run through a Connect. The app redesign unfortunately makes this completely unintuitive and pushes streaming apps to the forefront.

Yeah they dropped the Autoplay option from the Connect input settings in the new app. Supposedly it’s on the list of things that will be coming back in an update and that should make it much easier.

The new app must be a crazy fucking refactor if they can't reuse an autoplay function

but detecting nonzero voltage on a line-in and switching that speaker on doesn't seem to involve "new APIs"

checking in a couple months and however many updates later to report that sonos 2024 remains a complete disaster.

speakers dropping out constantly. like literally every 10 or 15 minutes.

volume doesn't respond to adjustments in real time.

artist discographies are barely navigable blobs that don't distinguish between albums, singles or anything else.

the back button doesn't work in any recognizable way. go to a discography. click on a title. hit "back." good luck.

still can't make playlists or find any of my old ones.

etc.

Sorry to hear about your troubles, I seem to gave come through without a hitch (I have 6 Sonos products). I use Spotify to stream from the cloud and Bubbleupnp to stream my personal digital library and it all works.

The new app interface is definitely a mess, though.