Sonos S1 Controller Hack 11.10.1 + Redeem Codes

Update: Changed my rating from 2 stars for v. 8 to 4 stars for v. 8.3.1. Especially impressed by your response to user feedback. There is zero chance of my buying a HomePod or whatever it’s called now.

Archive this: Disappointing update people. I cannot understand how you’re getting 5 star reviews from anyone who’s used the controller for any length of time. First, and forgetting the UI’s appearance for a second, the move to privilege songs over albums is misguided. Choosing an album now gives me a mountain of icons for individual songs to choose from that album. It’s unclear how to just play an album or add an album to the queue with one click or a hard press as in prior versions. Also, the Rooms navigation is awful. There used to be immediate access at the top of the screen to individual rooms. Navigating to the list now, even with the button on the bottom is aggravating. It should always be available on screen. You have complicated the controller in many ways under the guise of simplifying the look of the interface. The interface is cleaner, yes, and I don’t mind the white as others do. What bugs me is that the cleanliness of the look destroyed the ease of use that was there up to now. I don’t want to fumble around relearning how to use the controller effectively. I just want to listen to music quickly and easily. I especially want to be able to play albums quickly and easily. Looking forward to version 9.

Okay... we had a 10 year old Sony 46” Bravia TV and Bose Acoustimass 15 home theater speakers run through a Sony amp. So we decided to move up to a LG 65” c8 television. Love it, but that’s another review. The Bose was great for music but was always problematic trying to get it working properly for surround sound. The Sony and Bose never really jived with each other. So as a result we seldom used it. Anyway, friends told me about Sonos speakers and since we had the new TV I decided to purchase the Beam sound bar, the sub woofer and two play 1 speakers to make a surround system for the new LG. Man it sounds great. We are very please with the system and the ease of setup and use. It is pricey when it comes to the sub woofer. However the sub really completes the system so I would say if you can swing it $$$, go for it. We chose the Beam over the larger Sonos sound bar because the Beam has a HDMI hook up with “ARC” and Alexa built in if that’s important to you. I just didn’t want a optical connection that the bigger Sonos bar only comes with. However I would guess the larger sound bar probably sounds better.??? However don’t let the size of the Sonos Beam fool you, it's impressive. Anyway I can’t wait to add more speakers to our house later on. Very satisfied customer.

I’ve been a Sonos user since very early on. I have two Play:1 speakers that I use as a stereo pair. I was very disappointed when the v9.0 update, which apparently enabled Air Play on the One (plus other current models), disabled the home screen controls for those of us using the legacy speakers. I’ve also experienced the same as others where the last ~20 seconds of each track would be cut off when I was playing from a locked iOS device. I keep nearly all my audio on my iPhone & iPad and generally play straight from those devices’ libraries instead of from my Mac, as the latter spends most of its time in sleep mode.

Surprisingly I just accidentally got the lock screen controls re-enabled and the end-of-track cutoff seems to have gone away. For some reason one of my speakers dropped off the system and I couldn’t get it to reconnect, so I did a full-on controller reset on my iPhone. I also unplugged both speakers and then basically set my system back up, as if it was new. No idea why, but like I said this has caused the end-of-track dropout to go away and my lock screen controls to come back (even though Sonos says explicitly in their release notes that this function has gone away for those without Air Play compatible speakers).

Very weird, but now my system’s back to how I’ve used and loved it for the past 6-7 years and it’s great! Hopefully some others might try this and have some luck getting full functionality back.

Over the years, I have built a Sonos system with speakers throughout my home, a significant investment. I have also accumulated a library of thousands of titles, expecting to listen to my purchased music via Sonos, a functionality that made the hardware investment worthwhile. On the positive side, Sonos has gradually solved most of the bugs that would inexplicably fail to connect or randomly break connection with my WiFi or with my iphone. But the unwelcome news that Sonos would cease to play titles “on this phone” felt like a real ripoff - a classic bait and switch. It is redundant and wasteful to pay dues to a music streaming service when I already “own” the music I want to hear. Had I known that Sonos would block me from listening to my own music, I would never have invested in the system. This is why, when friends ask me whether they should buy Sonos, I now recommend rather that they purchase a set of high end Bluetooth speakers. I will be surprised if the good folks at Sonos publish this review, as it is anything but the hands-down accolade I’m sure they would prefer. But if they are serious about building consumer loyalty and serving and growing their customer base, they will thank their subscribers for their invaluable feedback and reinstate the “on this phone” functionality.

Revised 10/14 on new version. I hate the new layout. I do not find it intuitive and still struggle to figure out how to pick music to play in a particular room. Also, My favorites used to scroll vertically, making them easy to sort through as I could see many of them on the screen at the same time. Now they scroll horizontally and have huge icons, meaning I can only see one station at a time. This app used to be 5star worth and set it apart from the crowd.

Original review:
I seem to keep finding reasons to expand my system, it gets pretty addictive. I mostly use Pandora or other internet radio type stations. Streaming music to a speaker via Bluetooth is not the same! The speakers are more like today's smart TV's, with apps built in that run autonomously, the phone is just a remote control. Software navigation is incredibly easy and the speakers all sound amazing! I have a Play 1 in both my bedroom and home office, a Play 5 in my living room, a Playbar/Sub/Play1 surround system hooked to my Sony Bravia TV in the family room, and am waiting on a connect amp to arrive for my outdoor speakers. They can all play different stations, or group them together as needed during house parties.

Updated: I don't know that I'll ever love the new app design but they've definitely improved it since my last 2-star review. The Sonos experience as a whole is 5 stars. I love these devices, plain and simple.

Original Review: I'm split on this review, obviously. It's tempting to defiantly throw up a 1-star review and walk away without explanation but that would be unfair to a product that really is a standout. I've been a Sonos evangelist for years and years. The system has always been rock solid and the app intuitive -- flawless hardware and software. That all changed with the latest major version of the app. It's so confounding to those of us that have loved this product for years. I don't care that it's white -- stupid quibble. People can get over that. But the actual interactions I have with it while trying to play music in different rooms never seem to get easier. I eventually get what I want but it's not before cursing the new app several times for tricking me into the wrong area.

I want so badly for Sonos to acknowledge their error and revert to the older-style navigation. It would be an easy 5-star review from me again.

It’s a shame when you haven’t even had the chance to use the speaker and your already having problems. It just so happens that Sonos doesn’t have tech support available on the weekends to assist when the average human is needing it. I’m disappointed at the fact that I thought it would be a nice touch to bring the speaker to a bridal shower at a friends house for entertainment purposes. Connected it to the WiFi at her house, finally got everything setup and then couldn’t even use it because the speaker couldn’t just link to pandora without having my password. I couldn’t remember it to save my life. So I get it home the next day, and try to re-setup the speaker on the network in my house, thinking that this wouldn’t be so difficult according to the instruction video in the app/controller. I’ve unplugged the speaker, the router, plugged the Ethernet cable into a wireless router and the Internet box directly from the ISP, and nothing will work to have the speaker setup on my own network. The app/Controller instructs you to plug the Ethernet cable up and then wait for the mysterious green light that never comes on or to go to advanced settings which doesn’t appear anywhere in the app, or my personal favorite when the app tells you to select the SONOS wireless network that doesn’t appear. So lesson learned don’t take your Sonos anywhere and set it up unless you plan to leave it there!!! Because you won’t be able to set it up anywhere else!!!

I love the sound I get from my speakers, but the review isn’t really about the speakers. It’s about the app, which needs some work. The ability to access multiple audio sources is great. What it is missing though are the small details that make the apps from those services it is drawing from a better option almost every time. For instance, the Pandora app lets you view songs that have already played - so, if you were away from the device and heard a new song and want to know more about it, you could check later to see what it was. With the Sonos app, if you don’t check while the song is playing you will never know. With the Books from Audible, it’s great that you can play it in multiple rooms but losing the ability to speed up the playback means I won’t use that service here. The same (or worse) with Apple podcasts. The only way to access them is via the On This Phone option. Unfortunately, it doesn’t tap into the organization that the iPhone uses and just puts everything out there in a mess so if you have multiple episodes to listen to, it’s just a huge mess. This also needs the speed up option that the regular podcast apps offer. Again, I love my speakers and the music I play on them sounds amazing. However, I really hope the app gets some good upgrades soon.

My family has been a frequent costumer of Sonos, with over 5 speakers all over our house in a variety of sizes. For the past 6 years since we’ve gotten our first speaker, the sound bar, we have been very pleased with our (expensive, yet) great quality speakers. They will cut out every now and then, most noticeable during movies, but that was only a slight annoyance compared to what we are dealing with now. Perhaps it is part of a new update (we have the latest version, so the app being outdated should not be an issue), or simply the app crashing, meaning it will be back up and running within a week hopefully. But, since this morning, Sonos has let us down. An overall irritation, disappointment, and not what we paid for! The speakers (rooms) have been unable to group, and some speakers are silent, despite the loud volume it is set on (they are also all plugged in). We could select a song or artist or radio to play, but the speaker will simply not react whatsoever. Being a loyal patron of Sonos, my family and I are frustrated and hope this issue is resolved quickly, especially with the holidays.

But to those interested in purchasing one or more Sonos speakers, they have overall been a great investment for our family. We have been spoiled with these great speakers scattered around the house, making it so that when they suddenly fail to do what they are supposed to, it is especially aggravating.

The latest one simply removed the ability to play anything anywhere. Awesome!

Update: one of my favorite features is that Sonos can almost never process any command without restarting the app. And even more fun, the play/pause button is unreliable after it restarts. It may be playing but only offer “play,” or it may be paused and only offer “pause.” Leaving the house and want to turn off the music on the way out the door? Better sit down, maybe pour a drink. I left the music on all night recently because of this. I left convinced that it was off after at least a minute of toggling and waiting. Silly me. One must, I guess, use multiple devices to verify that a simple “pause” command was evaluated correctly.

Another great feature is the frequency of updates. I wish the updates would fix the problems, but they only seem to compound them. The annoying update notification inevitably lists something I don’t care about and then breaks some basic functionality. Whom exactly are you catering to, Sonos? Your customers? Someone else? What gives? Great, now Sonos works with all this stuff I don’t have or even want, but can’t manage any single task without a complete restart. You are optimizing for the wrong priorities. Take care of your customers or we will leave and never come back.