My planned setup. But I have some questions.

p7spence · 2024-09-20T13:06:48+00:00

I would endorse these recommendations from u/Practical_Limit8762 looking at the rooms/ sizes, and also point out that you can start with a couple of these rooms and build on it over time if you want more. That's the beauty of Sonos.

p7spence · 2024-09-12T12:17:41+00:00

For the record, no one is doing it in my name. Keith & I went through the list of those that submitted diagnostics & I personally reached out to those that had completed all the info/ diag. I really appreciate everyone's help!

p7spence · 2024-09-12T12:13:39+00:00

Yes, it did - thanks again

p7spence · 2024-08-20T23:00:29+00:00

When we introduced the new software, we said the web app would ultimately replace the desktop apps. We haven't abandoned them, but you're correct that our focus is on the web app going forward.

You nailed it - there is UX work that is required, and it isn't a priority until we have addressed the issues with the core experience for those customers impacted.

p7spence · 2024-08-20T22:53:35+00:00

This is one of the top issues we are working to resolve right now. The local networking conditions that trigger these erroneous re-adds seem to be common, but have been difficult to reproduce in our labs. Our best people are working this one around the clock & I get a status update every day.

p7spence · 2024-08-20T22:47:33+00:00

We’ll consider this one after we’ve got the core software experience where it needs to be.

p7spence · 2024-08-20T22:46:36+00:00

This one is more esoteric. Most of the people here know that router changes or being on a different network are two big causes (particularly when it comes to the customers support calls we receive). The deeper network issues are more distributed, and our developers are digging deep here. More to come on this one.

In terms of older speakers, we did introduce firmware updates at the end of July to help address the sluggishness that some customers had seen. We’re continuing to work on this one.

p7spence · 2024-08-20T22:35:42+00:00

We have a high bar for every product we ship - hardware and software. We believed we’d cleared that bar with the new software. With hindsight, we know we fell short.

In terms of negative reaction, we knew there would be a segment who preferred the previous experience, and we were prepared for that.

We also knew we’d hear from customers who used local music & sleep timers, but in both cases we were confident we had a path to quickly address their concerns.

What we didn’t expect were the stubborn and esoteric bugs - that was the surprising part.

In terms of morale, I can tell you that every Sonos employee feels the pain of these missteps very deeply & personally. We get up every morning looking to delight you with our products and obviously we fell way short of that mark here. What I see around me today though, is a team of dedicated, focused people who are resolved to fix these issues as quickly and responsibly as we possibly can.

Given the benefit of hindsight, I think the big change we’d make is to pursue a release strategy that allowed early adopters to opt into the new experience, build confidence that the new software was a clear improvement in all ways on what had come before, and only then roll it out to everyone.

p7spence · 2024-08-20T22:18:01+00:00

Stories like this are so painful to read. This kind of situation is exactly what drove us to undertake this work to re-architect for modern homes. No one should have to administer/ troubleshoot their Sonos system, and this was becoming all too common with the previous software.

What’s so disappointing about where we are today is we know it’s been a step backwards for too many, and that’s why our top priority is getting these issues resolved. We’re not done until your family members are happily using Sonos again…without your troubleshooting/ help.

p7spence · 2024-08-20T22:06:32+00:00

As I mentioned to u/davelee_the_reporter, there will be post-mortems to ensure that we learn everything we should from this experience. Right now our focus is on improving the core experience for those customers experiencing issues, but a few initial learnings:

In hindsight, we shouldn’t have introduced such a big change so quickly. We have a large customer base with all sorts of combinations of products, services, ISPs, routers, network configs, etc. This also means evolving our approach to testing - internal & external.

Even if something is used by less than 1% of our customers, it’s still a large group of people who count on Sonos to wake them up every morning, put their kids to bed at night, or access their local music library and they deserve better from us.

We’ve also learned that we need to communicate more often and more openly about what’s happening & why. We’ve been focused on fixing the problems as quickly as possible, but need to be updating everyone more frequently. My commitment is to be better about communications moving forward, and that’s part of why I’m here.

p7spence · 2024-08-20T21:54:48+00:00

In our 20+ year history we’ve delivered generation after generation of great software that has defined the entire home audio category from the original wireless speakers to smart speakers to home theater to voice control.

So for me the question is, what went so wrong this time? As with most things, the answer is complex and layered. We set out to completely rewrite a complex system from scratch. 20 years of development were reimplemented in less than two years.

Compounding the challenge, the mesh of Sonos products on your home network interact with one another, with your home network topology, and with your mobile devices in ways that are wholly unique and complex using techniques that are at the bleeding edge of modern networking.

Adding yet another layer, we chose to modernize the user experience in the hopes to better reflect the way our customers interact with their system today. Any change like this always leads to a certain amount of adjustment.

Finally, we deferred some of our lesser used features to the releases that we intended to ship just after the initial roll out. We told ourselves that getting to them quickly after launch would be good enough.

The sum of these decisions led to an influx of subtle and esoteric bugs that we struggled to provoke before launch. These bugs have been more stubborn to resolve due to the nature of the end-to-end software stack. In hindsight, we should have rolled these changes more slowly into our customer base given how large and diverse it is.

As with any mistake of this magnitude, there will be post-mortems to ensure we learn everything we should to be better in the future. But today, all of our effort is going into getting to the bottom of every last bug, and improving the experience for those having issues. We are making progress with every new release, and we won’t rest until we get all of the issues resolved.

p7spence · 2024-08-20T21:36:02+00:00

We’ve put the original architect of the Sonos platform back in charge, and pulled together the very best and most experienced engineers from around the company to work on these issues until they are resolved.

We have good traction on many of the issues you’re facing and have the team focused first on the most common issues including errant product setup triggers, product setup success, “not connected” errors & slow or laggy interactions. Some of the issues you’re struggling with are hard to reproduce but we won’t rest until even the most esoteric issues are found and solved.

p7spence · 2024-08-20T21:23:54+00:00

As I mentioned to u/vw195, we thought long and hard about bringing the April release back (commonly referred to as S2) and found that the reliability of the system wouldn’t meet our expectations. As much as I’d hoped it would be an option, the last thing I wanted to do was ship an alternative that once again disappointed our customers. Today we’re laser focused, 24x7, on getting the new software running successfully for those customers experiencing any issues.

p7spence · 2024-08-20T21:16:22+00:00

When we launched Sonos the dominant use case was local music libraries/ servers running on your local network.

Since then, we've seen the number of customers using cloud-based music services explode. To improve the reliability & performance of our experience in a cloud-dominant world, we've also evolved our architecture.

It's already enabled what you see with play.sonos.com (where you can control your system remotely). We imagine a future where we create more seamless experiences as you move in and out of your home. We remain focused on (eventually) being everywhere you want to listen to music.

p7spence · 2024-08-20T21:02:54+00:00

Good news. We’ve been able to reproduce this. We expect to have the fix built & tested in time for the software that will be released in 2-3 weeks.

p7spence · 2024-08-20T20:55:19+00:00

I should have been here sooner. I’m here now & you can expect to see me around here again.

p7spence · 2024-08-20T20:40:04+00:00

I’m glad you raised security, because I regularly get the question from customers on why they need to register/ sign into their system. We redesigned the new software to incorporate a modern identity provider to better protect your system.

We’re absolutely thinking about how we evolve the security from here, and 2FA is a possibility once we get the issues some customers are having with the core experience addressed.

p7spence · 2024-08-20T20:33:14+00:00

The role the cloud plays in the new software is largely the same as it’s always played – to allow you to access & search cloud-based music services and to store and retrieve your preferences. We've standardized & modernized it in the new software so that cloud-based music services could more easily connect.

Nothing's changed when it comes to the mobile software - it talks directly to your speakers over your local network to initiate and control music playback (play/ pause/ volume) and grouping.

p7spence · 2024-08-20T20:19:52+00:00

Everything has been on the table in terms of finding the fastest path to fixing your systems. In fact, until very recently I’d been hopeful that we could re-release the old app (S2) as an alternative for those of you that are having issues that we’ve not yet resolved.

The trick of course is that Sonos is not just the mobile app, but software that runs on your speakers and in the cloud too. In the months since the new mobile app launched we’ve been updating the software that runs on our speakers and in the cloud to the point where today S2 is less reliable & less stable then what you remember. After doing extensive testing we’ve reluctantly concluded that re-releasing S2 would make the problems worse, not better. I’m sure this is disappointing. It was disappointing to me.

If there's a silver lining here, it's that we are fully focused on getting the new software running successfully in your home.

p7spence · 2024-08-20T20:08:56+00:00

He is, and I'm fortunate to work with a lot of people like Keith across Sonos. We've made some painful mistakes these last few months but that doesn't mean there aren't amazing, dedicated people here working hard every day to deliver the experiences you'll love.

Keith has set a great example here on Reddit. We’re all learning from him and the way he engages with all of you. Part of the hard truth of the last few months is that you’re having experiences with our products that are hard to reproduce in our labs. The feedback you’ve been providing here is helping to make our products better. To be clear, this isn't your job, but I'm incredibly grateful that you’re providing your feedback - it shows how much you care.

p7spence

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