I feel certain products just dont need apps or 'tech'. Speakers should not be 'smart' anymore than a powertool needs an app. It just turns products that should otherwise be long-lasting become disposable waste once software support evaporates for any reason.<p>I dont think it was a good product even back when it did 'work'. We received a pair as a house-warming gift and I remember not understanding how or why I should use them. I already had a soundbar that I could stream music to. I now, out of politeness, had to use these new "wireless" speakers that demanded a constant wifi connection but still required their own <i>Very Visible</i> power cables along with its own dedicated app which was nothing but a wrapper for music services that logged me out after every software update. I couldn't even use it as a dumb speaker and operate it as part of my main sound system so now I have a soundbar that is nicely mounted to the wall and additionally these speakers that clutter my living room. Lovely.
I recently set up shairport-sync[0] on a pair of Raspberry Pi's w/ USB DACs and nice speakers to get multi-room audio from Apple music. It's pretty nice!<p>It definitely was a bit of a process to set up, but well documented and much less painful than what this sounds like.<p>I also put headless plexamp on one, which lets me play my music from Plex, although I haven't gotten around to putting it on the other one yet for multi-room audio.<p>[0] : <a href="https://github.com/mikebrady/shairport-sync">https://github.com/mikebrady/shairport-sync</a>
The debacle caused me to try out all the third party apps and I finally found Clic (iOS only), which is made by an indie developer and implements lots of modern stuff that the official app will probably never get around to (live activities on the Lock Screen, Dynamic Island, an actually decent watch app). It’s such a great experience and I’m enjoying and using my Sonos system more than I have in years now.<p>This has been a great example of how a company culture can go off the rails, and management can chase dubious ideas that sound good, like cloud mediated controls or a unified react native codebase, while a single dev can make something many times better by working off more pragmatic assumptions.
I’m happily still using S1. Given that upper management agrees the new S2 is a company ending level screwup, I wonder why they don’t just publish an S2 classic app, spin up old backends from their disaster recovery / business continuity plan, and move on with things.
A million years ago when Sonos and Slimdevices/Logitech Squeezebox were both newish, I was cheap and chose Logitech on price and an open source server. Today we have their devices in 6 rooms, and open source players in 2 more.<p>Logitech abandoned the ecosystem almost immediately after I started buying into it and I've worried what would happen but the open source community has made these things better than ever. Don't get me wrong, there have been teething issues with Spotify, breakages in service, and any new hardware is all a bit DIY, but I'm glad I chose the open solution.<p>The community is currently rebranding everything to Lyrion and you can get started without any official hardware. <a href="https://lyrion.org/" rel="nofollow">https://lyrion.org/</a>
I know this feeling, having seen an universally loved service made by passionate excellent engineers, my people, driven to shit along with the organization. It took a long time to get to grips with it. But then I realized, that the people who did it, made a whole lot of money. I might think it morally wrong, but I also understand I might not be able to resist the temptation to do the same, if someone promised me the same piles of cash. Gotta accept the failures of the man.
What's the current best whole home audio setup that doesn't locks you into a specific brand/product line? Must work on iOS/Android/PC, sorry AirPlay.<p>I'm okay with smart dongle-y things that don't fit the criteria so long as they could run on a set of passive speakers. Because if they turn to shit I just pitch them.
My Sonos experience has been fine eight years now 10+ devices.<p>That said I do dislike the new app rollout.<p>I do feel like there has been 500ms to 2 seconds of added lag in certain actions. I can't quite place what's going on though. Not enough to be a deal breaker yet.<p>I feel the surround sound experience has been very hit or miss but can't tell if it's Sonos or the media platform I'm watching videos on.
From the reddit post:<p>> Alarm functionality as a highlight feature wtf, dude I can write bash scripts that handle alarm systems reliably on an IoT network, NO PROBLEM … Queue logic systems are the most basic shit I've ever seen. Are you serious?<p>I don’t know what to make of this.<p>While the app may be a disaster claiming alarms are nothing more than a bash script on a distributed IOT system seems odd.<p>Networked queues with multiple clients is not as simple as the author implies either.
Not sure what people have in mind with regards to the growth of a company? Get to know more people? Get to know them more closely? Less debt/overhead? More agility? Less stakeholders?
"Just an honest opinion from a huge fan of Sonos speakers."<p>Ah yes, of course, the most honest opinions come from the hugest of fans. But in all seriousness: I will make fun of every single person who will show this level (or less) of emotional attachment to any tech. It's literally "victim of product and an abusive relationship with company".