Speak to me

Good morning.  Hope you're able to take the day off to celebrate the labor movement in this country.  I've never had a job that was associated with any of the labor unions but have great respect for those skilled workers who have such positions and the work they do.

Regular visitors to this space will remember my past posts about Sonos speakers and my personal experience with them.  Recall that I was very impressed with how they connected with your home wi-fi, always sounded great and were relatively problem free.  And I more or less doubled down, bought a second speaker, the One SL, to form a stereo pair for my office and was SO SO happy!

That was then.

In what seemed mere minutes after I made that decision and that purchase with which I was so enthralled, problems arose on the horizon.  I think I mentioned that their speakers are set up and managed with the help of an application on a smartphone or computer, and that allows you to change sound settings, add or remove streaming services and access a personally owned music library and play it directly through Sonos' speakers.

The way I used my speakers was pretty straightforward, since they were not portable, so I didn't experience all that many issues with the app and was satisfied.

That was, until Sonos issued an "all-new" version of said app.

As I customarily do with my Apple devices, I updated the app on my phone and almost instantly realized that I no longer could access the music library comprised of recordings I own.  I could, but would now have to do so via Airplay 2, which is a cumbersome and sometimes buggy connectivity method pioneered by Apple.  If you're familiar with their HomePod speakers, they connect with Apple devices by using Airplay 2, and from what I've read, it's not exactly perfect even when connecting from one Apple device to another.

Anyway, the loss of that function, which was about 50% of my usage of the Sonos speakers, was jarring, but I kept playing with Airplay and was able to get at least some enjoyment out of the speakers once this new app became the case.

I was apparently among the lucky users who were largely able to carry on as before.  I read online, on Reddit and other sites, that may users found that their speakers were completely functionless thanks to the new app, while others were relegated to continually resetting and restarting the many speakers they had throughout their homes (remember, the hook that Sonos uses is "multi-room audio," so lots of people had accumulated a speaker or two for each room).  And then there were their many home video users, with a speaker setup to accompany their televisions.

It was and is a mess.  Sonos' CEO gave many interviews not only apologizing for the poor rollout of this new software but committing to nearly weekly updates at one point and promising to regain the confidence of their user base.

About three weeks ago, after quite a bit of experimentation on my part, I was able to restore the function of playing my own music through the speakers and was very happy.  But all was still not quite well, and I still felt as though there were more problems in store.

I put my speakers up for sale on Craigslist, and was astounded that in this environment a very nice young man in Louisville, where I call on hospitals and other treatment providers for my job, offered my asking price.  I sold my speakers to him last week.  When we met for the transaction I asked him if he currently had Sonos speakers in his home and his response was a grin and he followed with "oh, yeah!"

I wish him luck.  I just didn't want endless problems operating what was marketed as a simple and solid process of joining software, hardware and content into a great entertainment system.

I initially decided I was going to simply use the speakers built into my iMac, but researched computer speakers and found a pair for less than $100 that had the features I wanted (namely, no app and the ability to connect via Bluetooth or a cable).  They arrived yesterday and I have listened to some of my music through them and I was impressed, given the size and price.  Ironically, what drove me to purchasing my first Sonos speaker was extensive problems with a Bose Bluetooth speaker that decided I must use their app to operate it, after using Bluetooth outside of the app without any issues whatsoever.  Reminds me of something the Scotty character says in one of the Star Trek movies---"the more they overtake the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain."  Uh-huh.

The funny part to me is that I travel so much I don't spend the hours at my desk that I once did in previous positions.  And I have a good pair of headphones, the excellent Apple AirPods Max headset (wearing them now so as not to disturb my sleeping wife), so speakers really aren't that essential.

Old habits die hard, I suppose, I've always had a stereo, until about ten years ago, when I went all in with digital and using my computer or phone to play music.  Not having those speakers next to or behind my computer just felt incomplete.  I have a little time to play with these I just got, so we'll see.  As always!