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Comment by Bhilai | Hacker News Reader

I’m not an audiophile, but after hearing Sonos at a friend’s house and being impressed, I decided to purchase a speaker for my kitchen, where I often listen to music while cooking. I opted for the Sonos Five, assuming that Bluetooth connectivity would be a standard feature on a standalone speaker, especially at this price point. To my surprise, a speaker costing nearly $600 doesn’t support Bluetooth—it only works via Wi-Fi streaming!

If you’re an Android user, the limitations are even more frustrating. Playing music directly from YouTube isn’t possible without jumping through hoops, such as linking the Sonos app to YouTube or relying on third-party solutions. Ultimately, I returned the Sonos Five and chose a portable JBL speaker instead. It connects seamlessly via Bluetooth and gets the job done without any unnecessary complications.

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As someone that an Android user, and has been a user (and formerly, major fan) of Sonos for about ten years now, it honestly seems worse than that. For a while, Sonos speakers appeared as Google Cast targets, which was a phenomenal (if slightly overcomplicated) way to use them without opening up the Sonos app. Then, the cast functionality became really unreliable. Then, it just went away one day. Then, the Sonos app itself became basically unusable.

So, a decade or so ago, I spent $1k+ on speakers. Over time, due to software changes, they've become more or less unusable for me. My recourse on this is.. pretty much nothing.

I'm not saying what they did was ok, but would it be possible to solder on a raspberry pi or something? Compared to other types of board rework, audio connections and DC power is relatively easy.

I'd suspect that there is. That kind of ruins the point of Sonos, though - their appeal was their ability to do a lot of different things, automatically, with just a wifi connection. Having to set up some sort of alternate source of audio means that I really should have just bought a cheaper speaker back when I bought my Sonos products.

Is there a good technical article for why casting has become unreliable over time? Is there like an issue with standardization across Manufacturer's APIs or is it more of an issue with Client SDKs being spotty in implementation?

The former. AirPlay and Google Cast (and Spotify Connect for that matter) are not actually standards at all. They're proprietary protocols subject to change in ways and for reasons not publicly known nor disclosed. But it can typically be safely assumed that any/all changes are made in order to maximize profits.

This seems like a strange gripe for this thread. That is something you could have looked up before purchasing the speaker.

I also might be in the minority but I much prefer Wi-Fi streaming to Bluetooth in my house.

Wifi streaming is great if it's easy, but for me, Sonos makes it hard.

My spouse uses the speakers pretty often, but even the old app wasn't great, and I gave up on it. Why can't I just cast the music from my Youtube music app? Why do I have to connect Sonos to Youtube, then wait for a separate app to pop up?

I just end up playing music in my headphones, or on my phone speaker. The quality is worse, but the experience is better.

>Why can't I just cast the music from my Youtube music app?

Because the YouTube app developers haven't implemented it? Casting via spotify works flawlessly in my experience, whether using airplay or letting spotify discover the speakers. No app hopping required.

> spotify

TBF that's because clicking on a Sonos device in Spotify uses their own special-sauce Spotify Connect, not AirPlay/Cast. So you're basically using the Spotify app as a remote for the selected Sonos device vs AirPlay/Cast which are transmitting (potentially a reference to) the underlying audio stream.

I do acknowledge that I did not read that the speaker does not support BLE. I assumed that a $600 speaker will come with basic features.

I agree with your last statement, because despite 20 years of development, they still haven't figured out how to get Bluetooth to work reliably. I don't think there's been a single other technology that has caused me more grief than it.

i got several "nice" sonos speaker for free, tried to stream to them via bluetooth, learned i couldn't, then promptly gave them away. what a garbage experience

as an Android user I can tell you that Sonos better fix this quickly because casting is going to work reliably any day now. And then they'll be in trouble!

Using the opportunity to mention AIAIAI Unit-4

First, why it is so hard to find out it exists when searching for wireless speakers?

Second, it eats most things twice it's price on sound and features, methinks. except power bricks, those are brütal

> If you’re an Android user, the limitations are even more frustrating. Playing music directly from YouTube isn’t possible without jumping through hoops

Unfortunately that's due to Google's bullshit. There's a lack of appropri APIs, that's why you'll notice that any "smart" audio device (by smart I mean, integrates directly with music streaming services/locally stored music) doesn't support YouTube nor YouTube Music.

Music Assistant (sister project to Home Assistant) supports it via hacks such as pretending to be a TV or copy pasting auth cookies.

It's frankly an embarrassment from Google not to have APIs for this, they only lose potential users.

Google Assistant also stopped working abruptly on many devices, Sonos included for months. This guy did exactly what some Google exec wanted, which was to exact revenge on Sonos over a patent loss.

The patent on changing volume for more than one speaker at a time? That was such bullshit. The software changes forced by the ITC ruling forced Google to basically break speaker groups.

Not a surprise that might have resulted in some frayed business relationships.

Soooo maybe Sonos could just put bluetooth on their speakers then?

I get that google is shitty, but that doesn't make sonos a saint.

They could, but syncing between speakers when one of them gets a Bluetooth input will probably be flakey. And like 2/3 of Sonos' value prop is sync.

Their newer speakers (Era 100, Era 300, Arc Ultra are the ones I know of) are Bluetooth enabled.

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