What cracking open a Sonos One tells us about the Sonos IPO
This is not directly relevant to the article - more a critique of the Sonos product which I&#x27;ve wanted to get off my chest.<p>I was a Sonos skeptic then a convert before becoming skeptical again.  I stopped buying after the third Sonos 3 speaker.<p>Some basic features are missing which mean that users like me are clearly not a focus.  Primarily I want to play my own, ripped-to-FLAC media.<p>The most irritating thing is that users have been requesting these features for 5+ years on the fora.<p>A random list of grievances:<p>- No regain support - this renders the playlist feature useless unless you want to constantly fiddle with the controller to adjust the volume between tracks.<p>- No cue support (i.e. single FLAC with a .cue file) which allows transitions between tracks.  This breaks play back for lots of classical, Opera, ED music and classic rock albums like the Beatles&#x27; Abbey Road.<p>- Multi-disc support is poor - no grouping or separate disc images.  2 CD boxsets are o.k. but larger (4+) are unnavigable.<p>- Can&#x27;t handle higher than 16&#x2F;48 digital rips.<p>- No airplay, bluetooth, etc. support.  This means you cannot use Sonos to replace all audio speakers in your home.<p>- Wierd&#x2F;undocumented rules for file naming - silently ignores tracks with quotes, colons and maybe others (these are the ones that hit me)<p>- Finally the controller software has gotten worse with every update: poor album art caching, illogical navigation, confusing search, artist search cannot find tracks on compilations, etc.<p>Then again, it seems going the &quot;smart speaker&quot; route has boosted their revenues. I have no interest in such functionality so I guess I&#x27;m not the target market for Sonos.<p>This is a pity because much of the package is quite compelling and it wouldn&#x27;t take much effort to support libraries (rather than streaming).<p>(edited for formatting)