Bose SoundTouch App Update - Android Only - December 8th

SoundTouch Speakers
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On Tuesday, December 8th, 2020, a new Bose SoundTouch App update will be released. 

 

If you do not see the update, please make sure to refresh the store and restart your device. If you have any difficulty for iOS see here, Android see here. Customers downloading for the first time will get the new app.

 

Version Information

  • Android – 26.0.3

 

Release notes

  • Fixes alternate setup for Android 9 users
    • Previous versions kept the SoundTouch app from correctly connecting to a product when attempting alternate setup whole using an Android 9
  • General bug fixes and app improvements
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I upgraded (was forced to since there was no option to not upgrade) and promptly lost functionality that was available in the previous version.

The online support was extremely slow in replying. I was online with them for over an hour and they couldn't resolve the problems or answer my questions. Very disappointing experience.

 

I also checked the comments and ratings in the Google Playstore (regretably after doing the upgrade) and was surprised at the large number of negative ratings, comments, and suggestions listed for the SoundTouch app. I'm curious to hear if the issues described will be addressed?

 

I'm fairly new to this community and might not know how to find the answers to the issues that I encountered after upgrading to the latest app version on my mobile devices. Any assistance would be appreciated. 

 

Thanks and regards.

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Hey there Arrivisto, 

 

Thank you for reaching out to us here at the Community! 

 

Thank you for your feedback regarding the update, I'm sorry to hear that you are experiencing some issues since the update and we will be more than happy to help you in any way that we can!

 

Firstly, we need to know the issues you are experiencing with the update so we can recommend some troubleshooting. 

 

We look forward to hearing from you!

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Hi Bose,

 

Thanks for the update and overall I do am happy with the app, there are only a few things that I think would make it better but the most important would be the first one. Please see my suggestions as follows:

1. Please allow to sort devices by Name or by Custom Order, Right now it always sorts them randomly depending (I imagine) on usage but that's so irritating, my office, bedroom, childern's room, living room and so on is always in a different place 🙂 Just a simple settings to lets say "Sort by Name" would help so much.

 

2. Instead of showing a menu when you click the 3 horizontal line (on the left top corner) which you don't almost ever use once all set up and you have favorites and so on, showing the list of devices would help navigate soooo much, right now you need to click the bottom bar and then swipe around till you find the right device and because problem 1 above (where everything is randomly shown) it's like swiping forever just to click play on another room. With replacing the menu with the list of devices I could just do 2 touches and have switched my device/room.

 

3. Do not reset sound to Maximum in case not yet connected to device but start dragging the volume control. Especially irritating in the middle of the night 🙂 you can duplicate it by using some other app and then reopening TouchFlow and don't wait for everything to load but start dragging the volume right away and for a quick period it will jump to Maximum volume. In this case at least jump to minimum so that you won't get a heart attack 🙂

 

4. And lastly, a and - button on the right and left side of the slider would help a lot to change volume in the middle of the night as right now it's pretty hard to change the volume just so slightly with a slider.

 

Overall that would be it, please let me know if there is a better place to make these suggestions, I love the sound of the speakers for sure and pretty happy with the app just these changes would make a huge difference for me on daily basis usage.

 

Thanks in advance!

Julius

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Bose makes great speakers - unfortunately their software is terrible. I wish there was an open source alternative to their SoundTouch software. I've had the Wave SoundTouch IV for a few years now and it's always been a challenge to make it work. Our speaker is setup in our living room and we might go several weeks without listening to it. It seems that a few times a year we'll go to use it and it demands that we do a software update. This takes the better part of an hour and is really frustrating given the infrequency of it's use. This last update (Dec 2020) has killed all functionality other than bluetooth and over the air radio - haven't tried the CD player, I would guess that that still works. It's almost always a software issue. This version and previous ones crashed or have an eternal "working" indicator and will not finish it's update. It's often difficult to tell whether it has crashed or is taking an eternity to install. I've tried installing this version of software on an Android 11 device, a Macintosh OS X computer, (Linux isn't supported but I tried using a WINE installer and unsurprisingly that didn't work). I also tried the software on a Windows 10 machine - no joy there either. The moving icon goes up and down and if it does find the speaker on the network it crashes during the update process. It takes a good 10 minutes or more before you know whether or not it can find the speaker initially.

 

Their website is also not the easiest to navigate. I registered my speakers online with the serial number thinking that if I clicked on one of "my products", I could more easily find the support i.e. the links to download the latest software but that is not the case. If you need to reinstall the sound touch app, it's far easier to exit their website and use Google rather than meander down an endless series of questions about the "problem" that you are experiencing. Although, searching on their website for simply SoundTouch app or program will get you there - but again, one would think that there would be a link directly from the page that lists the products that you own. This lack of navigational ease is also true if you want to download the software needed to reinstall the firmware to the speaker via a usb stick - which I've felt was necessary about once a year because I could not tell whether the SoundTouch app or the speaker software was malfunctioning.

 

Additionally, the wifi capability of this device is poor. I have a modern high speed Internet connection with a top of the line router and I have only once gotten the speaker to work properly via wifi - and that only lasted a few months. I then switched to an Ethernet cable and that sufficed until this latest update. I can see the device is connected to my home router but the SoundTouch software cannot find it now.

 

I've spent hours trying to make this speaker connect to it's software. When it's working, it's great. I can program the remote control buttons to have shortcuts to different services like Pandora and Spotify. I love the Spotify functionality to easily switch between listening on my phone, laptop or this speaker. With this latest update however that's all gone. I now have an incredibly expensive bluetooth speaker with a CD player and an AM/FM receiver. I'm going to unplug the Ethernet cable and just use this as a standalone device. Perhaps if it can't connect to the Internet it won't realize it needs updating and will continue to work without the troublesome software.

 

I couldn’t help but notice that this speaker is still being sold for over $500! Really, the sound quality is great but it’s not worth that price.

 

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Add Tidal please.

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Hi Bose / SoundTouch Support.

Apologies for taking so long to reply. I was expecting some message via my email address that there was a reply, if at all, so i wasn't checking the community. (Plus I was very frustrated with the product so I avoided it for awhile. I'm pleasantly surprised to see a reply. Thanks.

 

Now to my issue(s). Where do I start?

1) I can't access the canadian radio station CHFI 98.1. I can access it via my Firefox (84.0.2) web browser. It is on RadioPlayer Canada.
I contacted the station and they told me, "Our streams use the HLS format so the device you’re

using would need to support that. (I believe SoundTouch does) CHFI is available on the TuneIn radio service that is available widely and would likely be supported by Bose systems. We recommend, streaming CHFI using TuneIn via the Soundtouch app.

 

2) I tried to find the station with the SoundTouch Radioplayer option. I get the message, "... Radioplayer is available in UK,... Spain and Switzerland." When searching for CHFI, I only get swiss stations or a list of episodes and shows from a CHFI moderator, but not the

station's live stream.

 

3) I tried TuneIn and got the message, "... However, you cannot access your Favorites and Premium content on your existing TuneIn account at this time." (So how do I change this?)

 

4) I tried the Stream Custom Radio URL but got the message, "HMM... We can't play that right now. Please try again later. (3102)".

(Perhaps an expalnation of the 3102 & 3103 error messages would help the users identify the issue faster.)

 

5) ...and finally yet another attempt after many, to post this message. (The posting was always rejected stating there was a url (http..) that was removed and I should check the message again. However the original message was deleted. I couldn't find it. BTW: there was no url in the original message.)

 

Thanks for reaching out.

Regards,
arrivisto

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Hi Bose / SoundTouch Support.

 

Did I miss a reply or response. I can't find any replies or solutions to the issues I outlined previously. Maybe it's just me, a dumb user with tech challenges?

 

Thanks for helping out.

-arrivisto

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Hi , apologies for the delay in getting back to you. 

 

Are you able to play any other stations via TuneIn, or does this message occur when you try to play all stations?

 

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Hi Charlotte_G

 

Thanks for getting back to me so quickly.

 

Yes, I can find and play other canadian radio stations with TuneIn. (Eg. CJRT & CKDX).

 

The issue is with RadioPlayer. Although the Bose / SoundTouch marketing states that I can listen to RadioPlayer stations from numerous countries including Canada and Switzerland.

 

The station that I'm looking for is CHFI and is part of the RadioPlayer Canada (radioplayer.ca) offering. However, my searches only return the swiss stations.

 

Any suggetsions?