Separate S1 & S2 Systems and Household Id

Thanks Ken, I figured that was most likely the case, but don’t relish the whole process of Factory Reset etc and wanted to avoid going down that route, if it wasn’t the source of my problem.

I will do as you suggest and respond here with the result, as and when I have completed the process. 

BTW, I just noticed that the HH ids have been scrubbed from my original post.  Is there anything in there that could enable someone to hack or otherwise interfere with my Sonos system?  I only posted the actual ids on the basis that they didn’t appear to contan anything meaningful to anyone other than Sonos!

Hi @bjw10 

That was me - I removed them as they are unique to you, so although they mean nothing to anyone other than Sonos, they could conceivably be used to convince us that someone else was you. It’s unlikely though.

I hope this helps.

OK Corry, thanks for clearing that up for me.

Sonos mods here tend to remove all users individual/specific information from posts - including things like diagnostic references. Just to keep things as secure as practicable. I guess it’s a good policy whatever individual/unique info. we post.

One thing you could do as an interim step by the way, is to just check the HH ID after the first device is factory reset and setup again using the ‘reset’ Sonos App, just to ensure the HouseholdControlID before the ‘period’ has changed …and once confirmed, then go onto factory reset your other players from the chosen S1 or S2 system and add those to the new System, rather than doing all in one fell swoop.

Always pays to check things and ensure it works before resetting all.

Hope that assists too.

(edit: Ah I now see Corry P has replied about removing the personal info.)

More good advice……..noted.

@Ken_Griffiths

Ken,

Thanks to your advice, I successfully created a brand new S1 system with totally unique HH Ids, starting with a redundant Bridge and an unused  ZP90.  Once I had concurrent S1 & S2 systems, I was able to carry out a complete downgrade of my entire Sonos system back to S1, which was my ultimate objective.

This involved a fairly laborious process of, one by one, performing a factory reset of each S2 device and then downgrading it on the S2 system before adding it back to the new S1 system.  The final step was to disconnect the Bridge and the ZP90 and return them to the box alongside the not inconsiderable quantity of other redundant Sonos kit that it contains. 

There were some 9 units in total, including 2 Boosts, so I was a bit wary about doing things in the right order to try and avoid ending up with a non-functioning S2 system on which to do the final downgrades.  I was probably over stressing about this, since the last downgrade of my root Boost went through smoothly even though there were no players in the system.

For me (and more importantly my other half), the result has been even better than expected.  Since the arrival of the New S2 product, we had ended up with 4 different Sonos Controllers, which was something of a nightmare trying to explain which controller to use when.  We had New S2 on the iPhones and iPad, Old S2 on an iMac and a MacBook Air (fortunately I had managed to avoid the automatic upgrade on these devices) plus I had downloaded both SonoPhone and Phonos Plus to the iPhones as I looked for one simple, consistent user interface to support our relative straightforward use of Sonos. 

Now we are back on the S1 Controller, we couldn’t be happier.  The Network Matrix is a beautiful sea of green and yellow, which is something I had not consistently seen for quite some time.  More importantly, the whole system has already been running faultlessly for a number of days without the frequent dropouts and pauses that I had been experiencing since long before New S2.

I had spent many fruitless hours trying to fix this and other “network” problems with Sonos support, only to be told eventually that the RAM in my older Play:1’s and Play:3’s was failing and that the only solution was to upgrade to newer versions.  This explanation never sat that well with me and I always suspected that the problem was caused by the increased processor and memory demands of S2 being beyond the capability of these older units, which would now appear to be the case.

I realise that I was fortunate to have no S2-only devices and accept that I am now prohibited from adding new equipment to our set-up.  However, I don’t see this as a big problem given that, for me, Sonos has more or less guaranteed this will never happen.  The original screw-up over the S1/S2 transition was bad enough, but at least it was eventually resolved in an acceptable fashion.  In contrast, the latest fiasco with New S2 has been handled in an entirely unreasonable manner, which shows no sign of ever getting resolved satisfactorily.  As a result, like so many others on the Forums, I can’t see me ever investing in additional Sonos kit, even if I was able to do so, which is unfortunate for someone who has been very much a fan for the last 14 years or more.

Anyway, thanks for your help.  It is very much appreciated.

I’m glad to hear you’re all sorted @bjw10. I still have an S1 system, aswell as a new Sonos setup, and run both side-by-side (see attached). I appreciate that Sonos are still transitioning their new App/system and have chosen (for whatever reason) to do that in a live environment and whilst it hasn’t harmed my own setup (I guess I’m one of the fortunate ones) I am happy to wait patiently and see these things through to the end, rather than downgrading myself.

That said a lot of the devices here are S2-only compatible. However it’s each to their own I guess, but I do prefer the new Sonos App and look forward to seeing what new things may lie ahead for Sonos.

Long may your own S1 Sonos system continue, as long as the music plays, eh … that’s perhaps the important thing.👍

@Ken_Griffiths you are absolutely right ……. just let me play my music and stream a few radio channels.  The older I get the more important it becomes to maintain the status quo, since most change is often just a pita.  I can see that this is a problem for Sonos (and every other product manufacturer), who need to keep refreshing their products in order to attract new users, but it is very unhelpful to lots of existing users who often neither use nor want many of the new features.

Unfortunately, it is a fact of life that everything is becoming way more complicated.  My wife is adamant that if I were not around to deal with Sonos, wifi, pcs etc, she’d go back to LP’s and a record player (well maybe cd’s), a wireless and an abacus.  She might be joking about the last item - not sure either of us could use an abacus!

She’d be a very special person if she felt abacus is easy. On the positive side she’d never need to replace any batteries.

I will just mention none of us have to upgrade our products - that said, I’ve had to eventually upgrade phones, tablets and other devices to keep some Apps working. My PC needs upgrading too. I’ll get around to these things eventually though, no doubt.

My Harmony hubs/remotes (no longer supported) are heading towards their ‘last legs’ too.

It’s they way of the world, these days when it comes to tech.