Sonos One Reviews are starting to appear... 'Good hardware.. buggy software'. What a surprise !!

I can only go by my lying ears :-)
I've seen different comments on sound quality compared to the Play 1. They either say they sound the same or slightly better. They sound noticeably better to me but my ears are tuned to some pretty high end speakers.

I got my Sonos One's today and they do sound a little cleaner, richer, and fuller.
My other powered speakers are Kef LS50 W which cost $2200 but these are fine for the bedroom.
Really liking them so far and I prefer the matte black over the Play 1.

Nice. I'm planning to pick up a couple of ONEs at my usual local audio store tomorrow. Looking forward to it.

Should I audition the LS50W speakers while I'm there? Or would that just suck more money out of my wallet? I'm curious to see how they'd compare to my PLAY:5 pair + SUB, which I'm rather enamoured with.

The Kef's are quite a bit better than anything from Sonos but also a lot more expensive. Of course you should listen to them 🙂

At the point of asking for a track, I assume Alexa doesn't actually know if the request will succeed or fail as it doesn't know the entire contents of Amazon Unlimited. It then submits a request and either succeeds or fails. Why can't that be the case when requesting the same of the local index?

Because has built-in functionality to query the services it is already configured for, there is no need to interface with an external entity. External queries require the development of an API to allow the communication between the two. These APIs do not exist today (at least to the public), and are beholden to the technical (as well as financial, political, and legal) influence of all parties involved. Oh, and do not take the fact that "financial, political, and legal" is in parenthesis to mean it has a lesser impact; the opposite is more often true.

Should I audition the LS50W speakers while I'm there? Or would that just suck more money out of my wallet? I'm curious to see how they'd compare to my PLAY:5 pair + SUB, which I'm rather enamoured with.
The only thing for certain is the money they would suck out if you fell for them.

The problem with all such comparisons is how to set these up to be as objective as possible by ruling out well known and universally caused psychological biases in favour of the better looking, the better known in HiFi circles and the more expensive. At a minimum they need to be done with both speakers kept in the same place in the same space, with the same music, at instrument matched sound levels for both and with the tested speakers not being seen by the tester. In laboratory terms, what is called a blind test, preferably one that is double blind.

With this in mind, auditions can be entertaining and have a better chance of being financially harmless.

I have a KEF pair that uses the same drivers as the LS50 and I have also compared a play 1 pair + Sub against speakers more expensive than the LS50, so this isn't just theorising. But I will also agree that if there is any audio component where the claims for better sound quality may be valid is where speakers are the component in question. Here again, though sound quality differences are more likely to be identified, it is also possible for preferences to still be for the cheaper pair if it is not known to be so.

Are you talking about the passive LS 50 or the LS 50W.
Which Kef's do you have because having the same "drivers" is far from the only determining factor and there are no passive Kef's that sound like the LS 50W's..
I don't think you are telling anyone anything new about auditions.

I don't think you are telling anyone anything new about auditions.
That rather depends on the person that reads what I have written, don't you think?

It’s not really clear what your point was but in any event I’m sure your average person can figure out where and how you listen to something impacts sq.

My reference speakers are QUAD ESL-63s. They take up a lot of room, need to be positioned well away from the walls, but sound splendid in the sweet spot. My Play:1 pair fit nicely on the desk in my tiny home office. They are at ear level, near field. They sound every bit as splendid in this setting as the QUADs do in their much larger setting, because Peter Walker and Sonos had exactly the same goal; accurately reproducing sound, without the nonsense so many "high end" audio companies succumb to.

Can they? Perhaps. But I am sure that fewer understand how psychological biases of the kind I referred to work in very powerful ways to determine human perception. This is the reason why scientists in different domains use double blind test protocols to verify outcomes. In the field of audio, there is also a need to take into account how human hearing works - from what is conveyed by the ears to what is believed to be heard by the brain.

To anyone that reads what I have written a couple of posts preceding, a caveat: although I have over ten years of exposure to high end HiFi kit of many brands, I do not have trained/tuned ears.