End of Software Support - Clarifications

This isn’t accurate as to my understanding. One thing Sonos has stated is that it will be possible to add a newly purchased modern device to a legacy network. But quite honestly, financially, if you’re in legacy only, purchase Sonos sub from the used market instead.

The only time this would not be possible (in your instance particular) is if you’ve split the network into 1 for legacy devices and 1 for modern devices, your surround system is on legacy and you’re trying to add the sub to the modern system. (Clear as mud?)
Short answer - if you only run a legacy network to keep everything grouped and happy as it is today (which is what I’ll do), it will possible to add a new device to that environment, regardless of the firmware it ships with initially.

If I’ve missed some communication (entirely possible) that directly contradicts this please point to it.  

Lets calm down and take a minute to loom at this from Mr. Spence's point of view. I am going to assume that the issue was shareholders screaming for more revenue, and the fact that many of us who adopted early and often were actually problematic. My house is full of sonos. Many old play 5s, an old connect, an old connect amp, two 5.1 setups, two 2nd gen play 5s with a sub, etc. Unfortunately for sonos it is literally full. The old stuff works and sounds great and every room I want to fill with sound is going great. I have told all my friends to buy sonos, they all like it, but I am essentially a dead customer to them as I have nothing left to buy.

Someone at sonos probably did some market research looking for brand loyal music lovers with some disposable income to tap into, and they found we were already here. So how do you get us to buy more stuff? They tried a 30% bricking/upgrade, which was absurd for a few reasons. First, a play 5 trade in of 150 (30%) made no sense when I could easily sell it used for 250 or 200 at worst. Further, they would brick it and have it thrown in a landfill... a perfectly good, functional speaker worth 250 prior to the bricking!

It is safe to assume this initiative failed. So step two... lets just stop supporting the old units, break whole home functionality in a mixed environment, and see our intensely loyal customer based buy all new speakers! After backlash here and all over the internet, which I would say is literally exceeding 99% negative without hyperbole, we get a fake apology letter saying they are continuing down this road. And we are all still livid, selling our kit, switching vendors, etc.

Mr Spence is now rightfully in fear of his job. Stock is going down. He has a few options.

1) stay the course, lose more customers, try to buy time convincing the board that the post may app will be the next iphone in terms of revenue.

2) quietly modify the course to keep us happy - keep whole home audio working. Make a bridge that will allow legacy speakers to work or write the functionality into a new speaker with all that RAM - all you need is one new speaker to make the legacy work with the new.

3) he can reverse course, look weak and/or clueless to investors, maybe try to blame it on someone beneath him, but this would probably be the fastest way to lose his job and see a new CEO appointed. The new CEO comes in and offers a real apology and a change in direction, wins us all back with some 50% off discounts and company gift cards, and provides an assurance that such foolishness doesn't happen again.

I am hoping he goes with option 2 and learns from this. I suspect he is going with option 1 and is at least Machiavellian enough to avoid option 3. But if none of us are buying,  new customers are scared off, and this stock hits single digits I think #3 will happen in a "mutual agreement".

Bookmark this post and check back in June.

This constant conflating of Sonos devices with phones/laptops/ throw-away consumer electronics is ONLY HELPING Sonos make it’s case to us, the press, the industry, and the board.  These were Marketed/Advertised/Promoted/Sold as Whole House Audio Systems at high-end retailers and online.  You paid a premium price for the quality of the build, sound, and distributed music/audio!  The name SONOS is a simple derivative of Sonic - SOUND!  Most of us purchased these systems with the EXPECTATION that they would continue to send music/radio (SOUND) throughout our homes.  We didn’t expect our investment in these to be prematurely junked because of a post-IPO money grab and some FALSE notion that you need to cram more power/memory to distribute music throughout your home/office/business.  

PLEASE stop with this conflated narrative - it only helps Sonos move your Premium HiFi/AUDIO products into the landfill. 

Let’s concentrate on real solutions that won’t split our whole home audio systems and doesn’t let Sonos split them because it suits their short-sighted quarterly ambitions.   There’s a way, they just need to be brave enough to take it. 

Like others have said, I see this as a wake up call to having software based technology in hardware that otherwise would not become obsolete. Amps and speakers, like most other hifi products, are something we buy and expect to last for decades.

Whilst I’ve loved the ease of Sonos and being able to pair different rooms and rearrange what kit I want where, it reminds me why in my last house I ran speaker and phono cables all over the place so I could I could listen to any stereo in any room. Sonos made me (happily) lazy. 

Now I’ve had a few days to calm down after the initial announcement, my biggest annoyance is that this is the reality of all ‘smart’ / connected products that rely on cloud services. I’d be happy now to finish my Sonos journey with the devices I have, and still be able to control them from my PC/Phone/Tablet until the day the hardware dies. My main music source is my own NAS share, and could live without any online services. My future direction will back to traditional audio equipment and some nano pc’s.

But even if the firmware is the same, there has to be individual parts of the firmware to suit the different speakers and configuration.

So what will happen when Sonos releases a new product, will they update the old legacy firmware to support the new device, so that i can buy it and have it “downgrade” to “legacy” firmware ?

I really wish I had never invested in a Sonos system. I bought my first products soon after they were available so have had the system for around 13 years and have gradually added to it, having bought a Move only a few months ago. What a mistake. Logging on the website I see I have 21 legacy products and 7 modern ones which puts things into perspective. I feel a real fool and should have learnt my lesson when they made my Controller 100’s redundant, although this wasn’t so bad with the advent of smartphones and tablets which provided a substitute without having to spend money on replacements. All well and good but then they made these useless when the old iPad we used as a main controller tried to update the App and it wouldn’t run on the older version of IOS - no way to go back to an old version of the APP, so that was that … bin the iPad. Every other App installed on the iPad works fine - it just won’t update the App if the new version isn’t compatible. Not the case with Sonos … the old working version is gone so not only are they building redundancy into products they produce themselves but also stopping you using older iPads and phones as well. I complained about this but they weren’t interested! OK for a moment lets forget about the Controllers and the Bridges (since replaced by Boosts) but I have 12 ZP100’s and one ZP80. To upgrade just these would cost £5,450 even with the 30% discount … totally ridiculous!

And that’s not to mention the issues regarding the useless software with the track limit for the Music Library, which doesn’t tell you it has an issue but just seems to index music randomly missing things as it sees fit and coming up with continual error messages. OK it’s a hardware issue in part but whey when they have known about the problem for many years, they haven’t addressed the issue in software I cannot grasp!

Here in the UK we once  had a high street jewellery shop chain known as ‘Ratners’.

Just like you guys at Sonos they did very well and were very popular with their customers.,until in April 1991 the owner of Ratners (Mr Gerald Ratner), in a foolish and arrogant way, took his customers for fools, and proudly explained that some of Ratner’s products were “total crap” (that is a quote).

This Legacy statement really amounts to much the same thing.

So Sonos are now ‘doing a Ratner’.

Nobody is going to be purchasing Sonos products from this day forth……...That’s a sure bet.

A massive price jump but I’m getting more and more impressed the more I read and watch about the bowers and Wilkins formation stuff coupled with Roon or even just through Bluetooth I’d hope they’d be more future proof 

Done

I’d like to think they wouldn’t stoop that low, but with the recent announcements, and Patricks ‘Sorry’ announcement, I no longer have any trust in what they might do (even if unethical to you and me).

For example, they are currently running advertising saying ‘add to your system at any time’, and ‘Build a system’.

How is the mood around the office, ryan?

That’s really good to hear Ryan, thank you for confirming that info.

Would you need to keep software updates turned on or off, to maintain in that state?

Just a few days ago my partner asked if we should get another Sonos speaker after he saw an ad online. I told him there is no way we are going to sink any more money into this company and told him what was going on. I was already angry when the ‘play from your device’ was removed and thought it would be best to stop all of the Sonos purchasing but this really takes the cake. When is the next round of ‘legacy’ equipment going to be named? I wonder how many more of my speakers will become obsolete. 
 

Hope your new customers are worth it.