I have a home full of S1-only kit but like many others I am now effectively barred from buying any more new S2 Sonos kit due to the need to either have separate S1 and S2 systems, or brick my current kit for a 30% upgrade discount to S2. This all seems to be due to memory limitations unrelated to the actual amp and speaker properties of the S1 devices. So perhaps there is a fix for the memory issue to allow these still highly capable S1 units to operate in an S2 world?

It would seem to me a fairly simple network solution for Sonos to launch an “S1/S2” interface that sits in the distributed Sonos network and looks to the S2 network as an S2 network and looks to the S1 system as an S1 system, allowing interoperability of devices with control over all S1 devices. The necessary logic and memory could all sit in one (master) interface device for S1 (slave) devices, effectively creating in software a “virtual” S2 version of each S1 device. The interface device can then just pipe the audio to the correct physical device. Logically this would just be a control device to ensure data (in this case digitised music) is routed properly, and which virtualises an S2 environment per S1 device to allow those S1 devices to continue to deliver music. In essence, the brains for the S1 devices would move from the physical S1 units to the virtualised ones within the interface device, and the S2 system would continue to “see’ these virtualised devices as a valid part of the S2 system. Doing it all as virtualised devices would mean quite low cost and lots of flexibility, leaving the S1 physical units as dumb amp/speakers.

Sonos could no doubt sell these interface units for a few hundred dollars to not only keep the large S1 installed base engaged, but to allow that S1 base to continue to add new components. The problem at the moment is that I love my Sonos, and bought a lot of kit, but won't buy any more more if it makes my current set up redundant or marginalised.