You just don’t get it.  The app and players all need to communicate with each other, so they all need to recognize other devices on the system.  Sonos is not updating the app or the firmware on the players, it is only doing bug fixes and security patches.  So how is an app/firmware that is not being updated going to account for a device that didn’t even exist when the updates stopped? 

I want a device that will work with my current system.  I'm willing to pay for that.  I'm not willing to pay for something that won't.  So you say I don't get it.  I just disagree.  Any S2 device is powerful enough to do what the S1s can.  So let me as the consumer decide.     

Nope, still dont get it.  What you ask for is impossible.  It's not a question of can the Roam run S1, it's if S1 can recognize a Roam. There are no updates being done to the S1 firmware.  None, zero, niet, nada.  It simply won't fit in the older players.  So how is a ZP90 going to know how to sync with a Roam if S1 doesn't know what a Roam is and (once more for the cheap seats) S1 cannot be updated to recognize the Roam!!??

Same here.  Ugh!  3 connect amps, a beam and they want me to remove all existing to use the roam.  It will   Unfortunately have to go back.

Yup. 

What are you like in high school. 

Nope. 30 years in software engineering. Nice comeback though.  When you can’t rebut the facts, attack the poster.  

I have to agree. Your hardware life is at the whim of a manufacturer that encourages purchase and then decides to no longer support it, which I totally understand, but to force you to upgrade as the system you invested in is no longer capable and even making the decision to no longer allow the hardware to ever be used again (CR100 for example) is not acceptable. What promise does any one have that Sonos wont simply disband S2 hardware and force yet more upgrades. They have a track record of ignoring loyalty and customer outlay that is not mirrored by other manufactures. 

Sonos promise is that they will continue to provides functional upgrades and support for a minimum of 5 years after a product is discontinued.  Based on history, it’s likely Sonos will support much longer than that, but 5 years is the guarantee. 

As far as comparing Sonos to other manufacturers in the smart speaker/wireless multiroom audio market, Sonos has been around for much longer than anyone else, so it’s hard to conclude what other companies would do when their original products can no longer keep up with modern tech. Even then, there have been a few product lines that are no longer producing products.  Bose in particular has dropped their original line and started a completely new line of speakers that don’t work with the old line. 

It will be interesting to see what happens a few years from now when Amazon and Google state they are no longer supporting their original smart speakers.  Although I doubt people will care that much, since their devices are much cheaper, and perhaps very few will still even be operating.

Well put. However, Sonos was a start up multi-room offering needing people to invest in the brand - which they did, often heavily - who have now been under under-valued and over-looked.

People do not need “forever” support, nor do they expect their products to perform all the new stuff; but I have not seen any legitimate reasons for why software cannot cope with different hardware platforms; surely the software should be capable of identifying the hardware and determining what can and cannot work? Windows 7 has stopped support but it has not stopped laptops from doing the basic tasks that they did previously. There has been little to no thought around compatibility. Sonos is now a bunch of compromises until I again invest heavily and my gut feel is that past performance is probably an indication of future performance unfortunately.    

You need to realise that for all speakers to be compatible they ALL have to run the same Firmware. That is a must if music is to play in sync around all the speakers.  it’s a fundamental part of the architecture and what it gives in syncing features it prevents older kit with limited memory getting later updates.   There is simply not enough space on older S1 only devices to have the same firmware that new products like the Move, Arc etc have.  This firmware gives you Bluetooth, Atmos, Music Swap features and whatever other new features are in the pipeline. 

That’s why S1 was created.  Otherwise the legacy kit would have ceased to work when the new Sonos app, with it’s associated Firmware went live.

It gets complicated, and it’s been discussed at length many times before, but the idea that any new feature can be added to the more modern speakers, while leaving the older speakers untouched, just isn’t accurate.  The older speaker’s hardware limitations hold back what the entire system can do.  So Sonos had 3 choices to make here.

1 - Keep everything on the same system, with limited ability to improve the system as a whole.  Competition’s systems would be able to provide new features that Sonos cannot since they were not held back by old hardware.

2 - Have an S1 and S2 system, allowing new products on both with different feature sets.  This would allow Sonos to keep up with competition, but would add customer confusion as to what features are available on what systems, and perhaps double that development, testing, and support costs.

3 - Freeze the S1 system, and only add new features to the S2 system.  This allows for new features with a less confusing feature set (although I guess some people didn’t realize S1 was frozen), while keeping the same development and testing costs while only slightly raising support costs.

The right decision would depending a lot on the volume of people with S1 legacy hardware, level of competition, and costs of dev/testing/support….all these that we really can only guess at.  It’s understandable to believe that option 1 or 2 would have been the better way to go if those options fit your needs better, but entirely possible that those options were not sustainable for Sonos.

Again, nothing I can’t disagree on, but the third option deflects a significant cost onto your user base and away from Sonos...a natural choice (especially give the tone of the CEO and approach by Sonos when announcing this). 

If you have the technical detail as to where this has been discussed at length (or even able to summarise here for general consumption), that would go some way to helping people understand things better, but without it we can only continue to assume; driven by the context in which these changes where announced: the user base is, and is expected to, support a significant cost of Sonos moving forward with the competition. Its a win win really, trapped user base, and sell more products to upgrade.   

And I would add the lack of effort with even trying to achieve any degree of compatibility shows; the S2 speakers dont work alongside the S1 system at an virtual assistant level, so users have to make a choice which “system” they want to use with their home assistant...when I can simply add a smart speaker from a competitor and still control both separately.

With Amazon Alexa you can simply create two ‘linked’ profiles and add Alexa to S1 using Account A and Alexa to S2 using Account B - both will be able to access the music service installed on one of the accounts (use same Sonos account for both, but use a different Household ID), or simply use free services like Spotify Free - alternatively, use a family music account.

It’s only slightly more difficult to do the same setup with two Google Home accounts.

If you have iOS controller devices, then it’s possible to play streaming audio in sync across both S1 and S2 Households - you just need an Airplay compatible speaker in each Household and can then group/play Airplay audio to both systems, which is what I choose to do. The two Households just have to be on the same LAN subnet.

So there are still things that provide a few aspects of S1/S2 compatibility… but Sonos are just trying to drive ahead, like all such tech companies, I guess?

You could look at the link below, but it certainly isn’t organized in any logical fashion.  Filled with lots of speculation and emotional reaction.

I disagree with the statement that option 3 deflects costs to the user base, at least in part.  Obviously, no one is forced to upgrade to S1, as S1 will continue to go on as is without new features. And I get the impression you understand that continuing to support S1, keeping it sustained, isn’t free.   Second, Sonos is offering a 30% discount replacement program.  I get that a discount isn’t free, but it should help in most cases.  I would also argue that if Sonos continued to go down a path where they had unsustainable costs and could not keep up with competition features, they would cease to be in business and thus costomers would have no support at all and need to switch to a different brand entirely to have a system...at a significant cost.

JRico, I understand your frustrations. However you are vastly simplifying the technologies. There is no lack of effort, else Sonos would not have created the S1 and S2 hiatus. There was a generous 30% discount to upgrade and still keep the kit!  
 

There comes a point that anything computer based has a limit, whether that be memory or processor capability. The system infrastructure set up Sonos settled on requires all the speakers have the same firmware, that means inevitably older speakers will eventually get left behind as they don’t have the capacity for processing memory. 

I work in IT and can see the difficulties. I’m also willing to bet the smart speakers you refer to are not over 5 years old.  You can think this is Sonos conspiracy or plan if you want. Doesn’t  make sense to me though,  no company I’ve ever worked for has ever wanted to upset their customers deliberately especially if revenue is at stake. Maybe the likes of Google and Amazon can do that but  I suggests Sonos is small fry and needs all the money/revenue they can get. 

 Ken talked about your specific example, but in the general sense, Sonos had to decide if it made sense to put more effort into compatibility between legacy and modern speakers, knowing that it would complexity and confusion to customers.  For example, this thread is about adding Roam to S1...what would look like if you could add it to S1, but you could not share a bluetooth stream or use sound swap, or it could not be group to be played with certain speakers.  Would that result in more or less upset customers.  I would argue that it doesn’t make a ton of sense to try and add compatibility for a smaller and always shrinking group of customers, many who aren’t even interested in new products, when it comes with other negatives.

And you’re claiming there wasn’t enough effort, when you actually have no idea how much thought was put into these decisions.  We are also looking at many of the complications to deal with from an theoretical/intellectual point of view where we would miss some of issues involved that Sonos would discover in practical testing and experience.

You miss the point.

No company should be able to decide that my hardware isn’t fit for me anymore and do it using a software update - forced on me to take or risk that ALL of my other components wont get updated...that is not a “choice” as others have proffered.

“There comes a point that anything computer based has a limit, whether that be memory or processor capability” - I totally agree, but its the person who owns that equipment that should have the right to decide it no longer works for them. There are many phones, tablets and laptops out there that still work albeit with limited functionality and unsupported software. 

No company wants to upset their customer base?; but that is exactly what the first CEO announcement did and it was so ill received that an apology and clarification had to be made and a change in direction to not brick other pieces of kit including speakers to avoid further negativity. There are pages of negative comments and some resolving to leave the brand. There’s no conspiracy, but clearly previous form will help people decide for themselves.

I have not seen any responses in the forums that reflects any sensitivity towards understanding the customer; all responses are “We (sonos) think...”

My personal belief is that I invested with Sonos early as it was then a game changing company; I no longer feel part of the brand and am not comfortable risking more capital with a company that may well in the future decide to simply brink hardware that they deem no longer works for them.    

Exactly what is it about your system that “no longer works” or “isn’t fit for (you) anymore”?  Your S1 devices work exactly as they did before, and will continue to do so in the future.  

But with a few particular non-speaker exceptions, Sonos continues to offer S1 which works on older speakers, with exactly the same feature set as before.

The challenge is that Sonos is a software driven device, not just merely hardware. Much the same as Windows 11 won’t work on a ‘386 computer, or iOS 14.6 doesn’t work on a iPhone (1). 

If the hardware wasn’t driven by software, then yes, I can agree it should last effectively forever. But each Sonos device has essentially a small computer in it. So it requires an operating system to do all the things it needs to do. Operating systems change over time, and always get larger, not smaller. This is why Sonos needed to do the S1/S2 split, older devices just didn’t have available memory to put a newer OS on it. 

At the end of the day, it’s not a hardware thing being retired*, it’s an OS being frozen. Not retired, still valid and used by thousands of folks as S1.  

• Exceptions are the CR200 and the Sonos Dock (30 pin iOS device connector), neither of which are speakers. 

This thread isn't about adding Roam to S1; its about being able to keep a system I own working as well as I can and introducing a new sonos component . sonos should not tell me what they think I do with my system, just communicate what I can’t and let me make a decision...I might not need any of the ew features. You say that “what would look like if you could add it to S1, but you could not share a bluetooth stream or use sound swap, or it could not be group to be played with certain speakers.” - but the set up sonos are offering doesn't give me the any of these abilities either; neither S1 or S2 app recognise or talk to each other, the Roam is S2 only and I have to choose which one (S1 or S2) to work with my Google home because I can’t add both??...yet I can buy a JBL google assistant portable speaker and add it easily to Google Home so I can voice command both my “old” sonos and my new JBL portable speaker. Was even this too difficult to achieve? 

There will have been loads of effort put in to this, of that I am sure but again the response is all about what sonos have done; unfortunately it’s my (the customers) perception that actually matters. Sonos continue to miss this part. With almost zero compatibility between systems (even with Alexa and Google home integration) and reasons given that it simply was too costly or too complexity for sonos, there isn’t any other conclusion I can arrive at - it was commercially driven and failed to understand the customer. 

Nope, not fiscally or commercially driven at all.  Technically, all devices need to recognize all other devices so they can group and sync.  But S1 has no idea what a Roam is, and you can't add Roam capability to S1 because S1 would then be too large to run on the older units.  Those are the facts.

Why would a company sell a product that had previously been back and forward compatible and basically force users to upgrade the older components. I have a small fortune invested in Sonos equipment and cant justify scrapping my 3 connect amps for a meager 15% discount on new equipment. There needs to be a workaround for the Roam to work with S1. I hate being forced out of my current equipment. Not good customer relations

This was gone over ad nauseam when the S1/S2 split was first announced. There are threads here extending over dozens and dozens of pages. In a nutshell the legacy units are so lacking in memory they can no longer be enhanced functionally, nor can they interwork with modern devices whose software is now two major versions ahead.

If you choose to stay with S1 that’s your entitlement. It will continue doing what it does and Sonos have said they’ll maintain it for as long as they are able.

If you want to acquire new, S2-only, devices you have the option of splitting the system or of replacing the older units.

By the way if you really have legacy units each is eligible for a 30% discount coupon, not 15%. And each coupon can be applied against a product or entire product ‘set’. Depending on the ‘set’ you could even end up with a discount that exceeds the legacy unit’s original purchase price.