Adding a Play 1 to a Sonos S1 System WITHOUT Upgrading to S2

Sonos have missed to advertise an easy to understand “How to migrate from S1 to S2” step-by-step guide. That’s the crux of the matter.

Perform a factory reset on the Play:1 before adding it to your system.

Reset your Sonos product

Factory resetting the new Play1 will not fix this issue.  Even if it was factory reset, I can't add it via the S1 app without being prompted to upgrade to S2.  There is no way around the forced upgrade.

Is this process reversible?

While we don’t recommend downgrading your products to S1 after updating to S2, it is possible to downgrade by resetting the S2 products to their factory settings and adding them to an existing S1 system. An existing Sonos product running S1 software is required to downgrade an S2 product back to S1. Note that all settings and preferences will be lost when downgrading a product from S2 to S1.

https://support.sonos.com/s/article/4845?language=en_US

Are you sure that you haven’t created a split system or migrated the other Play:1s to S2? What do the entries in 'Settings --> System --> My System' next to each speaker say?

Yes- I am sure.  (You need to read my original post more carefully.)

I am running three (3) Play1s on the S1 controller/app.  I have not downloaded or installed S2 and I don't want to until Sonos fixes all of the bugs.  This is the entire reason for this thread.   

I need a screenshot of 'Settings --> System --> My System', please.

Like I said - all S1.  Here's what I get when I click on + Add Product.  When I click on it, it takes me to the S2 upgrade.

**Moderator Note: removed pictures for privacy reasons. Posting pictures with personal information like serial numbers, Sonos ID and the like; needs to be censored first.**

I had ‘upgraded’ my 2 Play1’s to S2. Then found I could not use s2 on my old iPad. Fortunately, I had not ‘upgraded’ my Connect. So I tried to restore the Play1 to s1. One of them factory reset to s1 with no problems. The other will not revert. I spent over an hour on the phone to Sonos Support with no success (so far!). 

When I try to open the s1 app, it works fine PROVIDING THE S2 SPEAKER IS OFF (the one that will not reset). If that speaker is powered on, I get the banner telling me to ‘upgrade’ and there is no way out.

I am looking forward to spending yet more time on the phone as soon as Sonos Support are open for business...

@RoyH, were you able to find a workaround for this issue?

I have the same problem while trying to add 2 x Sonos One SLs to a S1 system.

The SLs were upgraded to S2 by the previous owner and the factory reset does not perform the rollback to S1 as advertised by Sonos…

Agent on the Sonos chat was not very helpful… I was redirected to phone support during weekdays.
Any help will be appreciated.

THanks

Hi HyperV (and anyone else fighting S2!),

The short answer is, ‘yes’ I did manage to get my whole system back to S1 and that the problem I had was caused by my WiFi. 

To explain:  I finally spoke to a Sonos agent who took me through the same things I’d already done before going away and getting guidance from someone technical.  He came back and asked what ISP I was using and when I replied Virgin Media, he suggested that the problem was caused by the 5G service on the Virgin Media WiFi router.

I logged into the router, turned off 5G and BINGO! the Sonos app saw both Play1s and didn’t try to force me to ‘upgrade’.

Once I was sure everything was behaving as expected, I turned 5G back on, and everything still worked. I conclude that the problem is with the app, not the Play1.

Following this, I did a bit more reading and found that Sonos only talks 2.4G, not 5G. So in theory, the 5G service should not have caused any problem. Once again, whilst “in theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice, theory and practice are different”.

I very much hope that helps, 

Roy.