S2 Hi-Res false promise?

Sifting through all this hand wringing, my takeaway is that Sonos promised nothing with the release of Sonos S2, and has, so far, fully delivered on all of its promises. Great. Now that we can all accept that it’s not Sonos’s fault for failing to live up to consumers’ expectations, apparently and irresponsibly extrapolated from Sonos’s vague press releases, maybe the conversation can move to more productive subjects. 

What Sonos DID expressly say, in its May 6, 2020 press release, was “[t]his new generation app features support for higher resolution audio technologies...” Of course, this is not true at the moment: S2 “features support” for Dolby Atmos, which is singular, not plural, and (I believe) is only available on the Arc device at the moment. So the statement itself is deceptive and incomplete out of the chute. 

But that aside, with Sonos on record with that vague teaser, it’s completely reasonable for consumers—both those who have historically been faithful investors in the Sonos ecosystem, as well as those curious to see what all the Sonos fuss is about—to expect some sort of expansion on the plans. Does Sonos have an obligation to do that? Not at all. So that observation can be tossed aside as the irrelevant, school-marmish finger wagging that it is. But should Sonos flesh this out? Of course it should. 

I  fall into both categories of Sonos consumer. I’ve been in the Sonos ecosystem for 14 years, and have now had three legacy products made obsolete by Sonos S2. Okay. It’s tech. I expect a certain amount of that. But will I replace them with yet more Sonos, or is this a good time to part ways, jump ship, maybe over to the Roon system, as Roon shows greater flexibility for other manufacturers’ hardware, as well as true hi res capability across the board?
 

But I just moved into a new home, and have a very specific need for new hardware right now. It would be nice to know what Sonos plans, and I think my 14 years of customer loyalty and thousands of dollars of support for the company—especially in its nascent days—deserves more complete information than a vague reference to undefined “higher resolution audio technologies” at some time in the undefined future. It’s quite clearly not “future proofed” technology, so at the moment I’m leaning toward new investment in a more flexible and scalable platform. Roon’s looking pretty appealing.

Roon is also Sonos-compatible, though it downsamples hi res audio to squeeze through the Sonos hardware limitations. So a gradual phase out of Sonos is a likely game plan. I can get new, non-Sonos hardware, switch over to the Roon Core software platform, and continue to use existing Sonos products until I replace them over time. 

And THAT is a strategy from its loyal customer base that should have Sonos product planners quaking as it basically ensures the eventual total obsolescence of Sonos hardware. But if Sonos came out right now and said that it plans AT A MINIMUM 24/96 within 12-18 months? I’d likely stick around and keep buying Sonos. 

It’s not a requirement that Sonos answer these questions. But doing so would be, without even a hint of doubt, the smart thing to do. Because I’m not going to wait while they slowly unpeel that strategy over the next few years, and I doubt I’m alone. I’m also not going to continue buying Sonos hardware just because some audio magazine like HiFi “would be amazed” if support for other formats didn’t materialize. Just because Sonos has no obligation to comment on rumors, can’t be held responsible for the fact that some “users wish to weave press speculation into their own wishes,” arguably they do have some obligation to be accountable and transparent in how they communicate with their customers. Assuming that is, that they would like to retain those customers. Of course, if that assumption is wrong and they’re just running out the clock to eventual obsolescence, then it doesn’t matter. 

I’m also a hobby photographer, and am deep into the Fujifilm X-Series ecosystem. Fuji releases a product road map which tells me at any point in time what the next 18 months is bringing to their product lineup. That practice keeps me in the Fuji system, and without it I’d probably move back to Canon or Nikon.
 

Sonos could learn something from that. Especially as the hi res audio and whole house/multi-zone audio markets get more crowded and customer loyalty in those spaces gets harder to earn and retain.  

I was referring to press speculation, not suggesting you were doing the speculating.

However, an article is not a Sonos promise.  As it happens, The Verge is normally a reliable and balanced source of information.  And it was so here, which is why it says that S2 will have ‘expanded capabilities’ and ‘allow for’ hires to be added.

Sonos promised nothing for day 1 S2, and even the reporting actually seems to have reflected that.  How this got translated into ‘false promises’ by Sonos is something you are better placed to comment on than I.

@lonestay and @Jacob_12 . Let’s have some facts.  Here is What Hifi’s response to the initial announcement from Sonos, as an example:

“While Sonos is currently offering very little in the way of specifics around the Sonos S2 platform, it has said that the upgraded audio bandwidth will "enable higher resolution technologies for music and home theatre". We'd be amazed if that didn't mean support for high-resolution audio content from the likes of Qobuz and Tidal (MQA seems likely), as well as Dolby Atmos surround sound capabilities.

We're told that these updates won't arrive immediately, though. In fact the only new feature detailed so far is 'Room Groups'. “

As I have said, Sonos never comment on rumours.  If they were to deny one speculation, then any future failure to deny another rumour would be taken as endorsement.  So, consistently throughout their existence, they have adopted a ‘no comment’ approach. 

If some users wish to weave press speculation into their own wishes and then berate Sonos for failing to meet their unfounded expectations, that is their business.

(Although in fact further HiRes support may come - just don’t expect Sonos to say what and when before it happens.)

You make a good point, and perhaps Sonos did exactly what they wanted to do with the implicit promise of a better world post S2, even though they did not have the wherewithal to follow through to meet the expectations generated. They were angling for a sales bump, pure and simple, driven by the Street.

They did not go against the “letter of the law”, which is the defense being offered by Sonos defenders here, which is true enough.

But if they did not have the bullets ready, they could have held back selling the gun until they had the bullets for it. But that is not how the new Sonos works, and perhaps they even had the perceived good reason of survival calling for the release.

For what its worth, Hi Res itself is a chimera of no impact on heard sound quality, and the only reason for Sonos - a vocal opponent of Hi Res in up to the recent past - offers it now, even if just in terms of potentials and capability, is to counter the PR that it does not offer Hi Res. 

The real reason for S2 is to be liberated from the acute limitations of S1 hardware that does not allow Sonos to offer what in their opinion will be a new and improved all singing and dancing Sonos much beyond just Hi Res, to cope with the very serious competitive and existential threat they face. But I don't see that radically improved thing happening in the next 12 months, so I suspect Sonos, realising this, had to put out S2 to keep the ship afloat.

While I have no interest in S2 and am content in S1, it will be interesting to see how this strategy plays out for Sonos over the next couple of years.

I know it’s the mastering not the medium, and I’m not precious about bits. If Sonos could downsample Hi res files to 24/48 and play them it would be a start. It’s just a convenience thing, not needing to convert the hires files I buy to something Sonos can play. 
As for the promises made, there were enough stories about what S2 would bring around the time of release, all of them mentioned hi res playback. There may not have been statements about it being on day one, but I don’t recall the stories talking about at some point in the future either. Clearly they could have managed expectations better.  The annoying thing is just the way they leveraged S2 as the reason to upgrade, and the software to date hasn’t anything offered anything other than a new paint job. 

@lonestay . You obviously misunderstood the purpose of S2, which was to leave behind the older products that would have held back future developments.  

The massive change on day 1 that you were expecting was entirely the product of your own imagination, not promises made by Sonos.

The whole S2 app upgrade promised so much at the time, and I thought it was going to be a huge upgrade that took Sonos to a new level but? I wanted a new app that looked modern with an intuitive interface, something that said this is a quality system, I got the same looking app but in mustard yellow. Hi res audio was a dream that never really materialised, unless you had hi res files in your library. I think we all wanted our streaming services to suddenly becoming out of our speakers in some fantastic hi res format that would blow our socks off but of course that didn't happen either. Sonos radio was launched as part of this new S2 app and within months it's broken, now I understand that it has a lot to do with the Tune-in legal situation, but if your gonna launch something called Sonos radio then you expect Sonos to have done their due diligence on the company who's system they are going to use. Maybe as Sonos users we allowed ourselves to believe  that Sonos were going to reward us with some goodies for the upheaval that was part of the S2 introduction, but in reality they just hinted that they would and we bought it again .

I don’t recall Sonos stating that there would be hi res of a specific quality released at a certain date. Searching a few different new articles from last June, they impression I get is that such a feature would be later rather than sooner.  I get that people want it now, regardless, but I don’t know that you can blame Sonos for not meeting expectations they never stated they would meet.

If you can find a reference where Sonos staff state that hi res would be implemented in a matter of months, they you would have a point.  Otherwise, I don’t think you really claim you were duped.

As an aside, the fact you feel this way is exactly why Sonos usually avoids making any statements about future product enhancements.