The Sonos Brexit and pragmatic ways past it

K

I will start this thread with a few caveats:

First, this thread is not for rants. There are plenty here for those, and there is no bar on opening new ones.

Second, the thread is directed for the subset of users that have a large investment in legacy products, and are content to see their Sonos systems as music systems that offer stable streamed music from either a NAS or from the net, and have no expectation of more bells and whistles - just that things continue to work as they are working today. I happen to be in this boat as well, as someone that has three out of six zones running very well on legacy products that I simply cannot afford to jettison until the hardware dies.

Third, this thread is based on facts, some of which have been coming to light only over the last 48 or so hours. It is therefore incomplete to an extent, and may even be wrong in places. Feel free therefore to clarify/correct/add as necessary - and I specifically invite @Ryan S  to do so. But, no rants please - they have a place, but this is not it.

All that said, this is the solution I intend to proceed with and recommend here:

Opt for a legacy system operation in May, that will run legacy and modern products, exactly as these run today; no faffing around with two networks. No more enhancements, but expecting Sonos to honestly fulfil their recent promise of all bug fixes that the legacy products can accommodate. Ditto for what needs to be done to accommodate changes driven by at least the mainstream service providers.

By a happy coincidence, all legacy products have line in jacks. So if something even happens at the streaming service end that cannot be accommodated in legacy products, I am confident of finding some device that can be wired to the line in jacks of these, that will still allow streaming from the culprit service to work including in grouped mode with all other products in the system.

The streaming from the local NAS will not have any issues in this mode, other than hardware failures including that of the NAS, and a key assumption here is that NAS changes will not need a Sonos software update.

Although Sonos has said that new products can be added to such a system, I do not see how this is possible once new products come installed with versions that are beyond the frozen legacy system one. Unless Sonos is not going to sell any new products in future with versions beyond the 2020 legacy one - I doubt that. And once a product comes with the latest version, adding it to a legacy system without rendering legacy products inoperable is going to be tricky because it will involve first separating the one system into two; I also admit to being a little fuzzy with this bit. In my case, this is all moot; I have no need for another zone. As an aside, I am someone therefore that is not of much interest to Sonos!

I also assume that if anyone at any time in the future wanted to jettison legacy products for any reason, all they will need to do is leave all such products powered off, invoke updates and the result will be a Sonos system updated to the day they do the invocation. The concern here for me is different - I need to have an ironclad way of NOT updating my system before I am ready to separate or jettison legacy products, and this needs more insights into how things will work on this front in future.

I am pretty sure that this way ahead will work in my use case and I suggest it will also work for many that are heavily invested in Sonos legacy products, that do not want to write it off or to trade up to new products just to retain all existing functionality.

Yes, it involves losing future enhancements/features, but once we accept that these essentially are music boxes that will keep doing all they do today, that should be an acceptable trade off, I suggest. It is to me, for sure.

So this way, this event will be just a minor inconvenience, and I expect to be able to use all my existing products till the hardware fails.

What this event has convince me though is to now look at/recommend smart systems that are truly modular in the sense that the smart bits can be periodically replaced at low cost, while the core “dumb” electronic hardware can be of such build/after sales support, that it justifies the higher investment in the consequent price, if better sound quality is also needed than what the smart front ends can alone provide. But that's for the future.

 

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E
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Thread title: The Sonos Brexit and a pragmatic way past it

Solution:  buy a Raspberry Pi and install LMS + upnpbridge plugin 

 

That would be sort of going backwards for me, seeing as I moved to Sonos from the old slimserver devices -- still have a few of the latter laying about, including a Squeezebox Touch that I use as a glorified clock ...

B

@train_nerd I know from mine that echo dot can receive Bluetooth. Not sure than input can, so do check. Voice controlled play from input wired to line in jacks on Sonos will work, no doubt on that bit.

Just to add results of very simple testing I have been doing…I think others may have done this but I am working with my own equipment and wanted to test….

Use case assumes:

Legacy lock down on my Sonos system ( 5 play 5’s a Playbar, 3 Sonos Ones - no Zone Players/Connects).

All streaming sources (Tidal, Apple, Qobuz, Spotify) modify their API’s requiring new Sonos SW to continue to function on Sonos.  My locked down system can’t get it.  I.E.,will no longer support streaming or voice services (Sonos One’s on Legacy so new updates not possible).

Goal - find a way to use voice services and streaming sources with my speakers!!

Test result...

I have a iFi XDSD DAC (no I don’t work for them).  Connected it to a Sonos 5 using 3.5 line in connection.  

Paired my iPhone 11Pro via Bluetooth to XDSD.

Played Music though iPhone Native Player to the xDSD using downloaded music and streamed via Qobuz iPhone app.

Sonos iPhone app used to group speakers and adjust volume.

Used “hey Siri" to play music, increased/reduce volume, skip music…

Have not tried this with Alexa iPhone app yet but assume it will work as long as the app is supported by Apple iOS.

End result - as long as the speakers function and I have the controller available to group speakers my investment isn’t wasted.

Will wait till May to see what Sonos comes up with.

 

 

 

 

 

E
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Excellent thread -- thanks to the many helpful contributors. I feel better now about letting my relatively small system (Play5, Connect, 3 Play1s, Boost) stay in “Legacy mode” rather than trying to split them up somehow. I don’t use them for TV at all, and figure I should be able to use the line-ins on the Play5 and/or the Connect to handle any future “dongles” necessary for my limited streaming needs (TuneIn and Youtube Music/Google Play Music) -- right now I have two Chromecast Audios.

For clarity, as long as I keep them all in one connected system, Sonos won’t “force update” the non-legacy bits on me?

Another question -- what about the windows/android/iOS “controllers” -- do I have to do something to prevent them from getting updated in some way that will bork their compatibility with my “Legacy” system?

I will be watching the adventures with Roon, the Node2i and other options with great interest ...

Ken_Griffiths

“controllers” -- do I have to do something to prevent them from getting updated in some way that will bork their compatibility with my “Legacy” system?

My own thoughts here are that the legacy system will 'likely' get its own Controller App ...and there will be a separate one for the modern setup … that would simplify things for the user. That way, there will be no need to 'lock the door’ to your system either and why would you want to? ... if Sonos stick with the public annoucement that they plan to release security updates and adjustments to keep the legacy system, current (legacy compatible) devices and services up and running for the foreseeable (long term) future.

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here’s a post on another thread where I described for under  £35 per play:5 you can have groups and stereo paired speakers using chromecast ...

“ok, so here’s a thing. take a gen 3 chromecast (£25), add an hdmi splitter (£8) , plug chromecast into splitter, plug audio cable from splitter into sonos play:5 , turn on autoplay 

You can now cast to the chromecast, and play music on the speakers. You can also add each chromecast to a speaker group .

And with a little bit of lateral thinking you can cut the audio cable to each speaker to have only L and R wires active, so you have a stereo pair

So, for just over £30 you can “fix” your sonos 5 speakers to use the latest streaming tech. 

Which begs the question - why can’t sonos produce such a device and keep the play:5 speakers working indefinitely - after all the “puck” wouldn’t cost *that* much to make. If they were to offer this at cost, I’m sure that most Sonos owners would be delighted at the forward-thinking and customer support of this premium brand and not the PR disaster it has become.

I have been responsible for my family purchasing 10k+ of sonos gear. I will not be doing so going forwards, and neither will they. Such a shame”

R
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Brilliant

U
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with google home you can group the speakers together and they are synced - one of the powerful features of  sonos .. but using chromecast instead. Completely bypasses the need for the sonos app or wifi / network etc as the CC does all the heavy lifting.

And of course, it’s relatively future proof. As long as sonos allow us to use the line in ;) , then you can upgrade the chromecast for £30 whenever you want

F
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Excellent thread -- thanks to the many helpful contributors. I feel better now about letting my relatively small system (Play5, Connect, 3 Play1s, Boost) stay in “Legacy mode” rather than trying to split them up somehow. I don’t use them for TV at all, and figure I should be able to use the line-ins on the Play5 and/or the Connect to handle any future “dongles” necessary for my limited streaming needs (TuneIn and Youtube Music/Google Play Music) -- right now I have two Chromecast Audios.

For clarity, as long as I keep them all in one connected system, Sonos won’t “force update” the non-legacy bits on me?

Another question -- what about the windows/android/iOS “controllers” -- do I have to do something to prevent them from getting updated in some way that will bork their compatibility with my “Legacy” system?

I will be watching the adventures with Roon, the Node2i and other options with great interest ...

I agree about the thread - it is first class. Thanks Kumar. It’s interesting to me to learn how much flexible good value audio components there are around now compared with when I bought my first Play:5. I know that I can stream from my NAS in any number of ways but future streaming services concern me a bit.

While many products mentioned support services such as Spotify etc. I’ve seen very few that mention TuneIn Radio. if I lost that I’d be unhappy, so I’ve been digging out the URLs for the stations that I listen to the most and adding them manually to the controller app; I’m pleasantly surprised how many of them work.

That brings up another concern: ultimately we’re at the mercy of the controller app. I hope we don’t lose any of the functionality the it currently has.

U
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Excellent thread -- thanks to the many helpful contributors. I feel better now about letting my relatively small system (Play5, Connect, 3 Play1s, Boost) stay in “Legacy mode” rather than trying to split them up somehow. I don’t use them for TV at all, and figure I should be able to use the line-ins on the Play5 and/or the Connect to handle any future “dongles” necessary for my limited streaming needs (TuneIn and Youtube Music/Google Play Music) -- right now I have two Chromecast Audios.

For clarity, as long as I keep them all in one connected system, Sonos won’t “force update” the non-legacy bits on me?

Another question -- what about the windows/android/iOS “controllers” -- do I have to do something to prevent them from getting updated in some way that will bork their compatibility with my “Legacy” system?

I will be watching the adventures with Roon, the Node2i and other options with great interest ...

I agree about the thread - it is first class. Thanks Kumar. It’s interesting to me to learn how much flexible good value audio components there are around now compared with when I bought my first Play:5. I know that I can stream from my NAS in any number of ways but future streaming services concern me a bit.

While many products mentioned support services such as Spotify etc. I’ve seen very few that mention TuneIn Radio. if I lost that I’d be unhappy, so I’ve been digging out the URLs for the stations that I listen to the most and adding them manually to the controller app; I’m pleasantly surprised how many of them work.

That brings up another concern: ultimately we’re at the mercy of the controller app. I hope we don’t lose any of the functionality the it currently has.

see the message regarding chromecast - you don’t need the sonos controller app ;)

chickentender

This may sound odd, but for anyone that is concerned about future streaming services for their Sonos network that does NOT currently include a Connect as part of their (soon-to-be-legacy) ecosystem, I’d strongly recommend adding one (2nd-hand will be very inexpensive now) just for the simple RCA line-in connection option…… 
If you  1) don’t have another Sonos speaker that has a Line-in option, it’s an obvious help, or 2) if you have a Sonos speaker with line-in that would simply be cumbersome/inconvenient/unsightly to permanently attach a line feed from another device to,  just due to placement, Ethernet limitations, or whatever reason. (edit: not that Ethernet is required, I just always try to provide it when I can.)
If LINE-IN is the future life-blood of preserving the core function of our Sonos speaker network (which seems likely) the Connect is nice for no other reason than you can place it wherever you like that can easily accommodate an Ethernet run and a line-in from another streaming device, whichever one might choose. Just food for thought.

R
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Do you have any ideas about Ethernet connectivity through a Gen1 Bridge? 

K

Except for very brief and occasional interjections, I have now stopped participating in every other thread in this community except this one to conserve both my energy and my nerves. This one will hopefully then be my last hurrah here, and not something the like the last sigh of the last Moor looking back at Granada on being ejected from there at the end of the Spanish reconquista in the fifteenth century.

Had I known how many viewers it will attract I might have given it a better title than the present clunky one. That said - @Ryan S  or @Edward R - would you be able to change the title to “ The Sonos Brexit and pragmatic ways past it” to better reflect the plurality of views on the topic that are serving the thread so well? If yes, thank you.

chickentender

Do you have any ideas about Ethernet connectivity through a Gen1 Bridge? 

Can you be more specific? I’m not sure what you’re asking.
(I too have a Bridge but disconnected it quite some time back, opting to include wi-fi network details for the system to run on for speaker that had been problematic due to coverage.)

K

here’s a post on another thread where I described for under  £35 per play:5 you can have groups and stereo paired speakers using chromecast ...

“ok, so here’s a thing. take a gen 3 chromecast (£25), add an hdmi splitter (£8) , plug chromecast into splitter, plug audio cable from splitter into sonos play:5 , turn on autoplay 
 

I had seen this on the other thread and planned to copy it here, but thank you for beating me to this; it is a cool and doable workaround now that Google has stopped making the Chromecast audio puck that came with a stereo audio jack.

When it was introduced, I was very impressed with that device - the CCA. I bought one to play around with it because it was cheap. I have posts here from that time that write about how it completely destroyed the credibility of the price point of the Connect. My only issue with it was that I am used to extensively using the hard buttons on the Connect/Connect Amps to start/stop streams or to skip tracks, and to adjust sound levels. Using the CCA means - in my case - having to first find my phone and then invoke the app casting the stream to do this each time. I got tired of doing that and shifted CCA to a drawer where it still languishes. But I will leave it there for the day of the apocalypse:-).

@chickentender Your idea of buying a Connect - new or preferably used - just now is excellent, for those that have only modern products like play 3 or early make play 1 that will be the next to be culled. Because these do not have line in jacks, The only warning is make sure you don't end up buying a bricked for recycling Connect. 

@FarFromGruntled  I don't use radio much these days, except for a favourite station, Radio Paradise. But I think that all streamers can do Tune In, that is a basic function of all. I know Echo can, and it even has a skill dedicated to Radio Paradise. Also, even when all streaming service cease to work on Connect in a hopefully distant future, odds are that radio will continue to work. As to being mercy of the controller app, one can only hope that present or the next management team/s see that keeping it going is an important part of keeping the business running. And it is not just the app, that is trivial; Sonos servers need to be kept being accessible to us. But there is no point worrying about every doomsday scenario.

@Ken_Griffiths : Per @Ryan S , there WILL be a legacy app for legacy systems. That should take care of the inadvertent updating nightmares and sweats. It will however not address it for those that have come to this fork before us, that locked themselves out to retain CR100/classic blue etc. Those will continue to need special handling.

K

@Eddie the Eagle : If the stock keeps falling one of the big tech guys may see opportunities in replacing what looks like inept management even now. One can only stay optimistic and trust that they will also see the merit in keeping the installed base as satisfied as is feasible as a foundation stone for keeping sales and business growing under new management.

T
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Sage commentary about recent events and the path forward by a guy I respect Leo LaPorte, The Tech Guy.  Watch video at timeline: 56:30 thru 1:05:30

https://twit.tv/shows/the-tech-guy/episodes/1663?autostart=false

Speaks for itself.

 

chickentender

UPDATE TO MY PAST DIAGRAM
Hybrid Bluesound/Sonos - Phono/Receiver Setup 2.0

I thought this was worth a quick re-sketch. It now replaces how I had everything wired yesterday (posted one page back on Page.9)....

I’m really not certain why this didn’t dawn on me long ago to wire everything this way utilizing my receiver’s tape input/output jacks… but better late than never. It occured to me staring at my underutilized Marantz that there was a better way, and this entirely removes the previous TOSLINK-->RCA converter I’d been using. Instead I simply route the receiver’s tape output to the Connect’s RCA-IN and then pass the Connect RCA-OUT right back to the receiver RCA Tape-IN. Easy. All I need to do is turn on the receiver’s Tape-Monitor switch to listen to the Connect’s output instead of the Node-2i AUX source (eliminating sync problems when the Sonos is grouped with the other Sonos zones, as before).

This has the added benefit of also passing any EQ adjustments I make to the Node-2i source signal on the receiver right over to the Connect (and out to the zone speakers, in turn), as well as eliminating the signal degradation (very slight, but present) I was experiencing with the optical/analog converter.

And, as an added bonus (and this is where I seriously kicked myself for not even recognizing what I’d done until I started diagramming this again!!) I can now send my phono output to the other Sonos zones as well this way, also without sync delay! And the setup is clean and tidy. Seriously happy this evening.

 

K

@Ryan S : I noticed the title change, thank you.

Now, a couple more appeals, the first one that is a bit selfish, the second not so:

  1. Can I plead again for the Alexa Sonos integration for India before May passes? I am able to use Echo/Alexa wherever there is a line in; but my bedroom set up is a 1 pair, where it will be useful, even more so with the Alexa groups thing available in the Alexa app, that allows very brief voice commands. If the matter rests with Amazon, and if you let me know that, I can take a shot at emailing Bezos. Having lost China, he is determined to not lose India, makes a visit every six months and to date has invested USD 5 billion in the India strategy to the extent that Amazon has just released a battery powered Echo model just for the Indian market at this time - they say they may take it global in future. Emailing him if Amazon is the constraint to this may well therefore  be more successful than emailing Spence of whom I don't expect much for India - unlike Amazon, Sonos sees India as a third world backwater. Of course this feature may disappear after May on legacy systems if Amazon chooses to yank the Sonos tail; but that is an imponderable and can be ignored till it happens.
  2. The other Alexa feature is more widely needed because it is missing everywhere. Now that streaming providers open the window to a massive amount of new/unfamiliar music, album art for track playing becomes a very useful feature - instead of invoking the phone for this, or asking Alexa the question, both of which are clunky ways. This feature has proved to be invaluable for me in my extremely high value for money Echo Show 5/Connect Amp via Line In zone. But if the Sonos Alexa integration is used for music play, the Echo Show does NOT show album art as I have gathered from others here in locations where the integration has been released a long time ago. This is the missing feature that all legacy system owners will appreciate getting before May. Thus, this appeal.
K

@chickentender : that cool trick of looping the Connect using the tape out/monitor in jacks, where available, isn't one that many discover. Those that have extensively used tape decks and amps know about it, but that is a dwindling presence here.

chickentender

@chickentender : that cool trick of looping the Connect using the tape out/monitor in jacks, where available, isn't one that many discover. Those that have extensively used tape decks and amps know about it, but that is dwindling presence here.

Indeed. I’ve not ran tape on my receiver in over 15 years and simply got so used to always (historically) utilizing my AUX for streaming sources, since they were once sort of a novelty and truly an “AUX” source, that it quite literally never occurred to me to use the good old forgotten tape jacks. Definitely a modern application of very useful circuitry. 

K

In this post, I am giving links to some topics I have started over the years that may be of more than just passing interest to folks here; there is also no burning hurry to read any of these right now.

One that speaks to the value of Line In jacks that seems prescient now:

https://en.community.sonos.com/wireless-speakers-228992/the-case-for-making-line-in-a-standard-feature-6800582

I did a quick scan and found an interesting reply from Spence to my email to him on the subject - at a time when he used to respond:-).

There are many very long threads here on Hi Res; here is a very short one:

https://en.community.sonos.com/old-content-from-life-with-sonos-229113/the-hi-res-kool-aid-6733597

I remain a big fan of the play 1, which is perhaps the best product Sonos has ever made after the foundational zone players and here is why I think so:

https://en.community.sonos.com/old-content-from-life-with-sonos-229113/in-praise-of-the-play-1-6730867

And finally, some that relate to what this is all really about, the music, which is the moon that many fingers can be found to point at as long as one isn’t hypnotised into thinking that Sonos is the only one. For some here, these may be a good long term resource; they feature excellent contributions from many posters:

https://en.community.sonos.com/music-culture-the-industry-228997/recommended-music-other-than-classical-and-pop-42790

https://en.community.sonos.com/music-culture-the-industry-228997/recommended-music-blues-6794152

https://en.community.sonos.com/music-culture-the-industry-228997/music-for-the-holiday-season-6733123

That's the end of this post, some of which is off topic. Apologies for that.

Moving on…

PS: A correction! I just re read and realised that it wasn’t Spence that had actually replied to an email addressed to him, but a functionary. I must have mixed this up with where he had so responded to me, via an email that was clearly his voice, on the Indian market opportunity.

 

R
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The best option for me is to put my server rack full of Connect:Amps through a pasta roller and use them as toilet paper

K

@RichTeaBiscuit wait till the hardware dies. And if a rackful, invest in a used, unbricked connect for it's line in as back up, because those in the rack may be a challenge to run wires to.

 

K

I keep thinking of how to make this a more effective thread; I just realised I have missed a major trick.

As background: for quite a few years after I started with Sonos in 2011, this was a Sonos forum, using a simpler but effective V Bulletin architecture where all moderators were unpaid experts. Who did a fantastic job of keeping the forum to the levels that any civilised and knowledgeable one needs to be. Almost all that I know about Sonos, and about network management which I admit I still know little about, I learnt from them. Once the community morphed to its present state, they largely moved into the background; it was a major loss to Sonos that this could not be prevented.

So now, a call to @ratty @buzz  and @Majik, Jedi masters of the Sonos galaxy, to step in whenever they can, in any way they can, in response to any post, in furtherance of the objectives of the thread that the title tries to capture. What ever you can do or are still willing to, will have an impact. 

PS:  much as I hate this InSided platform I must say that the @ thing is a very cool feature.

E
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with google home you can group the speakers together and they are synced - one of the powerful features of  sonos .. but using chromecast instead. Completely bypasses the need for the sonos app or wifi / network etc as the CC does all the heavy lifting.

And of course, it’s relatively future proof. As long as sonos allow us to use the line in ;) , then you can upgrade the chromecast for £30 whenever you want

 

Woooo whooo

By passing sonos app is exactly what I wanted. Can you get your computer into the mix as a NAS and use winamp to play music?

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