What does the future hold

Squeezebox?  I don’t see how that has much impact on the competition that echo speakers offer to Sonos.  I’m not saying echos aren’t competition, they absolutely are. Just that LMS isn’t likely to move the needle that much.

Or because the brand doesn't actually exist anymore, because it ceased selling products many years ago?

Danny,

I’m going to say I agree with pretty much everything you put. And any minor quibbles are probably more nuances than a difference in opinion.

For instance I’m aware that the dislikes of app features are more heavily voiced than the likes or passives. My thoughts are we have had numerous changes of the apps over the years, a number that seemed to offer little benefit than a new GUI to learn. But the functionality differences between desktop apps and phone/tablet apps just seems there to confuse people. You know what you want to do, you know it does it, but you can’t find it. Then eventually realise it won’t do it in the desktop version, or on the controller, or its done differently in the app. Other than Dev cost there is rarely a reason why the Desktop can’t do all the things the App can (TruePlay, the EQ thing, being a rare exception). Simple and consistent is good.

Since we locked down to keep the CR100s I have zero internal support cases from wife/kids as they know how it all works, and it hasn’t changed. It’s primary function play music, is met. (This may change as daughter wants a music streaming service so may have to unlock yet). And it's still the best tech product I have had. 15-years+ and stuff still in use daily. We use the alarms a fair bit to set stuff running, so daily does mean daily.

I think the higher end sound quality is just too small for the big boys to go after 1st round but we have seen improvements in Amazon devices and they are starting to look at higher quality devices. That said I am not certain the Amp/ZonePlayer market may ever really feature i their line-up as the markets are just too small.

I wonder if we will see a much larger ‘whole house piped music market’ sub Sonos standard but good enough and a return to dedicated systems for the enthusiasts. Sonos crossed the line to enthusiasts enough that only the enthusiastic enthusiasts could be bothered not to have the integration. I am less fussed about music than movies, so Sonos Amp stuff is more than good enough for music. But the Playbar relegated to kids playroom and dedicated home cinema still rules the lounge. But in order of price magnitude it is probably 5 times the price of playbar/sub/play1 set-up. Music in the lounge is slightly cumbersome as you have to go and turn the amp on, and change the input, whereas a playbar would be slicker. But it just doesn’t do the SPL of big speakers & big subs.

And the home integration stuff is growing fast. OK we may be ahead of the curve but we have something like 150+ IP connected devices at home ran across 4 VLANs everything from windows, heating, doorbells, cameras, PV systems, the car, TVs etc. Your average joe is going to need an ecosystem to handle this for them. They can’t be expected to put in place VLANs, to manage security but just like home routers have added guest networks (effectively a VLAN) they will need a ‘things LAN’.

I suspect there are at some point going to be some expensive losers in this game both for consumers with redundant systems and for corporates who lose the battle for the ecosystem.

I am clearly not as ‘techy’ as the other contributors on here and a lot of what has been said has gone over my head. However, I have picked up from a couple of threads that people are still using their CR100 controllers: is this the case because mine both became obsolete upon the installation of an update some time ago. Is there any way they can be ‘undone’ for want of a better explanation?

The TLDR is: No.

The longer answer is only if you are running version 8.4 and locked yourself down so the controllers, players, and apps didn’t upgrade. Stopping the apps upgrading was the hardest as would require turning off the automatic app upgrades on iPhones (and not having a new phone either). But switching to Sonophone (an alternative Sonos app) and using CR100s avoided this. So we don’t have anything with a Sonos App. The upgrade path is blocked at the firewall, and everything remains on version 8.4.

Sonos have never allowed downgrading of versions on units so for completeness you can’t reverse.

The downside is we don’t have any new features since version 8.4 and in theory we could loose TuneIn or other streaming service if they instigate a change at the service end (TuneIn/Spotify etc). So far TuneIn and Amazon Prime Music is still operational.

One of the other posters may give you chapter and verse on the massive list of benefits that I have missed out from the latest updates. But I can upgrade if I want to.

Aah, that would imply they knew what they were doing; guess I am even less tech savvy than I thought. To be candid, the reason I feel quite bitter about the relatively rapid obsolescence of my equipment is because I simply bought into a fabulous system and experience at not insignificant cost, and am finding that it is all slowly be taken from me due to constant updates that I have no control over. People have commented on the CR100’s but no one seems bothered that my early iPad has already become useless and my desktop is soon destined to become useless for controlling Sonos.

How do all the people on here control their systems? Say for example a forgotten alarm setting starts playing music at 3.00am in the morning in your bedroom; how do you turn it off? I used to lean over and hit the CR 100 controller; now I have to have an iPad in the bedroom, pinging emails all night! I have to open it, load the Sonos app and then switch off the music; it is totally unacceptable. I even tried purchasing a Sonos one with Alexa but that was more than useless and Sonos admitted that it was unable to link zones or do very much at all that it was also returned for reimbursement.