What does the future hold

Some interesting points of view that have made me think a bit more.

My main point however was that as it is almost certain that older equipment will progressively become obsolete is it better to sell it now while it has some value. Prices on eBay are still good for things like ZP120’s but appear to be softening slightly whereas the 30% trade in deal is hopeless. Why would one accept £150 trade in on a £500 amp when £250 is easily achievable on eBay. To make a trade in worthwhile it would need to be at least 60%.

The fact that trade ins are being offered is the surest sign that Sonos knows much more obselescence is around the corner; the bit I am not sure about is how soon to jump before being left with a load of useless equipment. 

Note that controllers present a rather different problem from players. A controller has to work with the full current range of players and new features.

That’s not to say that I’m uncritical of Sonos’s inability to provide separate, ‘legacy’ versions of their controllers for use on older controller devices and OS versions, even if some features are unavailable. However, to some extent there are low-cost third party options that fill this gap, such as Sonopad.

I interpreted the trade-up programme as being about sales generation rather than preparing for obsolescence. If there is any player obsolescence in future, I’m certain it would be accompanied by a similar (or better) trade-up programme, so I have no intention of obsoleting any of my devices.

That makes sense to me.  Sounds like cost is less important to you as is the convenience of having a controller than you’re comfortable with and know how to use well, rather than having to consider a different means of control for whatever reason.

I can’t agree on the like/dislike of controllers.  The forum is naturally going to see more complaints that compliments just because people don’t often make the effort to say they like something.  The phone/tablet/PC/mac market is all over the place though and changing all the time, which creates havoc for customers.  I don’t think this is a Sonos only issue though,  but an app developer/smart home issue.

Yes.    I personally don’t see a ton of a value in a dedicated controller.  However, I’m the primary user, so my phone is always on me and ready to use, and we use voice controller rather liberally.   I can see where other household with different lifestyles would find greater use for a dedicated controller, and would have the issue you describe.

I think Sonos has done the best they can in this regarding, by making APIs public and free of charge.  For the most part any content not available on Sonos is due to decisions and issues on the streaming services side, not Sonos.  Doesn’t mean customers won’t blame Sonos and won’t have to spend time doing something about it.

The number of speakers per home sounds about right if I remember Sonos quarterly statements correctly.  However, many of these are soundbars or Amp/Port, which wouldn’t be comparable in any way with bluetooth.  They are also competing with echos and google assistance for those who want voice control smart speakers.  There  are those that are deciding between bluetooth options and Sonos, but I wouldn’t say this is exactly the demographic Sonos is targeting.  You are right though that Sonos is a stronger, better system the more products you own.  No doubt about that.

I don’t think there will be more.  As Sonos sells more speakers, services will have greater need to maintain service to Sonos.

Again, not seeing this. Less difference between a single speaker and a BT speaker perhaps, but not a whole house audio system.

I don’t know what scrap means in this context.  And Amazon/echo don’t really have an interface, unless you mean voice, where Sonos effectively has the same in terms of controlling music.  I don’t know Apple’s but do know it’s limited to Apple services.

Agreed on this.  An Amazon whole house system makes sense if you want ease of use, don’t care as much about sound quality, cheap, don’t care about integrating TV audio, other streaming services, or higher multiroom functions.  That actual fits quite a large group of people, evidenced by the massive sales.

Yes, it most certainly could be.  Sonos does have some patent advantages and such to keep them ahead in certain aspects and has remained relatively service agnostic.   I think Snips takes that even further if Sonos get their own voice assistant.  Perhaps surprising, the much bigger players have not tried to push much into higher market speakers with their systems.   Not sure if they just aren’t interested, want to maintain some semblance of partnerships with Sonos and other speaker makers or just don’t see a market for it.

Apple seems to be throwing in the towel on the smart speaker side of things and backing Amazon in a fight against Google.  At least for now.

Yes, most definitely.

glkay

Look up in your router’s manual how to set reserved IP adresses, and do so for all your Sonos devices. That should solve your issue.  

10 years ago, my house was filled with Sonos. I sold it all because my listening habits were changing and the system felt stale and dated.

Last month I bought a beam. Things escalated quickly from there:

I would not have re-entered the fold if the system had not made major leaps in usability over the last few years. New services offer new functionality that cannot be covered in the Sonos app. Take Idagio, which offers excellent UI to classical – and Sonos direct control for output. Basically – for me Sonos is the great consolidator all digital sources: throw a stream at it and it sticks.

I commend the company for staying relevant in these rapidly changing, service-oriented times while still for the largest part supporting their modus operandi of yore.

I have had read Danny’s response and I am in partial agreement.

The iPad obsolescence is in someway a casualty of technology rather than by design from Sonos. As Danny says all things that are technology based become redundant at some point. If Apple stop supporting it then it becomes very hard for third parties to add new functionality whilst retaining support for legacy third party devices. Sometimes the timing sucks.

However the CR100 was an internal product, an ability to freeze versions easily would have prevented what was quite a contentious issue. I understand that the CR100 may be unable to cope with new functions, and its existence in the system also hold back new functions. However this really was a cost based decision. It was not impossible for Sonos to continue supporting via a frozen version. However this would have had a longer term cost for Sonos in terms of development. Plus it also removed the risk of battery issues as fewer devices are now in use. They still manufactured the device, they are still liable for its design, so if something bad happens they are still on the hook for it if a court decide the design was at fault rather than a random failure. Risk to Sonos is pretty small IMHO.

So the iPad is just a technology thing, the CR100 was a cost of support thing.

However they had a good run technology wise, and the fact I can still get updates, and add new services, for a 15+ year old tech device is testament to the value product Sonos delivered.

But as a regular CR100 user I also saw the frustration it would cause with its removal for the scenarios you describe. Such as alarms. I have no iPads. phones, computers in the bedroom. The CR100 is as technical as it gets in my bedroom. 

I am also furious that my not-so-old iPad can no longer support the Sonos app - but that appears to be Apple planned obsolescence. And I’ve complained a thousand times that with each Sonos software update the system forgets most of my speakers. Sometimes I just go back to my CD player and turntable! I’m relatively tech savvy, though much of this thread went over my head; I just want my investment in this system to have long-term support and keep the product suite functioning without constant crashes. Is that too much to ask this far into the 21st century?

No battle, it’s exactly the same thing. The DHCP table stores the reserved IP addresses.

SonosNet is still a wireless communication channel, and is subject to the same interference as your Wi-Fi channels. It’s why they say that the SonosNet channel should not be the same as your Wi-Fi, and if your router has auto selection, you should turn it off, so the two signals don’t clash. 

Forgive me but isn’t all this BS?

Not what is being said but the fact that people should have to go to any trouble in order to listen to or operate Sonos. 

Why oh why shouldn’t it be like buying a TV; open the box, install, set up and watch with the only interaction being to change channels. What else is there to do with Sonos; please tell me! I either listen to the radio or to music that has been stored by me. Sonos could deal with this 10 years ago and I see no reason why it shouldn’t be able to deal with it for ever. 

Would someone please explain how any single update in the last 10 years has been to my benefit?

As I see it the updates thus far have only managed to render my two CR100 controllers useless and make my iPad ineffectual. 

Until the trade-up deal my Sonos were in trickle-down mode and when I got a new bigger one the smaller one went to a location I was too cheap to fill with a new one. (1 → 3 → 5)

While the new stuff is good I don’t see enough difference (for my use) in a Play 1 or One, or the Gen 1 and 2 5s to be worth replacing the old one.

Fair comment, but after the CR100’s were rendered obsolete it took a while to work around it. In fact no solution was ever found to substitute them. Eventually I came to terms with having to use an iPad and also purchased (on Sonos’s recommendation) an Amazon Fire 7. I was told that the Sonos App could be pinned open so as to always be available. This turned out to be incorrect and in fairness to Sonos, they did reimburse me for the unit. As I said in my opening post the iPad has now been rendered obsolete as it is unable to support the latest Sonos updates and Sonos have also told me that my Desktop has probably less than a year left to support updates. 

All I am left with now is my wife’s iPad air 2 which would seem to be good for while but its day will certainly come. 

I do admire the positivity of members here but because of the CR100 issue, I am not convinced Sonos are at all circumspect and remain sceptical about the reasons behind trade ups!

To clarify, the trade up program isn’t 30% value on the item your trading in, but on the item you end up buying.  So if you bought a playbar, you’d get 700*.30 = 210.  A Sonos One would be 200*.30 = 60.  I believe you can also use this on speaker sets.  So depending on what you are buying, what you could sell for, as well as ebay’s fees and shipping costs, the best choice financially is going to vary.  Personally, I don’t want the hassle of having to sell on ebay, so I’d even pick trade in even if it’s remotely close.

I think the other thing to consider is...if not Sonos, what else? Talking about getting selling off your Sonos as a solution doesn’t make sense unless your willing to just not have multiroom audio anymore, there needs to be something you move over to.  I don’t think there’s a perfect system  out there from what I’ve seen.  Denon, Bose, Bluesound, etc...all have their weaknesses and concerns about how long they will support their smart products.  I would think Amazon and Google are going to do better, but we still don’t know how long they will support their products and the sound quality is generally not as good.   Perhaps a more stable system would be have a more ‘dumb’ amp/speaker  system with Alexa or GA just for control, since dots and mini’s can be had for cheap.  Of course, that has it’s limitations as well.  Again, not a prefect system.