Control4 Integration with Sonos 7.0

Speaking as a Software Engineer with a background in rolling out all aspects of large scale projects, including analysis of ROI, I posit the positives of keeping multiple software versions that are of limited use to an extremely tiny fraction of your user base are far outweighed by the negative PR aspects and support costs I listed above. As to similarities to what happens today, not liking an aspect of a new feature is very different from going backwards and the software just not working any more. Your comparison is not apples to apples. I hate the new queue features and I am very vocal about it, but I wouldn't give up Google Play Music, Trueplay tuning, or being able to add new products to get it back. Not many would, I suspect.

On top of that, the sheer cost in man-hours of creating and maintaining a release methodology which allows this tiny minority to switch back and forth between many multiple versions would far exceed any cost benefit one may think it brings. This is especially true because by the very definition of your terms it is not likely to drive new sales, since taking advantage of this feature means one can never update their system with any future Sonos products.

But hey, at least I got you to drop the "no loss of functionality" mantra, if only because your original criteria was demonstrably impossible and you were backed into a corner. I wish you were able to apply that sort of insight to your whole idea, therefore realizing the more you apply your goalpost moves, the more watered down your original wishes become, and the user base you are actually serving declines to almost nothing. Who knows, if I keep shooting your silly ideas down like ducks on the wing, we may get there. Once again . . . baby steps. ;)

PS - I see you clipped my statement that it is only tiny fraction of Sonos users for which this would be helpful. That is one of, if not the single greatest factor, in figuring ROI. Convenient that you should ignore it.

As a Control4 Dealer who has for 2-3 years avoided using Sonos like the plague because of the shockingly low dealer discount and the hoops we have to jump through to even be allowed to get the minuscule discount on the product (Saying this I installed it in my own house 4yrs and love the way it works because the wife and kids can work it!) Long and short when it comes to clients I will sell them C4 audio, Denon, Nuvo or anything that integrates with C4 'PROPERLY' its clear from the lack of discount that and this latest endorsed API debacle that Sonos could not careless about the CI industry and any close partnership, they would appear to only want to make money from retail sales.

While they take this narrow minded and blinkered approach to CI installers like us we are out there spreading the word not to buy what is actually a great product, but with poor leadership/marketing/partnership and direction on placing it in multiple market places, to top it off in the UK we got hit in Feb by a 25% price increase so it makes Heos a no brainer now.

We recently had a client ask for Sonos and would not go for other options, we thought what the heck, the crazy thing is they got a better discount than we did via their global corporation that a family member is CEO of. So when it came to integration we thought lets do a Control4 announcement for the door bell like we have done on countless pre endorsed driver sites using the old Extra Veg driver, oh to our surprise the new driver will not allow this either as the line level input switching is not part of the API. The new driver is absolutely pointless and so is the partnership that Sonos made such a big thing so long story short unless we see Sonos play nice we are not a fan of selling your kit and Heos is our new option because they have not burnt their bridges yet.

Don't get me wrong I do not wish to see Sonos fail or even lose market share but maybe they have had it their own way for too long now and its time for them to see they have competition ready to play nice with integration manufactures, Nest tried all this no one has our API at the start but soon realised it was a benefit to give integrators access to the full API

So you previously avoided Sonos like the plague and you now come here to post a tl;dr that says you are going to avoid Sonos like the plague?

Way to hit the in the wallet, dude. Now excuse me, I'm off to post in the McDonalds forum that I previously avoided fast food like the plague and will continue to do so. :?

Lol there is always one who has 13,000+ posts on a forum who misses the point....its called using the power of social media to hopefully make a change or at least let the blind know they are not perfect....I doubt you have time to go on another forum DUDE! you must barely get out the house!!! 😛

9 years of posting adds up to about 4 posts a day. You did that, with far more useless content, in less than an hour. So I get out of the house just fine, thanks.

And by the way, when someone attacks the messenger instead of the message, I know I hit a nerve. Your post was illogical, and you know it.

Far from illogical, we like the hardware and what it does and more to the point did until they stuffed it up by diluting the integration to a useless level. We made no margin on it so avoided it for the past 2-3 years (not illogical) Now we avoid it even more because they killed the integration which makes it even more useless in what we do (still not illogical)

I fail to see what is illogical about my post in anyway, maybe if you had been constructive in your reply and debated the points you thought were illogical instead of using sarcasm we would not be wasting our lives in this childish exchange!

Feel free to point out what specifically is illogical I'm intrigued!

I thought my point was quite clear. It is illogical to believe your threat that something "avoided like the plague" before the changes to the API will now be further "avoided like the plague" after the changes would have any effect at all on Sonos. It is like vegans threatening to boycott a steakhouse for their latest menu changes. They dont eat there anyway, so who cares? In your haste to bag on Sonos, you took all the teeth out of your threat by stating you really dont buy many in the first place, for reasons far different than the subject of this thread. You self-revealed your threat as idle, which is a rather impotent way to force the issue.

As an aside, Sonos' target market has never really been custom installers. Sonos' target market is mainly . . . well . . . Target.

This was an extremely bad decision on Sonos' part and will force us to have to abandon our beloved line of Sonos products in favor of built in streaming on Control4 products. Sonos does not care about the custom integration business and I can see why companies like Denon, Paradigm, and Control4 will be filling the niche that Sonos has vacated.

It looks like Sonos is continuing to support UPNP connectivity and many Control4 competitors are using that to provide all the Sonos functionality that Control4 used to have. Has anyone asked Control4 why they forced dealers to switch to the new Sonos API drivers when the old UPNP ones worked so much better? Maybe Control4 can explain why Control4 dealers (and their customers) need to suffer while dealers of competing systems do not.

It looks like Sonos is continuing to support UPNP connectivity and many Control4 competitors are using that to provide all the Sonos functionality that Control4 used to have. Has anyone asked Control4 why they forced dealers to switch to the new Sonos API drivers when the old UPNP ones worked so much better? Maybe Control4 can explain why Control4 dealers (and their customers) need to suffer while dealers of competing systems do not.

Who are you, and what have you done with upstatemike??!!