Trending Lyricist I

Is Sonos S2 a lemon?

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
June 24, 2020
23 replies
1369 views

I’ve had Sonos for many years. My system grew to 8 zones and although there would sometimes be problems there was never something that couldn’t be fixed by rebooting everything from my router through switches to wired and wireless Sonos devices. Hey ho, this is the price we pay for humanity’s early steps to networking Nirvana (which probably won’t be reached in my lifetime!)

Then came news of Sonos S2. After getting past Sonos’ poor initial communications, and finding that most of my devices were S2 compatible I upgraded the remaining ones and apart from being annoyed that the new Sonos Port is functionally a backwards step (no volume control buttons, no pause/play button, no optical digital output) I was ready to say ‘Hello’ to S2.

I hesitated.

I had a splendid multi-room sound setup feeding both simple speakers and two traditional hifi stereo systems. I didn’t want a load of hassle. Life’s too short to spend hours rebooting, deleting and adding components or hanging on the phone to Support.

So I came to this forum. Oh boy, am I glad I did?! There appears to be a constant stream of trouble with S2. But is this representative? There may be millions of happy S2 users out there, or millions of people pulling their hair out. Of course it’s mainly those with problems who come here so the bias toward troublesome upgrades may not be representative.

How do I find out? It appears that reversing from S2 back to S1 isn’t a supported process so I’m very reluctant to ‘give it a go’.

What is the truth? Is Sonos S2 a lemon?

Sonos S2

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melvimbe

You are upgraded to S2, and don’t currently have any issues. Why would you go to S1?

The issues I’ve seen, though not something I’ve paid a lot of attention to, is people having trouble migrating to S2, or setting up a split system...which do not apply to you.

Danny

Bumper

What is the truth? Is Sonos S2 a lemon?

Not a lemon for me. But functionally for me there is no difference between s1 and s2.

Let's seen in 12 months, SMB security fix and new features that hopefully make S2 hardware upgrades really worthwhile.

rosswells127

Prodigy I

I am running a 3 room setup including 2 x Play5 Gen 2 a Sub Gen 2 and a couple of Sonos Ones.
I have IPhone, IPad, Android and Windows10 controllers.

99% of the S1 to S2 conversion worked well.

I did have a problem on the W10 PC that contains my Music Library. I ended up having to uninstall and reinstall the W10 controller on that PC and re-instate the Music Library setup.

The S2 controller at least “appears” to be the same as the S1 version apart from some cosmetic changes and a couple of new annoyances. e.g. The time remaining for a song being played fades out after a few seconds and you have to click the time-line for it to re-appear.

I agree with Bumper that the true value for S2 probably won’t be seen for a few months when hopefully Sonos will release changes that were previously restricted because of having to support older devices.

Ross.

bamber2000Author

Trending Lyricist I

You are upgraded to S2, and don’t currently have any issues.

No. I’m ready to upgrade but hesitating.

bamber2000

Iain59

Collaborator II

Don’t think it’s a lemon. Upgraded when it was released on a multi-room setup with 3 x Sonos Ones; Beam, Sub(Gen 3), 2 x One SLs in a 5.1 config; 2 x Connects (Gen 2). No issues, but as others have said no features as yet that truly wow. Hi-Res (24/48) from my NAS through one of the Connects to a Naim system is nice for the v. small number of Hi-Res files I have, but it’s Hi-Res streaming from the likes of Qobuz and Tidal that I’d like to see plus direct control from Qobuz.

bockersjv

Local Superstar

Then you don’t currently have a problem apart from indecision :wink:

You buy any IT component that links to ifi and/or the internet and update and changes will be a way of life. If you don’t like that then stand alone systems, without links to smart home kit or music streaming services, may be better for you situation.

Given the 100s of thousands of Sonos customers across the globe there are bound to be issues, none I have seen have been widespread or critical. So no it’s not a lemon, or even mildly citrus :wink: I have even reported an issue with my Move. It’s not S2 specific but appears to be wifi interference which i am trying to resolve.

If you are unsure then just wait a while. The key to most successful updates is a stable interference free wifi and following the instructions and not being rushed.

C

craigski

Local Superstar

If you are unsure then just wait a while. The key to most successful updates is a stable interference free wifi and following the instructions and not being rushed.

I agree, not a lemon. The other thing I would suggest for a ‘belt and braces’ approach is to restart all your Sonos devices one by one (they may have been on for months without a restart), ensure everything is working as it should *before* starting upgrade to a major release.

bamber2000Author

Trending Lyricist I

I would suggest for a ‘belt and braces’ approach … restart all your Sonos devices one by one (they may have been on for months without a restart), ensure everything is working as it should *before* starting upgrade to a major release.

I’m sure that’s good advice and when the time comes I’ll follow it. In fact before I eventually attempt the change I’ll reboot the router and switches before switching the Sonos devices on and checking as you suggest.

So as bockersjv correctly said, my only current problem is indecision! Thanks to the comments above I’ve fixed that: I'm not going to move to S2 until there are a couple of good reasons. Good reasons include

streaming hires from Tidal with hi-res digital output from my new Sonos Port (that feeds digital into my very high end DAC) so that it’s actually better in some way than the Connect gen.1 that it replaced
more sophisticated management of zones, i.e. groups of zones with overlap of the groups if desired
a compellingly better interface [Note to Sonos: that doesn’t mean a different colour and it doesn’t mean ‘simpler’ as I’m not a simpleton and don’t find the current interface to be a problem though it could be better.]
an iPad app that will work on older iPads so that the ones here and there in my house can be put to an additional use

Until then I shall stay with S1 and remain happy.

bamber2000

K

Keithmac

Virtuoso

I'm staying S1 for now, will wait until there is a significant gain on S2 before considering a swap over.

Hi-Res isn't of any interest to me, I have a Playbar (the ARC is too wide to fit our TV stand anyway) and it's all working perfectly fine on S1!.

Bumper

streaming hires from Tidal with hi-res digital output from my new Sonos Port (that feeds digital into my very high end DAC) so that it’s actually better in some way than the Connect gen.1 that it replaced
more sophisticated management of zones, i.e. groups of zones with overlap of the groups if desired
a compellingly better interface [Note to Sonos: that doesn’t mean a different colour and it doesn’t mean ‘simpler’ as I’m not a simpleton and don’t find the current interface to be a problem though it could be better.]
an iPad app that will work on older iPads so that the ones here and there in my house can be put to an additional use

Do you have any S1 devices? If not you may want to consider the upgrade to S2 so that you get the regular stream of bug fixes and features.

There’s no guarantee that we will get Hi Res streaming on Tidal. If this is important to you I would add a different streamer to your high end dac and start enjoying that, life’s too short to wait for a feature that may never arrive.

IMO Sonos will never support older iPads, Sonopad fills this niche today, maybe it will work for you.

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