S2 Hi-Res false promise?

I don’t recall Sonos stating that there would be hi res of a specific quality released at a certain date. Searching a few different new articles from last June, they impression I get is that such a feature would be later rather than sooner.  I get that people want it now, regardless, but I don’t know that you can blame Sonos for not meeting expectations they never stated they would meet.

If you can find a reference where Sonos staff state that hi res would be implemented in a matter of months, they you would have a point.  Otherwise, I don’t think you really claim you were duped.

As an aside, the fact you feel this way is exactly why Sonos usually avoids making any statements about future product enhancements.

So do you think the pre-S2 24/48 files sound noticeably better than ordinary CD quality 16 bit files?

The whole S2 app upgrade promised so much at the time, and I thought it was going to be a huge upgrade that took Sonos to a new level but? I wanted a new app that looked modern with an intuitive interface, something that said this is a quality system, I got the same looking app but in mustard yellow. Hi res audio was a dream that never really materialised, unless you had hi res files in your library. I think we all wanted our streaming services to suddenly becoming out of our speakers in some fantastic hi res format that would blow our socks off but of course that didn't happen either. Sonos radio was launched as part of this new S2 app and within months it's broken, now I understand that it has a lot to do with the Tune-in legal situation, but if your gonna launch something called Sonos radio then you expect Sonos to have done their due diligence on the company who's system they are going to use. Maybe as Sonos users we allowed ourselves to believe  that Sonos were going to reward us with some goodies for the upheaval that was part of the S2 introduction, but in reality they just hinted that they would and we bought it again .

I didn’t care about hi res format because I’m aware that my ears cannot tell the difference between hi res and CD quality audio.  Any blown off socks would be entirely psychosomatic.

@lonestay . You obviously misunderstood the purpose of S2, which was to leave behind the older products that would have held back future developments.  

The massive change on day 1 that you were expecting was entirely the product of your own imagination, not promises made by Sonos.

John B nope I knew what the S2 app was designed to do it was to get us all to update our equipment, or in other words give Sonos money, I understand the memory issues and that older equipment may hold back future development, yep get all that but it's a two way street . I gave Sonos money to upgrade the one speaker I needed to ensure that I had a fully integrated one app system, like I had before S2, what did Sonos give me in return? Sure a new speaker and ? You say that it's to ensure future development so the question is when do I see these new developments? If Sonos radio is a new development it's broke !

I know it’s the mastering not the medium, and I’m not precious about bits. If Sonos could downsample Hi res files to 24/48 and play them it would be a start. It’s just a convenience thing, not needing to convert the hires files I buy to something Sonos can play. 
As for the promises made, there were enough stories about what S2 would bring around the time of release, all of them mentioned hi res playback. There may not have been statements about it being on day one, but I don’t recall the stories talking about at some point in the future either. Clearly they could have managed expectations better.  The annoying thing is just the way they leveraged S2 as the reason to upgrade, and the software to date hasn’t anything offered anything other than a new paint job. 

Sonos don't generally give any expectations - they make a point of not doing so. They never respond one way or another to speculation, rumour, leaks or 'stories'. I may be mistaken but I don't think Sonos themselves actually said anything about hires being in S2 on day 1 until the exact details were announced. If you can find me the evidence that they did then I shall gladly admit my mistake. (I am genuinely not sure about this.)

You make a good point, and perhaps Sonos did exactly what they wanted to do with the implicit promise of a better world post S2, even though they did not have the wherewithal to follow through to meet the expectations generated. They were angling for a sales bump, pure and simple, driven by the Street.

They did not go against the “letter of the law”, which is the defense being offered by Sonos defenders here, which is true enough.

But if they did not have the bullets ready, they could have held back selling the gun until they had the bullets for it. But that is not how the new Sonos works, and perhaps they even had the perceived good reason of survival calling for the release.

For what its worth, Hi Res itself is a chimera of no impact on heard sound quality, and the only reason for Sonos - a vocal opponent of Hi Res in up to the recent past - offers it now, even if just in terms of potentials and capability, is to counter the PR that it does not offer Hi Res. 

The real reason for S2 is to be liberated from the acute limitations of S1 hardware that does not allow Sonos to offer what in their opinion will be a new and improved all singing and dancing Sonos much beyond just Hi Res, to cope with the very serious competitive and existential threat they face. But I don't see that radically improved thing happening in the next 12 months, so I suspect Sonos, realising this, had to put out S2 to keep the ship afloat.

While I have no interest in S2 and am content in S1, it will be interesting to see how this strategy plays out for Sonos over the next couple of years.

On the other hand, the S2 promise is being able to keep up with the competition.

It won't be easy. For example, Amazon works at different price points as a strategy that is also afforded to it by much bigger scales, that allows it to offer replaceable hardware. For instance an Echo of three years ago to the new spherical model around the corner, or, similar with respect to the Echo Dot. From both a sound quality and features perspective, both will offer a night and day difference for the better in the user experience for just music play. And Amazon will keep moving the bar higher via this model of cheaper and therefore more easily replaced hardware.

Sonos will have to deliver corresponding improvements in the user experience if it is to keep a lead using the same S2 hardware, via free software upgrades to the same hardware. Can it? Only time will tell, but getting those improvements is what you sign on for when you move to S2. The Hi Res thing is a side issue in this.