Sonos S2 - what has it actually delivered so far?

Why worry till it comes about? I for one don’t think it is very likely that more than a handful of service will be affected, if at all. But, time will tell. In that time a lot of other things could happen.

Hi @annascott 

No need to worry about that - it’s very unlikely. We initially were going to stop working on the S1 app, but now we still address bugs and if any service were to change things to the extent that Sonos couldn’t connect anymore, it would be fixed in both apps.

In time, it’s possible that a music service may demand something that S1 cannot comply with, but this would happen to one service at a time, and will likely take a long while yet.

That is probably the most reassuring thing that I have heard in a long time from anyone in Sonos.

My pleasure!

Back to the “what has S2 ever done for us,” Monty Python plagery, I think it’s fair to list 24bit playback, Atmos support and dual Sub support in there too.

I think that what @Corry P has said goes further than Sonos has promised before, and further than I was expecting.  I am a tad surprised…...

I feel I should add that this is assuming that Spotify, for example, doesn’t up and change everything next week - they might, and they have no obligation to tell us beforehand (though I think they and a few others would - most services not so much). The point is, it’s ultimately out of our control but we don’t see it on the horizon for any services yet.

What I have said above has been our view since shortly after S2 was released and it was decided to continue limited support on S1.

Within the context of that sentence, I don’t think you could conclude that any features are coming soon or at any particular time.  All it states that whenever a new feature is ready to be provided to customers (ie, the latest feature), that feature will go to all the S2/modern speakers, but not on the S1 speakers.  As John mentioned, not all features are specific to individual speakers but require the entire system to have the hardware/software capabilities, such as HiRes audio.

It’s also worth noting I think that we have no idea what impact the pandemic has had on Sonos development.  I do thinks it’s fair to say that Sonos has been releasing new products and features at the same or greater pace then previously, but we do not know if they had planned for even more.

Thanks everyone for their replies to this topic, some interesting discussion which people have taken time out to share - much appreciated. 

Would like to clarify that in no way did I feel anyone’s responses belittled or denigrated my original question. John B’s initial reply was very informative - and the overall message I get from that is that S2 is a marathon, not a sprint.

On the topic of playback directly from devices, Bose still has this functionality, as does the excellent Nuvo player. My broad understanding was that Apple changed  the functionality in a manner which Sonos felt they were unable to guarantee being able to support to the minimum standards they wanted to maintain. I will confess to not having read all the specifics of it though. 

Have a good weekend all, enjoy your sound systems.

In my humble opinion, the one feature I'd like to see changed in S2 is the removal of the awful colour-coordinated backgrounds where the predominant colour of the stream artwork is reflected in a.sickly kaleidoscope of pastel colours.  Just let the user choose a background colour from a palette.  Please.