The Sonos Brexit and pragmatic ways past it

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
January 23, 2020
570 replies
22875 views

I will start this thread with a few caveats:

First, this thread is not for rants. There are plenty here for those, and there is no bar on opening new ones.

Second, the thread is directed for the subset of users that have a large investment in legacy products, and are content to see their Sonos systems as music systems that offer stable streamed music from either a NAS or from the net, and have no expectation of more bells and whistles - just that things continue to work as they are working today. I happen to be in this boat as well, as someone that has three out of six zones running very well on legacy products that I simply cannot afford to jettison until the hardware dies.

Third, this thread is based on facts, some of which have been coming to light only over the last 48 or so hours. It is therefore incomplete to an extent, and may even be wrong in places. Feel free therefore to clarify/correct/add as necessary - and I specifically invite @Ryan S to do so. But, no rants please - they have a place, but this is not it.

All that said, this is the solution I intend to proceed with and recommend here:

Opt for a legacy system operation in May, that will run legacy and modern products, exactly as these run today; no faffing around with two networks. No more enhancements, but expecting Sonos to honestly fulfil their recent promise of all bug fixes that the legacy products can accommodate. Ditto for what needs to be done to accommodate changes driven by at least the mainstream service providers.

By a happy coincidence, all legacy products have line in jacks. So if something even happens at the streaming service end that cannot be accommodated in legacy products, I am confident of finding some device that can be wired to the line in jacks of these, that will still allow streaming from the culprit service to work including in grouped mode with all other products in the system.

The streaming from the local NAS will not have any issues in this mode, other than hardware failures including that of the NAS, and a key assumption here is that NAS changes will not need a Sonos software update.

Although Sonos has said that new products can be added to such a system, I do not see how this is possible once new products come installed with versions that are beyond the frozen legacy system one. Unless Sonos is not going to sell any new products in future with versions beyond the 2020 legacy one - I doubt that. And once a product comes with the latest version, adding it to a legacy system without rendering legacy products inoperable is going to be tricky because it will involve first separating the one system into two; I also admit to being a little fuzzy with this bit. In my case, this is all moot; I have no need for another zone. As an aside, I am someone therefore that is not of much interest to Sonos!

I also assume that if anyone at any time in the future wanted to jettison legacy products for any reason, all they will need to do is leave all such products powered off, invoke updates and the result will be a Sonos system updated to the day they do the invocation. The concern here for me is different - I need to have an ironclad way of NOT updating my system before I am ready to separate or jettison legacy products, and this needs more insights into how things will work on this front in future.

I am pretty sure that this way ahead will work in my use case and I suggest it will also work for many that are heavily invested in Sonos legacy products, that do not want to write it off or to trade up to new products just to retain all existing functionality.

Yes, it involves losing future enhancements/features, but once we accept that these essentially are music boxes that will keep doing all they do today, that should be an acceptable trade off, I suggest. It is to me, for sure.

So this way, this event will be just a minor inconvenience, and I expect to be able to use all my existing products till the hardware fails.

What this event has convince me though is to now look at/recommend smart systems that are truly modular in the sense that the smart bits can be periodically replaced at low cost, while the core “dumb” electronic hardware can be of such build/after sales support, that it justifies the higher investment in the consequent price, if better sound quality is also needed than what the smart front ends can alone provide. But that's for the future.

This topic has been closed for further comments. You can use the search bar to find a similar topic, or create a new one by clicking Create Topic at the top of the page.

K

KumarAuthor

After I wrote the first post I discovered that my remaining 3 zones served by play 1 units aren't going to remain modern for much longer, with the play 1 containing a mere 64 mb of memory, just marginally better than the 32 in the units jettisoned at this time. And as opposed to the 1024 mb contained in the One units, so the temptation for Sonos to use this idling hardware by jettisoning the play 1s shortly after May or in the next “news” cycle must be strong.

All the more reason then for me to successfully pursue the approach I have set out in this thread.

J

jacob_7

Prodigy I

After I wrote the first post I discovered that my remaining 3 zones served by play 1 units aren't going to remain modern for much longer, with the play 1 containing a mere 64 mb of memory, just marginally better than the 32 in the units jettisoned at this time. And as opposed to the 1024 mb contained in the One units, so the temptation for Sonos to use this idling hardware by jettisoning the play 1s shortly after May or in the next “news” cycle must be strong.

All the more reason then for me to successfully pursue the approach I have set out in this thread.

The play 1 is still sold by Sonos and Ryan still states that Sonos will support products for at least 5 years after they stop selling them. So here's hoping they stick to that.

Cheers

K

KumarAuthor

The play 1 is still sold by Sonos and Ryan still states that Sonos will support products for at least 5 years after they stop selling them. So here's hoping they stick to that.

It is no longer as simple as that, going by what happened with the Connect Amp - although this was sold by Sonos till 2019, they are pulling support on those made in 2015 and before that saying that these have a much smaller memory than the ones made after, so the earlier ones, though carrying the same name and looks, will no longer get support.

My concern is something similar happening for my 2014 make play 1 units with their relatively very small memory of 64 mb. And I don’t see the play 1 on the Sonos products listed on their website and I think they stopped selling those in 2019 as well. So if they do the same thing they did for my Connect Amp, there go my four play 1 units.

Hence the concern. Once bitten, twice shy.

P

paulrw

Prodigy II

Sonos maybe able to sell to legacy customers, by the user downloading software to the device at instalation, either current or legacy….maybe

R

Ralph Bolton

Contributor I

I have concerns about “they’re just music boxes and will continue to do what they do now”. They’ll probably play from your NAS forever, and most Internet radio will probably be fine too. However, Spotify, Amazon, Deezer etc could, at any time, make a change which Sonos will not deliver to legacy systems (either because they don’t want to, or because the legacy devices can’t properly support it).

I also have problems with Sonos stance here - if a legacy device can’t actually stream (say) Spotify, then fair enough - but it should be possible to use it as a fully supported, updated and working “extra speaker” for another (modern) Sonos device. But that’s not being offered right now.

Whilst I think they should be offering that as a way out, it actually won’t help me on this occasion (although might do when my Play:1s go legacy in the future).

I have a legacy Connect:Amp is currently connected to 4 ceiling speakers in the kitchen. It works fine, but it’s not great at higher volumes and it lacks sub (ceiling speakers struggle to do sub, and mine aren’t the best in that area either).

My plan is currently:

Buy a Yamaha connected amp to replace the Connect:Amp. A similar spec device comes in at half the list price of the new Sonos Amp.
Eval Yamaha as a competitor (they seem to review about the same, although their phone app doesn’t review very well)
Probably use the trade-in to buy a Port, and use that as the sound source for the Yamaha amp (unless Yamaha turn out to be awesome).

This means:

We keep “sonos everywhere” and multi-room etc. Ultimately, nothing really changes.
I get to properly eval Yamaha, and they get time to support Amazon Music (which they say they’re working on).
If Sonos pull any more of this sort of stuff, then I can switch any other devices to Yamaha quite easily, yanking out any Sonos which is then legacy, and keep multi-room in the process.
Potentially stick a sub in the kitchen using the sub-out of the Yamaha amp (which incidentally, I could do with the new Sonos Amp too)

So in short, I’m not going to ditch Sonos entirely, in fact, I’m not really leaving at all. But I’m very much going to insulate myself from any future foul-ups, or indeed an entire implosion at Sonos (if by some miracle what’s going on right now doesn’t turn out to be a “Gerald Ratner”).

K

KumarAuthor

So in short, I’m not going to ditch Sonos entirely, in fact, I’m not really leaving at all. But I’m very much going to insulate myself from any future foul-ups, or indeed an entire implosion at Sonos (if by some miracle what’s going on right now doesn’t turn out to be a “Gerald Ratner”).

Neither am I; I can't afford to leave Sonos en masse. But I refuse to have to do this hoopla ever again because of Sonos or any other smart speaker maker. So, I will also have my migration plan to cheap throw away smart front ends, as Sonos hardware dies, wherever I need the smarts. Since I have the 3 legacy zones all blessed with line in jacks, I don’t even expect the kind of hiccups in streaming that you alluded to; even today these units have Echo Dots/Show wired to them that will work regardless of any Sonos issues in future.

What I do not want - and I can’t really see it happening - is a Sonos implosion that destroys these migration strategies.

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RickInHouston1

Trending Lyricist I

I’m going DigiOne Allo. It’s a raspberry pi server. Will have a large upfront cost for the software side to run things, but I gain non-proprietary and high res playback. So I do win something out of it.

I think I was the first person to buy a Sonos. At least I feel like it.

spydrwebb

Prodigy I

Kumar, this is the best thread yet since the announcements. Thanks for stepping out, brother.

Respect.

Beam, Sub, 2 x P:1 -- 5.1 (video) / 2 x P:3 (music) / 2 x gen1 One (music) ----> ever evolving setup, as they say...

K

KumarAuthor

@RickInHouston1 :Good for you. In my case, just the sight of a unit with an exposed circuit board makes me nervous - I am no techie:-)

@spydrwebb : happy to help. Beyond a point, ranting serves no one.

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NeedSleep

Renowned Enthusiast I

I’m going DigiOne Allo. It’s a raspberry pi server. Will have a large upfront cost for the software side to run things, but I gain non-proprietary and high res playback. So I do win something out of it.

What software are you buying for your RPi server?

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