The Sonos Brexit and pragmatic ways past it

@Kumar .  Thanks for this.  I am using the ‘other’ thread to satisfy my anger and this one to start thinking ahead.

There is some great info above, mostly from people who understand way more about Sonos than me but I think it is a bit of a shame we don’t have more detail from Sonos to work on.  There are quite a few statement like ‘if Sonos do this then we can/can’t do this’  or if Sonos don’t do this then we can/can’t do that.

Anyhow, I am really looking forward to this thread being the most viewed when we do know that detail.  For now, I am going to not buy any more Sonos products, calm down...watch….and wait.

Thanks again Kumar.

Wholeheartedly agree with that sentiment. I’m relatively late to Sonos comparatively (6 or 7 years) but I’ve a background in both IT as well as music performance and a/v with webcasting… I never considered myself pro or anything approaching the knowledge many I know have, more of a guerilla electronics warrior, so this problem solving type is fun for me. 
Though to be honest, I don't have as much fun as I once did, and throughout it all I’m tempted to just leave the Sonos system as is, add nothing, and just return to playing more records again. I guess I’m just getting old and grumpy.
I will, and I’m sure many other will, check in on this thread as the weeks tick closer. There’ll be guidance and still time for plans. At the end of it all, I don’t think it needs to be a big deal at least in practice. There are many convergent factors at work feeding the incense going ‘round, but (as you’ve titled the thread) there’s a perfectly pragmatic and sky-is-not-falling future. 
I’d feel a bit sad for some folks throwing their hands up, selling it all and jumping into another ship that could sink even faster. I hope some of them buy speaker wire.

LOL. That made my day:-). I hope that any that do, don't fall into the audiophile snake oil nonsense around speaker wires. 

Let alone IT, I am not even an engineer; but I have spent a decade afflicted by severe audiophilia. I cured myself of that, came to Sonos in 2011 to stay cured, and all was good till this deja vu of getting into the workings of what I would really prefer to see as just boxes that make music.

Hahah. I lived that decade as well… roughly 2000 through mid-2009, when I sold off my remaining 6 receivers (several were quad monsters) and 3 speaker sets from the basement, along with nearly everything else I owned, and went around the world for 2 years. When I came back stuff didn’t seem as neat. Sonos sure did.
Now I’ve just got an old Marantz 2235b running to a pair of Wharfedales. No pres, no bi-wiring or gold plates… hell no optical. Modest, old, compact and I love it. Everything else is just faffing about and convenience. Don’t need it. That’s just me.

If you want to stay up with all the latest features, in particular voice control, then it probably is a big deal… All I’ve ever wanted to do was listen to my music from a NAS, which is why I locked it all off a while ago, so I can honestly say that it doesn’t affect me in the slightest. That doesn’t stop me feeling very sorry for those who feel angry or deeply disappointed, though - I do feel that Sonos has let them down badly.

@chickentender :Lol. Parallel stories in part - Audiophilia, 2000-2010. Took a while to arrive at my premier kit - Quad 909/99 that fed Harbeth speakers. Source Rega P5/Marantz SACDP. In time Sonos replaced it all, though I retained a KEF and Quad passive pair for two Connect Amps, that are still soldiering along very well. I remember sending a Quad CDP for service to the UK, that was promptly done; I still miss the legendary bombproof 909, but it ended up overbuilt for my use case, so needs must kind of thing. Sonos has been brilliant - allowing orders of magnitude expansion in access to great music, with no audible sound quality compromises. Till now it just worked except for minor attention to things like reserving IP addresses. Now I have to again break my head about more than the music to keep the music playing. I haven’t the time or the inclination to rinse and repeat, so no more after this.

If Sonos sticks to their latest pledge - and it must be said that this is a big if given their recent track record of broken promises - and keeps legacy systems afloat for many more years why? Every legacy product of today has line in jacks, so even if the streaming service feed to Sonos isn't broken, one just needs to switch the supply device to the line in jacks for the latest in voice control, even before Sonos offers it in their newest integrated products. And while Sonos has been bashful about saying this explicitly, only streaming service functionality might break before the hardware dies, in which again - Line In to the rescue.

I cannot see Sonos doing anything in future on the smart audio side that the best of other smart device makers will not be able to do, except in some ways that are unique to Sonos today. But that also gets offset by Sonos not being able to do some things that are unique to the other devices. For most users, these differences won’t be a big deal. On the other hand, at best Sonos will stay on level pegging terms on voice control. Leader in this area? Doubtful.

TV may be a  different ball game - I don't use Sonos for TV and don’t much care for anything fancy for TV audio, so I don't know much about that or care to know more. But there it may be that having the latest Sonos offerings delivers a better outcome than anything other than a full blown HT system, with the latter having the problem of being decor destroying. And in that case one may want to stay on the Sonos upgrade train to get those benefits, jettisoning legacy products if one wants to stay on one interoperable system.

For those that would like to have a background summary, a link to what feels like a balanced article:

https://www.slashgear.com/sonos-nightmare-was-inevitable-24607638/

From the above article a quote:

“The reality is that this situation was always going to happen: the oldest products in Sonos’ line-up were inevitably going to reach a point where their hardware wasn’t able to keep up with the software, even if the amps and drivers themselves are perfectly functional.”

And where the amps and drivers are expensive for obtaining quality sound, as well for reliability/long service life, the idea of having separate boxes for the software and the hardware suggests itself. And with line in equipped legacy products, it is easy enough for another software box to access the legacy Sonos amp/driver hardware, bypassing the obsoleted Sonos software. As long as the amps/driver hardware continues to work.

The article also uses smartphones as an analogy which is fine, but physically unbundling a phone on similar lines is wildly impractical, which is where the analogy breaks down.

This also helps understand why sending functional amp/driver hardware to a landfill is criminal in AD 2020. Trump beliefs on what causes global climate change notwithstanding.

There is one aspect where I can add relevant value to this thread, based on experience with audiophile kits for a decade and Sonos for another and that is on the subject of the sound quality via Line In. 

There is absolutely no difference in the heard sound quality between Apple Music invoked via the Sonos app, and Apple Music invoked on an Echo device and played via a wire connected Connect Amp. It isn't even necessary for the wire to be anything more expensive than a bog standard RCA stereo cable - I have found that these days excellent cables in varying lengths are sold by Amazon Basics at very reasonable prices. But any electronics shop should also have perfectly adequate ones.

Audiophiles may also point out that there is an additional analog to digital conversion involved here that takes place in the Connect Amp - again, it does not result in any audible difference.