The Sonos Brexit and pragmatic ways past it

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
January 23, 2020
570 replies
22879 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.

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FarFromGruntled

Lyricist III

@amun Agreed on CCA; but as you pointed out, one now needs access to the used products market, since Google has stopped selling it.

Or even a used old-style Airport Express. I’ve seen them as low as £4.

K

KumarAuthor

@FarFromGruntled - I have used these for audio back in 2011. Their weakness is stable music play because of how the music streams are handled, particularly for grouped play. I only use them as WiFi access points now, wired to the network. In that role they are still excellent.

Eddie the Eagle

Collaborator II

Not sure if this was already raised, it is almost impossible to read trough all the legacy related posts, but what if (purely hypothetical) this is judgment day for Sonos and leads to it`s bankruptcy ? How would scenario`s look like, over and out for a zillion of users? I guess we are heavily depending on their servers and infrastructure, and given the storm of reactions this would not be the unthinkable. Would any of the big tech guys step up and take over whatever is left ?

To say that his style is unorthodox would be something of an understatement, but it obviously works for him.

chickentender

Yup, Echo is fine if setup sans NAS isn’t an issue. I have other reasons for not going that direction, personal and technical, but logistically it’s fine. The Echo Link is more comparable in my instance.
Another piece I looked at potentially was a scrappy little Arylic S50 Pro streamer box. Does nearly everything the Bluesound does but uses 4Stream application - certainly more DIY oriented but I chose not plunge in until one is offered via Amazon for a return policy in case it didn’t work out for me. The cost is far less though.
Quite honestly, in terms of expanding my own system, were the Port half the price it’s currently listed at, I’d make it work and likely buy more than one for extending to the rest of the house by means of small powered speakers. But for what it is, I can’t justify that personally. I’d sooner pick up additional Node or Powernode units
As many know, Apple users should/could look to Airplay2 certified speakers. Libratone has some nice drop-in-a-room options. Smaller Sonos as well work for this.

chickentender

Another option to drop in-place of the Node in my example (e.g. hooking it up to a Connect’s analog input), perhaps obviously, is any of the relatively less expensive Bluetooth AptX capable receivers available now. Would allow grouping/volume/settings similarly still taken care of within the legacy Sonos app, but for streaming/media-selection you’d use the native applications on PC or mobile device of whichever streaming app you are using. Modular and not tied to streaming APIs within Sonos.

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eg1

Lyricist III

Thread title: The Sonos Brexit and a pragmatic way past it

Solution: buy a Raspberry Pi and install LMS + upnpbridge plugin

That would be sort of going backwards for me, seeing as I moved to Sonos from the old slimserver devices -- still have a few of the latter laying about, including a Squeezebox Touch that I use as a glorified clock ...

B

Bennetg1

Lyricist I

@train_nerd I know from mine that echo dot can receive Bluetooth. Not sure than input can, so do check. Voice controlled play from input wired to line in jacks on Sonos will work, no doubt on that bit.

Just to add results of very simple testing I have been doing…I think others may have done this but I am working with my own equipment and wanted to test….

Use case assumes:

Legacy lock down on my Sonos system ( 5 play 5’s a Playbar, 3 Sonos Ones - no Zone Players/Connects).

All streaming sources (Tidal, Apple, Qobuz, Spotify) modify their API’s requiring new Sonos SW to continue to function on Sonos. My locked down system can’t get it. I.E.,will no longer support streaming or voice services (Sonos One’s on Legacy so new updates not possible).

Goal - find a way to use voice services and streaming sources with my speakers!!

Test result...

I have a iFi XDSD DAC (no I don’t work for them). Connected it to a Sonos 5 using 3.5 line in connection.

Paired my iPhone 11Pro via Bluetooth to XDSD.

Played Music though iPhone Native Player to the xDSD using downloaded music and streamed via Qobuz iPhone app.

Sonos iPhone app used to group speakers and adjust volume.

Used “hey Siri" to play music, increased/reduce volume, skip music…

Have not tried this with Alexa iPhone app yet but assume it will work as long as the app is supported by Apple iOS.

End result - as long as the speakers function and I have the controller available to group speakers my investment isn’t wasted.

Will wait till May to see what Sonos comes up with.

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eg1

Lyricist III

Excellent thread -- thanks to the many helpful contributors. I feel better now about letting my relatively small system (Play5, Connect, 3 Play1s, Boost) stay in “Legacy mode” rather than trying to split them up somehow. I don’t use them for TV at all, and figure I should be able to use the line-ins on the Play5 and/or the Connect to handle any future “dongles” necessary for my limited streaming needs (TuneIn and Youtube Music/Google Play Music) -- right now I have two Chromecast Audios.

For clarity, as long as I keep them all in one connected system, Sonos won’t “force update” the non-legacy bits on me?

Another question -- what about the windows/android/iOS “controllers” -- do I have to do something to prevent them from getting updated in some way that will bork their compatibility with my “Legacy” system?

I will be watching the adventures with Roon, the Node2i and other options with great interest ...

Ken_Griffiths

“controllers” -- do I have to do something to prevent them from getting updated in some way that will bork their compatibility with my “Legacy” system?

My own thoughts here are that the legacy system will 'likely' get its own Controller App ...and there will be a separate one for the modern setup … that would simplify things for the user. That way, there will be no need to 'lock the door’ to your system either and why would you want to? ... if Sonos stick with the public annoucement that they plan to release security updates and adjustments to keep the legacy system, current (legacy compatible) devices and services up and running for the foreseeable (long term) future.

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User533936

Lyricist III

here’s a post on another thread where I described for under £35 per play:5 you can have groups and stereo paired speakers using chromecast ...

“ok, so here’s a thing. take a gen 3 chromecast (£25), add an hdmi splitter (£8) , plug chromecast into splitter, plug audio cable from splitter into sonos play:5 , turn on autoplay

You can now cast to the chromecast, and play music on the speakers. You can also add each chromecast to a speaker group .

And with a little bit of lateral thinking you can cut the audio cable to each speaker to have only L and R wires active, so you have a stereo pair

So, for just over £30 you can “fix” your sonos 5 speakers to use the latest streaming tech.

Which begs the question - why can’t sonos produce such a device and keep the play:5 speakers working indefinitely - after all the “puck” wouldn’t cost *that* much to make. If they were to offer this at cost, I’m sure that most Sonos owners would be delighted at the forward-thinking and customer support of this premium brand and not the PR disaster it has become.

I have been responsible for my family purchasing 10k+ of sonos gear. I will not be doing so going forwards, and neither will they. Such a shame”

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