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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Russ Phoenix

Contributor I

Brilliant

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User533936

Lyricist III

with google home you can group the speakers together and they are synced - one of the powerful features of sonos .. but using chromecast instead. Completely bypasses the need for the sonos app or wifi / network etc as the CC does all the heavy lifting.

And of course, it’s relatively future proof. As long as sonos allow us to use the line in ;) , then you can upgrade the chromecast for £30 whenever you want

F

FarFromGruntled

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 ...

I agree about the thread - it is first class. Thanks Kumar. It’s interesting to me to learn how much flexible good value audio components there are around now compared with when I bought my first Play:5. I know that I can stream from my NAS in any number of ways but future streaming services concern me a bit.

While many products mentioned support services such as Spotify etc. I’ve seen very few that mention TuneIn Radio. if I lost that I’d be unhappy, so I’ve been digging out the URLs for the stations that I listen to the most and adding them manually to the controller app; I’m pleasantly surprised how many of them work.

That brings up another concern: ultimately we’re at the mercy of the controller app. I hope we don’t lose any of the functionality the it currently has.

U

User533936

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 ...

I agree about the thread - it is first class. Thanks Kumar. It’s interesting to me to learn how much flexible good value audio components there are around now compared with when I bought my first Play:5. I know that I can stream from my NAS in any number of ways but future streaming services concern me a bit.

While many products mentioned support services such as Spotify etc. I’ve seen very few that mention TuneIn Radio. if I lost that I’d be unhappy, so I’ve been digging out the URLs for the stations that I listen to the most and adding them manually to the controller app; I’m pleasantly surprised how many of them work.

That brings up another concern: ultimately we’re at the mercy of the controller app. I hope we don’t lose any of the functionality the it currently has.

see the message regarding chromecast - you don’t need the sonos controller app ;)

chickentender

This may sound odd, but for anyone that is concerned about future streaming services for their Sonos network that does NOT currently include a Connect as part of their (soon-to-be-legacy) ecosystem, I’d strongly recommend adding one (2nd-hand will be very inexpensive now) just for the simple RCA line-in connection option……
If you 1) don’t have another Sonos speaker that has a Line-in option, it’s an obvious help, or 2) if you have a Sonos speaker with line-in that would simply be cumbersome/inconvenient/unsightly to permanently attach a line feed from another device to, just due to placement, Ethernet limitations, or whatever reason. (edit: not that Ethernet is required, I just always try to provide it when I can.)
If LINE-IN is the future life-blood of preserving the core function of our Sonos speaker network (which seems likely) the Connect is nice for no other reason than you can place it wherever you like that can easily accommodate an Ethernet run and a line-in from another streaming device, whichever one might choose. Just food for thought.

R

Russ Phoenix

Contributor I

Do you have any ideas about Ethernet connectivity through a Gen1 Bridge?

K

KumarAuthor

Except for very brief and occasional interjections, I have now stopped participating in every other thread in this community except this one to conserve both my energy and my nerves. This one will hopefully then be my last hurrah here, and not something the like the last sigh of the last Moor looking back at Granada on being ejected from there at the end of the Spanish reconquista in the fifteenth century.

Had I known how many viewers it will attract I might have given it a better title than the present clunky one. That said - @Ryan S or @Edward R - would you be able to change the title to “ The Sonos Brexit and pragmatic ways past it” to better reflect the plurality of views on the topic that are serving the thread so well? If yes, thank you.

chickentender

Do you have any ideas about Ethernet connectivity through a Gen1 Bridge?

Can you be more specific? I’m not sure what you’re asking.
(I too have a Bridge but disconnected it quite some time back, opting to include wi-fi network details for the system to run on for speaker that had been problematic due to coverage.)

K

KumarAuthor

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

I had seen this on the other thread and planned to copy it here, but thank you for beating me to this; it is a cool and doable workaround now that Google has stopped making the Chromecast audio puck that came with a stereo audio jack.

When it was introduced, I was very impressed with that device - the CCA. I bought one to play around with it because it was cheap. I have posts here from that time that write about how it completely destroyed the credibility of the price point of the Connect. My only issue with it was that I am used to extensively using the hard buttons on the Connect/Connect Amps to start/stop streams or to skip tracks, and to adjust sound levels. Using the CCA means - in my case - having to first find my phone and then invoke the app casting the stream to do this each time. I got tired of doing that and shifted CCA to a drawer where it still languishes. But I will leave it there for the day of the apocalypse:-).

@chickentender Your idea of buying a Connect - new or preferably used - just now is excellent, for those that have only modern products like play 3 or early make play 1 that will be the next to be culled. Because these do not have line in jacks, The only warning is make sure you don't end up buying a bricked for recycling Connect.

@FarFromGruntled I don't use radio much these days, except for a favourite station, Radio Paradise. But I think that all streamers can do Tune In, that is a basic function of all. I know Echo can, and it even has a skill dedicated to Radio Paradise. Also, even when all streaming service cease to work on Connect in a hopefully distant future, odds are that radio will continue to work. As to being mercy of the controller app, one can only hope that present or the next management team/s see that keeping it going is an important part of keeping the business running. And it is not just the app, that is trivial; Sonos servers need to be kept being accessible to us. But there is no point worrying about every doomsday scenario.

@Ken_Griffiths : Per @Ryan S , there WILL be a legacy app for legacy systems. That should take care of the inadvertent updating nightmares and sweats. It will however not address it for those that have come to this fork before us, that locked themselves out to retain CR100/classic blue etc. Those will continue to need special handling.

K

KumarAuthor

@Eddie the Eagle : If the stock keeps falling one of the big tech guys may see opportunities in replacing what looks like inept management even now. One can only stay optimistic and trust that they will also see the merit in keeping the installed base as satisfied as is feasible as a foundation stone for keeping sales and business growing under new management.

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