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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train_nerd

Trending Lyricist I

Sage commentary about recent events and the path forward by a guy I respect Leo LaPorte, The Tech Guy. Watch video at timeline: 56:30 thru 1:05:30

https://twit.tv/shows/the-tech-guy/episodes/1663?autostart=false

Speaks for itself.

chickentender

UPDATE TO MY PAST DIAGRAM
Hybrid Bluesound/Sonos - Phono/Receiver Setup 2.0

I thought this was worth a quick re-sketch. It now replaces how I had everything wired yesterday (posted one page back on Page.9)....

I’m really not certain why this didn’t dawn on me long ago to wire everything this way utilizing my receiver’s tape input/output jacks… but better late than never. It occured to me staring at my underutilized Marantz that there was a better way, and this entirely removes the previous TOSLINK-->RCA converter I’d been using. Instead I simply route the receiver’s tape output to the Connect’s RCA-IN and then pass the Connect RCA-OUT right back to the receiver RCA Tape-IN. Easy. All I need to do is turn on the receiver’s Tape-Monitor switch to listen to the Connect’s output instead of the Node-2i AUX source (eliminating sync problems when the Sonos is grouped with the other Sonos zones, as before).

This has the added benefit of also passing any EQ adjustments I make to the Node-2i source signal on the receiver right over to the Connect (and out to the zone speakers, in turn), as well as eliminating the signal degradation (very slight, but present) I was experiencing with the optical/analog converter.

And, as an added bonus (and this is where I seriously kicked myself for not even recognizing what I’d done until I started diagramming this again!!) I can now send my phono output to the other Sonos zones as well this way, also without sync delay! And the setup is clean and tidy. Seriously happy this evening.

K

KumarAuthor

@Ryan S : I noticed the title change, thank you.

Now, a couple more appeals, the first one that is a bit selfish, the second not so:

Can I plead again for the Alexa Sonos integration for India before May passes? I am able to use Echo/Alexa wherever there is a line in; but my bedroom set up is a 1 pair, where it will be useful, even more so with the Alexa groups thing available in the Alexa app, that allows very brief voice commands. If the matter rests with Amazon, and if you let me know that, I can take a shot at emailing Bezos. Having lost China, he is determined to not lose India, makes a visit every six months and to date has invested USD 5 billion in the India strategy to the extent that Amazon has just released a battery powered Echo model just for the Indian market at this time - they say they may take it global in future. Emailing him if Amazon is the constraint to this may well therefore be more successful than emailing Spence of whom I don't expect much for India - unlike Amazon, Sonos sees India as a third world backwater. Of course this feature may disappear after May on legacy systems if Amazon chooses to yank the Sonos tail; but that is an imponderable and can be ignored till it happens.
The other Alexa feature is more widely needed because it is missing everywhere. Now that streaming providers open the window to a massive amount of new/unfamiliar music, album art for track playing becomes a very useful feature - instead of invoking the phone for this, or asking Alexa the question, both of which are clunky ways. This feature has proved to be invaluable for me in my extremely high value for money Echo Show 5/Connect Amp via Line In zone. But if the Sonos Alexa integration is used for music play, the Echo Show does NOT show album art as I have gathered from others here in locations where the integration has been released a long time ago. This is the missing feature that all legacy system owners will appreciate getting before May. Thus, this appeal.

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KumarAuthor

@chickentender : that cool trick of looping the Connect using the tape out/monitor in jacks, where available, isn't one that many discover. Those that have extensively used tape decks and amps know about it, but that is a dwindling presence here.

chickentender

@chickentender : that cool trick of looping the Connect using the tape out/monitor in jacks, where available, isn't one that many discover. Those that have extensively used tape decks and amps know about it, but that is dwindling presence here.

Indeed. I’ve not ran tape on my receiver in over 15 years and simply got so used to always (historically) utilizing my AUX for streaming sources, since they were once sort of a novelty and truly an “AUX” source, that it quite literally never occurred to me to use the good old forgotten tape jacks. Definitely a modern application of very useful circuitry.

K

KumarAuthor

In this post, I am giving links to some topics I have started over the years that may be of more than just passing interest to folks here; there is also no burning hurry to read any of these right now.

One that speaks to the value of Line In jacks that seems prescient now:

https://en.community.sonos.com/wireless-speakers-228992/the-case-for-making-line-in-a-standard-feature-6800582

I did a quick scan and found an interesting reply from Spence to my email to him on the subject - at a time when he used to respond:-).

There are many very long threads here on Hi Res; here is a very short one:

https://en.community.sonos.com/old-content-from-life-with-sonos-229113/the-hi-res-kool-aid-6733597

I remain a big fan of the play 1, which is perhaps the best product Sonos has ever made after the foundational zone players and here is why I think so:

https://en.community.sonos.com/old-content-from-life-with-sonos-229113/in-praise-of-the-play-1-6730867

And finally, some that relate to what this is all really about, the music, which is the moon that many fingers can be found to point at as long as one isn’t hypnotised into thinking that Sonos is the only one. For some here, these may be a good long term resource; they feature excellent contributions from many posters:

https://en.community.sonos.com/music-culture-the-industry-228997/recommended-music-other-than-classical-and-pop-42790

https://en.community.sonos.com/music-culture-the-industry-228997/recommended-music-blues-6794152

https://en.community.sonos.com/music-culture-the-industry-228997/music-for-the-holiday-season-6733123

That's the end of this post, some of which is off topic. Apologies for that.

Moving on…

PS: A correction! I just re read and realised that it wasn’t Spence that had actually replied to an email addressed to him, but a functionary. I must have mixed this up with where he had so responded to me, via an email that was clearly his voice, on the Indian market opportunity.

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RichTeaBiscuit

Contributor I

The best option for me is to put my server rack full of Connect:Amps through a pasta roller and use them as toilet paper

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KumarAuthor

@RichTeaBiscuit wait till the hardware dies. And if a rackful, invest in a used, unbricked connect for it's line in as back up, because those in the rack may be a challenge to run wires to.

K

KumarAuthor

I keep thinking of how to make this a more effective thread; I just realised I have missed a major trick.

As background: for quite a few years after I started with Sonos in 2011, this was a Sonos forum, using a simpler but effective V Bulletin architecture where all moderators were unpaid experts. Who did a fantastic job of keeping the forum to the levels that any civilised and knowledgeable one needs to be. Almost all that I know about Sonos, and about network management which I admit I still know little about, I learnt from them. Once the community morphed to its present state, they largely moved into the background; it was a major loss to Sonos that this could not be prevented.

So now, a call to @ratty @buzz and @Majik, Jedi masters of the Sonos galaxy, to step in whenever they can, in any way they can, in response to any post, in furtherance of the objectives of the thread that the title tries to capture. What ever you can do or are still willing to, will have an impact.

PS: much as I hate this InSided platform I must say that the @ thing is a very cool feature.

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edamame

Trending Lyricist I

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

Woooo whooo

By passing sonos app is exactly what I wanted. Can you get your computer into the mix as a NAS and use winamp to play music?

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