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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edamame

Trending Lyricist I

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”

Totally brilliant. I wanted to give it 20 thumbs up. So instead I bump it.

Very sad that this could not be done by Sonos.

chickentender

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”

Totally brilliant. I wanted to give it 20 thumbs up. So instead I bump it.

Very sad that this could not be done by Sonos.

@User533936 - Just for clarity, when you refer to “hdmi splitter” are you talking about an HDMI-to-Composite/RCA breakout converter (shown top)? If paired with an RCA-to-StereoMini (shown below) sending that to the 3.5mm stereo line-in of a Sonos Play5 and similar. Or for pairing, running just a mono cable from the respective L/R RCAs out of the adapter?
(That’s the kind of crap I used to have to do for guerilla webcasting setups using all manner of hardware in bizarre configurations. Fun stuff. :) )

K

KumarAuthor

@User533936 : your lateral thinking bit around the Chromecast video puck may not be such a good idea; a pitfall I can see just now is making sure that the jacks suit this trick with different jacks with different black insulator rings that are there to separate the channels. Or to not separate this, for mono jacks. I would not do this in a hurry and instead would wire a stereo cable to the kind of splitter in the @chickentender posted picture using appropriate jacks at the Sonos end suited to the nature of line in jack/s of the 5 or the Connect/Connect Amp, as the case may be. And let the 5 pair stereo thing be done by Sonos software; with the Connect/Connect Amp your lateral thinking isn't needed anyway.

And to answer your question as well as for @edamame about why Sonos can’t - won’t, more accurately - make such a device - what's to stop anyone from buying a bunch of them for a couple of hundred bucks, wiring them to third party speakers, and getting all the multi room Sonos features while blowing away the Sonos top line? IMO, that is a legitimate reason for them to not do this. The same reason why they will never introduce a cheap Port even if the costs justify a low price. What they should be doing - and I have suggested this to them as have some others - is to make the cheap device, but rig it to work only with Sonos “dumb” speakers, connected to each other via ethernet cable and not audio cables. But that is to cope with future Brexits more elegantly, doesn’t help this one.

K

KumarAuthor

@train_nerd

I just got around to seeing the excellent and balanced video, thank you. He echoes what I now think, and even have suggested to Sonos more than once this week about the lessons learnt about separating the computer from the durable.

More reinforcements and learnings from the video, that apply to the group on this thread:

Multi room in sync may not be as important as Sonos would like you to believe. How many times do you really need/use that feature? He says in his case - once a year.
In any case, fifteen years ago, only Sonos could do this, now there are many that can.
Use this lesson not just for audio, for all that comes with smart, web enabled interfaces. Else suffer the same consequence for every durable in the home as more and more of them are given web enabled smarts that are physically bundled into the durable like a fridge/TV/microwave/washing machine. Big takeaway there, IMO.

Bottom line, and there I am in full agreement - he says that the practice of dumping the durable just because the smart part can be made smarter is now being shown to be unsustainable given the perceived state of the planet in AD 2020 - even if it is affordable. I suggest this is something to be very aware of for every purchase in the future, not just of audio products.

And of course, this supports the ethos of this thread.

As an aside: I cannot believe that anyone that isn't insane is going to sell a smart car with driver assist features of different assist levels made in a way that the entire car becomes a legacy product after five years, when a more advance assist module becomes available.

Or, no one sells smart houses where houses have to be dumped because smarter devices are available. What he says is just drilling this thinking downward to the smart durable level.

chickentender

@User533936 : your lateral thinking bit around the Chromecast video puck may not be such a good idea; a pitfall I can see just now is making sure that the jacks suit this trick with different jacks with different black insulator rings that are there to separate the channels. Or to not separate this, for mono jacks. I would not do this in a hurry and instead would wire a stereo cable to the kind of splitter in the @chickentender posted picture using appropriate jacks at the Sonos end suited to the nature of line in jack/s of the 5 or the Connect/Connect Amp, as the case may be. And let the 5 pair stereo thing be done by Sonos software; with the Connect/Connect Amp your lateral thinking isn't needed anyway.

And to answer your question as well as for @edamame about why Sonos can’t - won’t, more accurately - make such a device - what's to stop anyone from buying a bunch of them for a couple of hundred bucks, wiring them to third party speakers, and getting all the multi room Sonos features while blowing away the Sonos top line? IMO, that is a legitimate reason for them to not do this. The same reason why they will never introduce a cheap Port even if the costs justify a low price. What they should be doing - and I have suggested this to them as have some others - is to make the cheap device, but rig it to work only with Sonos “dumb” speakers, connected to each other via ethernet cable and not audio cables. But that is to cope with future Brexits more elegantly, doesn’t help this one.

Good points. Technically speaking, the physical split (in order to allow just one Chromecast to control a full stereo pair) could be done with two separate RCA-mono to 3.5mm-mono cables like this one, ran to each speaker from L or R RCA channels. Full contact on the tip/sleeve of the 3.5 plug will make sure the speaker is getting the mono signal completely. I’d not use shorter length on either side though - cables should remain the same length, one left coiled at the Chromecast/Adapter, the other ran over to the second speaker. Theoretically don’t see any reason why it wouldn't work just fine. A bit janky/messy, but certainly cheap.

K

KumarAuthor

Technically speaking, the physical split (in order to allow just one Chromecast to control a full stereo pair) could be done with two separate RCA-mono to 3.5mm-mono cables like this one, ran to ran to each speaker from L or R RCA channels.

There you have lost me. One chromecast audio can deliver a stereo signal via a multi jack identical at both ends to one 5 unit that can then deliver stereo music when paired with another 5. For it to do this for Connect, it just needs separate left and right jacks at the Connect end. Turn this kind of jack around and use it with the splitter to use the Chromecast video with a 5 unit. With Connect, the cable will have two jacks at both ends.

chickentender

@train_nerd

I just got around to seeing the excellent and balanced video, thank you. He echoes what I now think, and even have suggested to Sonos more than once this week about the lessons learnt about separating the computer from the durable.

More reinforcements and learnings from the video, that apply to the group on this thread:

Multi room in sync may not be as important as Sonos would like you to believe. How many times do you really need/use that feature? He says in his case - once a year.
In any case, fifteen years ago, only Sonos could do this, now there are many that can.
Use this lesson not just for audio, for all that comes with smart, web enabled interfaces. Else suffer the same consequence for every durable in the home as more and more of them are given web enabled smarts that are physically bundled into the durable like a fridge/TV/microwave/washing machine. Big takeaway there, IMO.

Bottom line, and there I am in full agreement - he says that the practice of dumping the durable just because the smart part can be made smarter is now being shown to be unsustainable given the perceived state of the planet in AD 2020 - even if it is affordable. I suggest this is something to be very aware of for every purchase in the future, not just of audio products.

And of course, this supports the ethos of this thread.

As an aside: I cannot believe that anyone that isn't insane is going to sell a smart car with driver assist features of different assist levels made in a way that the entire car becomes a legacy product after five years, when a more advance assist module becomes available.

Or, no one sells smart houses where houses have to be dumped because smarter devices are available. What he says is just drilling this thinking downward to the smart durable level.

Agreed. This is all quite the “teaching moment”. I was talking with my dad about all of this earlier today. He doesn’t have any Sonos (not for lack of me extolling the perceived virtues of the system many times in the past) but as we chatted that’s the one thing that becomes clear. He has the moment when he realized his lovely Nest doorbell will meet this fate in the not-so-distant future and as he put it “wow, yeah, it never occurred to me that I’d have to upgrade that.”
IoT has another think coming… coming soon. Coming now.

K

KumarAuthor

@chickentender actually that is what he said: IoT is at - or at least should be at - a turning point that this event has surfaced. I wasn’t sure the jargon would be known to all.

chickentender

Technically speaking, the physical split (in order to allow just one Chromecast to control a full stereo pair) could be done with two separate RCA-mono to 3.5mm-mono cables like this one, ran to ran to each speaker from L or R RCA channels.

There you have lost me. One chromecast audio can deliver a stereo signal via a multi jack identical at both ends to one 5 unit that can then deliver stereo music when paired with another 5. For it to do this for Connect, it just needs separate left and right jacks at the Connect end. Turn this kind of jack around and use it with the splitter to use the Chromecast video with a 5 unit. With Connect, the cable will have two jacks at both ends.

I’m speaking only to speakers in this instance, not a Connect, and really only if the intent is to use that speaker as a truly dumb speaker only, e.g. an active monitor. With the HDMI/RCA breakout, the left/right channels could be ran each separately via mono cable to a pair of Play5s, one taking left, one taking right. Now you have a physical stereo pair that is controlled/fed by Chromecast on the adapter. No changes need to be done in Sonos app for the Play5s except make sure they’re both on and Line-in enabled and at the same volume. (Can the Play5 line-in be set to auto-sense like the Connect can? I’ve never owned a Play5.)
It’d be messy, but it should work.

K

KumarAuthor

In only partially a lighter vein - someone should arm Greta Thunberg with a briefing note about this stunt and point her at Sonos. She will go ballistic and Sonos will be in even deeper doo-doo :joy:

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