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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J

johngolfuk

Enthusiast II

@johngolfuk as to the pi beta test you refer to it may have been @pwt.

Thanks Kumar, I’ll look it up.

Cheers

J

johngolfuk

Enthusiast II

Just a quick note on future NAS failures.

As a PC user and a tight Yorkshire man, all my kit as required is sourced from eBay.

It is very easy to pick up a 2nd user desktop PC, complete with a decent sized HD and Windows OS for around £40 - maybe less.

Stick all your tracks on to the HDD, consign the PC to the attic / cellar / back room / whatever, point Sonos to your track folder and let that be your NAS

K

KumarAuthor

And I have been waiting to use this word that the military guys often use: What a cluster.…

Insert appropriate four letter word there. Hint: it isn't love.

To clarify, since the edit thing is gone: the quoted was my immediate response on reading the horrifying scenario that @RedSonos painted a few posts preceding. And the prompt - kudos again for that - Ryan response only left me thinking how much of a furore that will erupt as the roll out starts; for somewhat different reasons, but a furore even so. This from the fact that all posters here or in other online places are a small fraction of the total installed base that is still working. All those folk are going to discover all of this in May and will have to take implementation actions via complex workflows? The mind boggles at the thought. And to start, Sonos will need to clone Ryan a hundred times over to man all the touch points.

J

Johnas

Enthusiast II

.

I happen to have a PI W floating around - since it was only £15 I bought one out of curiosity - amazing what they can squeeze out of such a tiny PCB. But aside from the basic load (I recall it was Raspian as it goes), I never really got to grips with it.

I have an RPI i think I will repurpose to try out one of these suggestions. Will report back CC @castalla

C

castalla

Local Superstar

@johngolfuk

Windows should be okay - first step is basic install

@Johnas

Check out slimdevices forum - I have a brief posting there

It's the courageous bee's knees - all 6 🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝. - - - - - Make Sonos Great Again - - - - -

R

Ralpfocus

Prodigy III

@Ryan S you have quoted variations of “We haven’t shared all of the details of how the current legacy process is happening. Let’s get through May first before….” a number of times now. It looks like that there may quite a large amount of information released in May (and hopefully some significant changes to the proposed course of action :relaxed: ) plus new releases of software.

I am concerned that there may be a very limited amount of time to decide upon a pragmatic way forward before software is released that accidentally and Irrevocably changes ones environment. By accidentally I mean scenarios such as friends or family coming round with the latest version of the app (maybe they only have modern kit) on their phone and (helpfully) forcing an update of the system. Can Sonos confirm that customers will have time to decide what to do and that there will be safeguards to prevent an accidental action or methods that enable customers to switch between the options?

T

train_nerd

Trending Lyricist I

@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.

On the latter paragraph, that’s what I was thinking. Sonos has to do the device. Use their protocols, preserve hardware, honor customers and their investments, enable modularity, speculate a patent in there too. At a half the cost of a Sonos One, I’m just (perhaps naively) IN. SOLD! Such a device may even save older Sonos Ones.

Profound betrayal aside and personally, we love the Sonos and it’s features. There are a bunch of genius if not practical work-arounds here (THANKS to all lateral thinkers here and otherwise), but it all may be a bit kludgy. Love the nerdy challenge, but ya know, this stuff is making me weary. Sonos, you can and should step up.

On the free cash flow comment, suggest you talk to Boeing about their borrowing to bridge 737Max situation. YIKES!

W

Whitenoise

Enthusiast I

@Ryan Syou have quoted variations of “We haven’t shared all of the details of how the current legacy process is happening. Let’s get through May first before….” a number of times now. It looks like that there may quite a large amount of information released in May (and hopefully some significant changes to the proposed course of action :relaxed: ) plus new releases of software.

I am concerned that there may be a very limited amount of time to decide upon a pragmatic way forward before software is released that accidentally and Irrevocably changes ones environment. By accidentally I mean scenarios such as friends or family coming round with the latest version of the app (maybe they only have modern kit) on their phone and (helpfully) forcing an update of the system. Can Sonos confirm that customers will have time to decide what to do and that there will be safeguards to prevent an accidental action or methods that enable customers to switch between the options?

In so many different variations, this. @Ryan S You keep suggesting that all important details will come in May -- not earlier? Could you confirm that Sonos does not anticipate being able to provide further details on the Legacy option in the near-term?

Ryan S

Retired Sonos Staff

@Ryan Syou have quoted variations of “We haven’t shared all of the details of how the current legacy process is happening. Let’s get through May first before….” a number of times now. It looks like that there may quite a large amount of information released in May (and hopefully some significant changes to the proposed course of action :relaxed: ) plus new releases of software.

I am concerned that there may be a very limited amount of time to decide upon a pragmatic way forward before software is released that accidentally and Irrevocably changes ones environment. By accidentally I mean scenarios such as friends or family coming round with the latest version of the app (maybe they only have modern kit) on their phone and (helpfully) forcing an update of the system. Can Sonos confirm that customers will have time to decide what to do and that there will be safeguards to prevent an accidental action or methods that enable customers to switch between the options?

In so many different variations, this. @Ryan S You keep suggesting that all important details will come in May -- not earlier? Could you confirm that Sonos does not anticipate being able to provide further details on the Legacy option in the near-term?

At best, I can confirm that’s currently the plan I have to share. But if information does become available sooner, I’ll be sure to let you all know.

Mark good posts by pressing the like button, and select the best answer on questions you've asked to help others find solutions.

K

KumarAuthor

On the free cash flow comment, suggest you talk to Boeing about their borrowing to bridge 737Max situation. YIKES!

That reference is actually a good way for all of us to remember to see things in perspective; no matter what happens, this isn't life and death for users.

As to Boeing though, their CEO, Calhoun is getting hammered on social media as he continues to find more and more ways to put his foot in his mouth.

And although they may need to borrow to overcome the present crisis, they will find lenders that lend at reasonable rates, as long there is belief in the future of Boeing and its ability to generate future cash flows to pay back all the borrowing and interest. Boeing is very interesting actually - every time they get into a new plane build they have to bet the entire company on its success. I know they did that for the 747, and the 777. They must have had to do that earlier as well. In comparison, Sonos gambles are trivial.

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