The Sonos Brexit and pragmatic ways past it

I have almost stopped posting anywhere else now; for sure this will be the last thread I will open in this place. 

Mostly now for free entertainment, and a few insights, I do keep looking at the main announcement thread that is a venting room more than anything else, but sometimes there are interesting things that surface. The quoted latest example below:

The question that i like an answer to is if its worth investing in another play5 gen 2 or will that also get obsolet? Wanted to have 4 of them but thats alot of money if they decide to release a gen3 and stop selling the gen2 which gives my speakers only 5 years after they got canceled, but 256MB is alot better than 32, 

guessing gen3 Will have 1024MB

should i buy the little ones with 1024 and sacrifice the bass or have faith and go with gen2

milliondollar question for me! 

Are people now going to start assessing options for which Sonos to buy like when they buy computers, comparing RAM/ROM etc?!! Instead of what should matter most for a music system - sound quality, ease of use and service life that is in consonance with the price demanded. And people are going to assess trade offs between RAM and sound quality???

And, Sonos, that has never published any spec for its integrated speakers, and rightly so IMO because  specs from the world of HiFi separates like watts/amps/ohms are irrelevant where Sonos speakers are concerned, will now start publishing this RAM/ROM stuff in a spec list?

Kumar/all: fair points on Boeing.  NPR story today observed Boeing too big to fail.  Maybe not Sonos.

ZP-90 “progress” here:

Echo Input installed via line-in on ZP-90. It works. A few watch-outs (in my case):

1  Apparently low input signal. Working acceptably with source level set to 8 or higher, line-out set to pass-through.  Of course need Sonos controller for this. 

2  Tested with Echo Skill: TuneIn radio which required linking to Echo app. Fidelity: I don’t know, kinda weak, lotsa hops?

3  Amazon stuff: Music, Audible appear available, need trial.

4  Interestingly enough, once set-up, Echo Input set-up here on separate IoT subnet.  Echo app apparently does not (given my firewall rules) seem to care about subnet.  I thought I might be flip-flopping subnets on iOS which would have been messy, not family palatable.

Further plans:

1  Second Echo Input  line-in via Connect Amp. Via Echo app, set-up groups and see if groups work without sync issues.  That would be a Connect Amp save.  No additional wire pulls for these speakers.

2  Move first Echo direct to receiver aux input or tape/in out, trial input levels, trial linking to Echo Input on Connect Amp.  This would give me back ZP-90 line-in for other uses.

3  Explore NAS via Echo My Media skill.  Needs a server.  Need to think that a bit.  QNAP has an app that lives on the NAS.

4 Beg indulgence on timing further reports.  Other duties call.

More musings that will encourage folks with significant legacy components, but will leave Sonos alarmed, unless they are already thinking on these lines:

On page 5 of this thread I have posted a photo of one of my zones that has three clear layers of products that can be seen in it - the HiFi speaker from 2002, Connect Amp from 2012, and Echo Show 5 from 2019.

The way this came to be was in evolution like steps - Back when I bought the speakers, the system conceptually was a single layer one with all HiFi components in principle that could be bought from one company or different ones. In either case, a single layer conceptually.

When Sonos arrived at my home in 2011, it made for a second layer that squeezed out, by making them redundant, all the HiFi components except for the speakers. I sold them all; getting very good prices for the carefully used kit, because no part of it was obsolete in the sense a Connect Amp will be made obsolete. And once Sonos introduced speakers, people with no legacy HiFi kit to carry forward, were able use Sonos as the only layer - desirable from a convenience and often even appearance point of view - ask any wife that suffered the clutter of HiFi separates.

With the advent of Echo/Alexa in India in 2017, allied to the extreme tardiness of Sonos in releasing the Alexa Sonos integration in India (still to be released), I started accumulating Echo Dots for not much money. That culminated in the 2019 Echo Show 5 with a cool album art capable display that no Sonos unit has, plus all Echo features, that finally also made financial sense to me. So that got added on as the third layer in the system, connected to Line In jacks on the Connect Amp.

Here’s the thing now - how long before the Sonos layer gets squeezed out by the Echo interface that will evolve far more rapidly than any Sonos modern product, bearing down on Sonos from top and passive speakers at the bottom that will last a lifetime, resisting this downward pressure from below? Where, instead of the Connect Amp, the second layer was a more modular Connect+Amp? Why is Sonos even needed there - Echo on top and amp+passive speakers below. Or, buying new, active speakers, thus going back to a two layer system that does all that Sonos can, and more.

Sonos has issues as I see it, that will continue far beyond the successful management of the legacy event.

Boeing also too big to be easily acquired, not so Sonos.

Feedback on line in sensitivity levels - this is an issue that is well known to Sonos line in users. The solution is to bump up line in levels all the way up to max -10 - on the controller app. It will cause distortion in only very rare cases; if distortion heard, dial level back down to 8.

PS: Does the Echo Input accept a bluetooth stream like the Echo Dot does? Also, try the Amazon Cast feature where you can start music on the phone in the Amazon Music app, and then cast it to the Input that will then take the stream over, leaving the phone out of the loop. Very good away of avoiding voice commands.

More tips for Echo try outs, all based on the wired to line in mode, I can’t speak to how the Alexa integration with Sonos works.

1. Make sure to use Alexa groups within the Alexa apps to set up both groups and preferred speaker/groups. The latter allows voice commands to be very brief. 
2. Also choose the most used streaming service that is available via Alexa as the default service, that also shortens the voice commands.
3. A longer wire is needed for this, but it helps the voice thing to work better if the Echo unit is at some distance from the speakers, such that the sound from the latter does not overwhelm your voiced command.
4. And of course, the cast to Echo feature is very useful on the many occasions that voice is not appropriate. It also helps people like me that have many self curated playlists in the app, but can’t remember them when needed, to select one and then command it to play by voice, usually in shuffled mode. I often have to call up the app to pick a playlist name to play, and then command it to play by voice. Or via the casting method, if that suits better at that time. Unfortunately the cast option is only available for Amazon Music at this time, even if, as it is in my case, Apple Music can also be played via Echo; hopefully that will change, but just now Apple Music play is possible only via voice. Other apps may have their own idiosyncrasies. Spotify may be able to use Spotify Connect to cast to Echo, something that someone here that has Spotify in Alexa can speak to that.
5. It may be worth doing a search for more Echo tips and tricks, if that is either your chosen alternative to Sonos, or just as an interface to Sonos via Line In.

Kumar,

Whilst I appreciate the shout-out, I certainly don’t consider myself to be any sort of “Jedi master” of Sonos. In fact I would probably say that, in recent years, I’ve grown a bit out of touch with the newer kit and the kit I have does what I need it to do (at least for the moment).

So, in conjunction with a waning interest in ”dabbling” with my system, the fact that I’m no longer a moderator (thank goodness), changes I made to my online habits a few years ago, and some changes in my working life I no longer feel the need to keep abreast of the latest and greatest in the Sonos world, including the forum chatter, angry mobs, and management fumbles.

If I was still a moderator during the current “fun” I’m really not sure how we would handle it. At the end of the day we didn’t want to censor opinions but, on the other hand, we wanted people to keep conversations reasonably civilised and, ideally rational and objective.

Unfortunately, the mishandling of this situation by Sonos seems to have raised a pitchfork mob, which almost certainly includes people who are wholly ignorant of the situation, but who have been given a whiff of blood and encouraged to “pile in” by sensationalist reporting in the gutter tech press (yes, Verge, I’m looking at you).

I recall this happening before but in much lower profile ways and at a point when Sonos was a much smaller animal, so the often-feigned bile and outrage directed into the forums was manageable.

I’ve not read the threads and probably won’t. But I guarantee there’s people in them who have joined the forum just to take shots at Sonos, and a good proportion of them won’t be Sonos users. Many of those people will have gone through several iterations of iPhone in as many years. #justsayin

That isn’t to say that people don’t have a point. This was really badly handled. I’m not going to speculate on the reasons behind it or whether they’ve could have done it a better way, etc. because I don’t feel qualified to.

As to what is the solution for those with mixed networks? Well I intend to continue to use my 2005-era ZP100’s (and other legacy) alongside some newer equipment I have just as I always have. As long as it largely continues to do what it does today, I really don’t care that much about new features.

I do care about streaming services, although the majority of my Sonos purchases were originally made based on streaming from my home server, and I don’t see that going away. Will there be services that I can’t access? Probably. Do I care? As long as there are some mainstream streaming services which still work for me, or if I can cast in some way, I’m not that bothered.

If it really comes to it I will split my network into two. That’s not ideal, but it will work for me.

If Sonos were to develop the app so you could easily switch between legacy and new installations, I would be happy with that.

To be honest, many of the ZPs in my network rarely get used these days. At some point I may upgrade one or two of my zones to newer kit, but I don’t feel compelled to do so at the moment. The zones where I do most of my listening have the newer devices already.

YMMV

Cheers,

Keith

@Majik if yoda has not already said this, it's because he forgot to: the first sign of a true master is that he knows he isn't one. 

He would have turned around the order of words in that sentence and come across as very profound of course.

Your approaches to the next steps are a very good validation of what many here plan to do, and knowing this is of much value. To me, at any rate.

Key takeaways in my book, the quoted. As to the first, this is close to what MacFarlane tweeted as his go ahead plan, so we are in august company.

I don't see myself running two networks, so I doubt I will split, but that decision also hangs on things like what unit is placed in what part of the home, so it is very much a case of different strokes, and the answer will vary from one user to the next.

Just a pop-in; I’ve now been enjoying my newly reconfigured for 3 days now and quite honestly am beginning to feel almost happy about the announcement because it prompted me to look at other possibilities… Not the drastic measures some have imagined this announcement necessitating, just subtle massaging. The simply addition of the Node2i and tape-monitor loop for the connect incorporating the rest of the house is just fantastic. I’ve not been on the forum but for stints here and there in the past years - largely everything worked and for that reason I never had much pragmatic reason to hang about (particularly because I’ve a couple other forums, mostly photography related, at which I spent most of my internet “free time” on) so I always drifted back away.

But for now all seems just fine again. I will not split my network, come flood or drought. Between the mentioned kit addition/change and the Airplay2 option from my wife’s devices to our Sonos One (as well as to the Bluesound), we’re as future-proof as need be. And, certainly, wandering about listening to some Tom Waits albums from the main turntable whilst back in the office today was surely nice. (I’ve mentioned to her several times I cannot believe I’d not utilized the receiver better all this time, but ah well.) At any rate, I’ll keep popping in once in a while. And hopefully Ryan might get the go-ahead to share a bit of information sooner than May… if for no other reason than to tamp the firestarters a bit (and admittedly I fanned some flame in the first day or so) in these weeks coming. Methinks they doth protest too much.

Why am I not surprised?! It was the absence of the Alexa India integration that drove me towards the idling Line In jacks of my Sonos kit a couple of years ago, so I know the feeling. That was before the release of the display equipped Echo Show 5, that made a display screen addition to Sonos possible, but it was being able to play with cheap Dots that have now left me a viable alternative to Sonos that gives me something I missed in Sonos from the early days, based on my use of CD players that had a LED strip that gave track play information - now, about ten years after having sold the last such player, a Sonos zone finally has a display that has more - album art in full colour. In another Sonos zone, I get album art for track playing on a old 32 inch LCD panel via Spotify, from a Chromecast Video puck fed TV that has its audio wired to the Line In of a Connect. All this means that if Sonos were to release the Alexa India integration before the legacy halt happens, it will be useful to me, but in just one of my zones where the play 1 pair does not have line in jacks. 

An interesting experience to narrate in this context: back in late 2017, when Amazon released Alexa in India, being impatient to have it on Sonos, I emailed Spence a couple of times to shake the India integration out of the Sonos tree. He responded, politely, but did nothing more. After some time, I had a WTF moment, and  figured out a way to get Alexa to work on my Sonos zones via Sonos line in jacks and did not feel the need for Spence any more. 

There is a lesson there for Sonos that savvy business managers have known for ages - once you give a competitor a toe hold in your strongholds, there is no knowing how the thin end of that wedge may expand, even to the point of displacing you over time. So before you pursue new markets and new customers, make sure that you do not concede any toe holds in your existing markets - you risk losing everything that way.

These by the way are things that doesn't take a geek to accomplish, it is all plug and play and some imagination. Many possibilities then become visible to not just replicate but to go beyond what Sonos offers.

Necessity is the mother of invention, as I am sure many other users will re-discover as well.