The Sonos Brexit and pragmatic ways past it

@Cisume : Very good link, thanks. It also suggests how the problems Sonos is facing today are rooted in the very successful architecture choices they made yesterday(2005 and prior).

Their other problem is that the limitations that made these choices the right ones back then have been largely removed via tech progress since then - over 15 years, which for tech, is huge. If Sonos were to start from a clean sheet today, they would quite likely not make identical choices. As Echo has not, for instance. But having made their choices, these are now boxing Sonos in. It is a classic and well known conundrum that hits all successful companies based on innovation sooner or later - the tech ones tend to be the later category. It then gets to re-innovate or perish. And Sonos hasn't done significant re-innovation till now. Can they now, with all the extra memory that will be released? That is the big question, and the basis of what is just as much an existential crisis for them, as this one threatens to be. I have serious doubts that Hi Res will be the saviour.

To clarify to others: the first sentence that seems to be mine in the boxed quote in the preceding post is actually part of a Sonos response; my response to the Sonos one is in the remaining two paragraphs. A full understanding of this very interesting twist is best gained by reading my post preceding.

For beginners (me) : RPI streaming 101 - like using dots with Sonos as described in the first post but you pick the software

https://darko.audio/2020/01/raspberry-pi-audio-streaming-101/

I think it’s more a question if they want to solve this problem or not. There are ways to do it software / hardware. You could install firmware on older systems which work completely different It seems they choose not to. As for Hi Res , most people these days are used to the sound quality from mobile devices which is poor, partly from the used audio source. A point Neil Young always hammered down that people don’t know anymore how music really sounds because they grew up with low sound quality devices. We had in the past other high quality audio formats which disappeared like .Super Audio CD (SACD) , DVD Audio , PonoMusic ( Neil Young’s project ). If you going to sell devices with a limited lifetime then quality doesn’t matter. Why spend extra money for a soon obsolete product.? If you go the quality route then you make sure that all products keep working and you build on your legacy. All depends what they choose as their future market segment and competition.

you can get high quality DACs which plug into the Pi bus

If you are referring here to sound quality I don’t agree. There is now so much cheap mass manufactured componentry available that excellent sound quality can be obtained, very cheaply, with the right design. Take a look at the pro audio monitor market to see that.

If you are referring to build quality I agree but in a limited way. I have had more hardware issues with more expensive HiFi kit in the past than with cheaper Sonos products, in a similar amount of time. The key to this is being able to reach a scale where the components can be bought in bulk, and therefore cheaply, and where state of the art manufacturing and testing facility costs can be absorbed. These then provide better build quality than what the HiFi makers with their low scales can deliver at higher price points.

What limited lifetimes can make unnecessary is expensive after warranty parts and service support. There is an environmental cost of this approach though, that we don't realise because these costs are not in the purchase prices.

@Kumar I meant build quality and comparing for example the current SONOS Amps to the competition.

I have to knock on wood ,I never had any problems with amplifiers is the past. Devices with rubber involved mechanics like CD/DVD players it’s a different story. They don’t age well if not used on a regular basis. .

@Cisume : when I referred to a poorer record of failures, this was without taking into account CD player tray mechanism issues or belt changes for turn-tables; I had failures in solid state amps as well. None in Sonos.

The thing is that modern tech has meant that quality v price is no longer an either/or thing. Get the volume levels high enough, then low price AND high reliability can be achieved if the design is right and the manufacturing strategy is properly executed. Take any JBL portable speaker like a Flip or Charge model as an example.

And where Sonos is concerned their success on this front is precisely why this thread even exists - because their hardware looks to comfortably be able to outlast the software. 

I don’t have a complain about SONOS Amps quality. They worked over the years flawlessly. What I tried to say is, if from now on the product life cycle is 5 years, compared with competing products it’s not a good deal and better choices out there.

I take your point; but your statement about 5 years lifecycle henceforth is not quite what Sonos is saying, but I will leave it to Sonos to defend themselves here, I haven't the energy/inclination to keep doing that

Separately though, I agree that 5 years life is ridiculously short at the Sonos price points. The only reason I think my travel required BT portables will fail before that is because their rechargeable batteries might. And even the much abused in this community Apple products that I use sailed past 5 years with ease. My MacBook from Feb 2014 is still solid as I type on it just now - and unlike Sonos, that involves mechanical things like the keys, and is subjected to closing and opening the lid many times a day - effortlessly updating to Catalina, the latest Apple OS, and even has no battery issues. My Apple Time Capsule base station that anchors my WiFi continues to work 24/7 flawlessly since 2011, along with a couple of 2011 Apple Airport Expresses that I use as WiFi access points. 

Which is why this thread is about non Sonos ways ahead, once the legacy products die.

PS: Interesting to note that both the Apple Time Capsule and the Airport Express of 2011 have been discontinued by Apple some years ago - to the extent that Apple no longer makes such products and has exited this line of business. The devices however continue to receive security updates from Apple who have never said that these would stop. When they do die, I will have to go third party - there is no Apple replacement now even if I wanted one.

@Cisume : now that I think about this 5 years thing more, it seems to me that this is yet another mis-step by Sonos in recent days. What they should have said is that all our hardware has a warranty of 1 year( or 2, if that is what they offer) from the date it is first sold, and we will thereafter provide software updates till the hardware dies.

I can guess at the reason they are scared to say this - there are still modern products that are not far from being legacied, having a memory of 64 mb, that is not much of an improvement over the 32 mb in legacied products, seeing that the latest products have 1024 mb. Now, if all modern products had 1024 mb, saying this would not have been so scary for Sonos.

Maybe they should have legacied all products less than 512 mb just now and done a one time penitance. That would have allowed to them not get stuck in the 5 year trap, as a compensation. Perhaps that might have been a better way to go?