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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C

Cisume

Enthusiast II

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

The hardware of the legacy products I don’t see them to die at all :wink:

But until then I would hope to see an open standard for in house audio distribution where you can mix and match devices from different manufactures and pick the software to your needs. Similar to the home automation standards. Then you are not locked in to a specific ecosystem of a particular manufacturer and you are going to have oodles of 3rd party solutions.

K

KumarAuthor

@Cisume : Hard to see that happening, and if it does, Sonos being an early adopter - so in its absence cherish the Line In jacks on Sonos legacy products.

K

KumarAuthor

Which brings forth this advice for all legacy product owners - the line in is a mechanical device that can be damaged by plugging/unplugging frequently, particularly if poor quality cables with imperfect jacks are being used.

C

Cisume

Enthusiast II

@Cisume : Hard to see that happening, and if it does, Sonos being an early adopter - so in its absence cherish the Line In jacks on Sonos legacy products.

In the mean time I think I may dive into their API

K

KumarAuthor

@Cisume let us know if you find anything useful. In English please:-)

D

DK_Madsen

Enthusiast II

@Cisume : Hard to see that happening, and if it does, Sonos being an early adopter - so in its absence cherish the Line In jacks on Sonos legacy products.

In the mean time I think I may dive into their API

Maybe look into their firmware.

Would be interesting if someone with the knowledge did a validity check on their “There is not enough flash storage to keep updating”.

chickentender

I’ve been cruising around the web this evening. Looked into Raspberry Pi which I’d not touched since around 2015 when I tinkered with them for a work project. Still very cool.
Though as I’ve participated to a limited extent over in the Rantsville frustration farm, all whilst listening to quite a bit of streamed music around the house via the Bluesound piped to Sonos as I’ve described, I realized something. I’m just not sure how much I care anymore. I think were it to come down to it, as well as my current setup works, I’d just buy 2nd hand Sonos, or even new again --- this at least in terms of extending the network to non-critical-listening areas…. which is most of them. At $354 (as of the moment) for a pair of One SL’s, that’s bit hard to beat for what they are. Particularly so if I can continue to feed them via another source. I’ll certainly wait to see what shakes out in May, but to my surprise I may have reversed course. This is all simply due to the fact that I’m already invested in 4 other speakers and the Connect (which is meager compared to some folks) and transitioning completely sounds like a pain. If things look good in the spring…. well, I dunno. I’m softening to the whole idea ever since getting the Node 2i. Perhaps I’ll just view it all as diversification.

K

KumarAuthor

I’d just buy 2nd hand Sonos, or even new again

if I can continue to feed them via another source.

due to the fact that I’m already invested in 4 other speakers and the Connect (which is meager compared to some folks) and transitioning completely sounds like a pain.

Being pragmatic means ruling out nothing that can work so the quoted merely raises the following questions:

By feeding them another source, you mean via the existing Sonos speakers, because the ones you refer to do not have line in?
That would then means the additions would have to be joinable to the legacy system?
And it would mean that you would be willing to have the new Sonos forego all the subsequent to legacy features, even if that means foregoing Hi Res if that is one of them?

Of course a fundamental assumption is that the new Sonos speaker bought in say 2021, can be added to a unified legacy system as one part of it.

chickentender

I’d just buy 2nd hand Sonos, or even new again

if I can continue to feed them via another source.

due to the fact that I’m already invested in 4 other speakers and the Connect (which is meager compared to some folks) and transitioning completely sounds like a pain.

Being pragmatic means ruling out nothing that can work so the quoted merely raises the following questions:

By feeding them another source, you mean via the existing Sonos speakers, because the ones you refer to do not have line in?
That would then means the additions would have to be joinable to the legacy system?
And it would mean that you would be willing to have the new Sonos forego all the subsequent to legacy features, even if that means foregoing Hi Res if that is one of them?

Of course a fundamental assumption is that the new Sonos speaker bought in say 2021, can be added to a unified legacy system as one part of it.

As things stand of this moment only… There are certainly some assumptions at play in my thinking regarding the future. How that shapes up in reality remains to be seen.

Another source meaning from another device to my Connect (the Bluesound currently)… assuming legacy changes nothing going forward from basic operational standpoint. But also factoring in is the ability to Airplay2 to my single Sonos One (another of those could be beneficial) as well as just using the Sonos controller whilst using just the Sonos network.
Yes. This is the assumption that we’ll be able to add new (currently) or old (though if legacy, old seems pragmatic in the near term, but a modern (still perhaps used) could have more longevity than we might think if it’s a ONE or more current that Play:1 in terms of memory/storage, so that could be a possibility were I to ever upgrade to 256mb 2nd-hand Connect (which has also crossed my mind).
Correct. Hi-res support, in my current environment doesn’t matter to me in terms of Sonos. I receive it from the Bluesound in the main room. The other zones are just casual/background music - an I’m not certain how important hir-res really is to me anyhow. FLAC is often just fine. (I’ve been auditioning Qobuz recently and I do hear a difference in some selections, but there are too many other variables to be definitive, and even as such, the difference is subtle.)

Majik

@Cisume : Hard to see that happening, and if it does, Sonos being an early adopter - so in its absence cherish the Line In jacks on Sonos legacy products.

In the mean time I think I may dive into their API

Maybe look into their firmware.

Would be interesting if someone with the knowledge did a validity check on their “There is not enough flash storage to keep updating”.

I believe the Sonos firmware is very locked down. I’m not aware of anyone who has yet broken through that security in any meaningful way.

And, even if they had, and there was some reasonable quantity of flash storage free (which I doubt) without knowledge of Sonos’s future product plans, there’s no useful way to make a judgement. on how much is enough.

I think it is safe, and rational, to take them at their word on this.

Cheers,

Keith

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