The Sonos Brexit and pragmatic ways past it

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
January 23, 2020
570 replies
22878 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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A

amun

it definitely looks like this thread provides some great ideas or next steps for my review.

@Noelle Good luck; it is a long and therefore unwieldy thread, an outcome arising out of the nature of an online discussion, so take your time! I am trying to address that by forking the thread into two, as you will see on a post on this page, but even if that helps, we are stuck with the present levels of unwieldiness that nothing can reduce. A legacy problem:-)).

@Ryan S @Edward R : there seems to be something wrong with the link to the last page of this thread, it does not allow me to go directly to the last page from the thread list. I have to open the first page, and then click the last page there, a very tiresome process. I don’t know if this is affecting just me, of course; can you help?

Thanks.

No it’s happening to me, as well….

K

KumarAuthor

And more fun finds in the vent thread, quoted below, with my response there included in the quoted:

Quote

DK_Madsen wrote:

There is even someone wanting to buy tradeup-bricked sonos play 5’s, he offers to pick them up at people’s home in his area and pay 20USD for them.

My guess is that he has found a way to reactivate them and want to sell them for profit as functioning legacy devices or maybe just reactivate them enough to be able to stick a echo dot on the back, hook it up to the jack port and sell it as an echo device.

Are there any reports of the bolded working? It is possible that whether it will depends on what was set for their line in setting at the time they were bricked by Sonos after being marked for recycling.

My testing of unbricked units suggests that it may even be possible to get these to do perfect sync multi room, by wiring a cheap Dot to each and multi rooming the Dots via the Alexa app.

End of quote

The mind boggles...and if it works, the planet will be grateful, never mind in how small a way.

K

KumarAuthor

The obvious question to anyone here that has a bricked 5: what happens if you plug a phone playing music into the line in jack of a 5? Does it even boot up if power is applied?

M

MikeOinToronto

Lyricist III

Seeing once again this perfect Echo sync that drives via Line In the Sonos sync across two Sonos systems, raises the question I have asked before - how does Echo achieve this trick? I have a suspicion that it isn't done at a local level at all like Sonos does; somewhere in the Alexa cloud, the Echo group is registered as such - as evidenced to an extent by the fact that Echo groups, unlike Sonos ones, survive power cycling. The music streams then are synced in the cloud and sent at the exact same time to each Echo device in the group. That the music also plays in sync at distant destinations after passing through a bunch of devices en-route demonstrates how well this works. If that is indeed the way this works. And if so, there may not be any Sonos patent infringement by Amazon. And given that Amazon may provide Sonos with a solution to this significant issue of integrating split systems, Sonos may not even want to approach any sleeping dogs there, even if there are any such.

Which leads to one of the biggest issues leading to my lack of trust with the company now. I agree that two echo dots may end up being a good solution with the echo acting only as a mechanism for syncing legacy and new. If the solution is so simple, why won't Sonos come up with a cheap bridge device to sync between these. It wouldn't then require line in devices to do this. Perhaps Amazon does this in the cloud and sonos does not have the resources. If yes, state that but don't imply it can't be done. Once again we have customers proving that the belief that this is strictly a technical issue are wrong.

Again I believe this is a company that wants to change its business model. Fair enough, I don't own the company. But don't pretend it is purely a technical issue. Both Roon and echo solutions seem able to fix the final issue that is really bothering customers, syncing legacy and modern systems. My guess is Google devices could do the same. And these will be the solutions customers will turn to if sonos don't come up with their own solution. I think that Sonos leadership just has to understand that most people will not just throw away their legacy products to help sonos raise their revenue and make a serious internal effort to maintain full functionality in all devices. Essentially demonstrate that they are still leaders in this technology.

M

MikeOinToronto

Lyricist III

Just wanted to add one other thought to this thread as it seems people are coming up with some viable and clever work arounds. All of these ideas depend on the fact that Sonos really has tried and not come up with a technical solution to allow legacy products to continue to function correctly. What if these issues were really seen by management as an opportunity to bring in a different business model. So if the two echo dot solution resolves the technical issues and this allows customers to keep legacy gear, do you not suspect Sonos to then disable something in the legacy system so that echo dots cannot sync with modern systems. If roon can control both legacy and new systems would a future sonos update not break the link to roon for legacy systems. Of course sonos management would not acknowledge it but if they have decided that they want to go to a five year life cycle for business reasons, changes to the sonos software will help support that business goal, not work against it. So my guess, if this is the case, is that as customers find clever ways to keep their products running, sonos will just write an update to block this feature. Again, this is based on my belief that this decision is business driven, not technical. I can see the announcement in May. "Due to low memory limitations, legacy products will not be able to support integration with third party products such as Amazon Echo, Google Home, or Roon." And bang, all these solutions no longer work.

K

KumarAuthor

@MikeOinToronto : one hopes that Sonos will understand that while ambition with subtle moves might work, naked ambition will be counter productive. Or another way of saying this, sins of omission may get forgotten and forgiven, sins of commission are not likely to be, if exposed.

M

MikeOinToronto

Lyricist III

I know I would feel much better about Sonos going forward if they created a reasonably cheap bridge device to do this. It would reassure almost everyone who believes this is just a business decision. And if we as customers are finding work arounds I do believe a billion dollar company with some of the most experienced engineers in the world in this area could find a brilliant and beautiful solution. It likely would even allow me to start buying their products again.

K

KumarAuthor

Back in 2011, I played around with airplay using Airport Express boxes wired to the HiFi system I then had. It worked very well when it did, but music play was not as stable as I needed it to be and I switched to Sonos.

Is Airplay 2 better enough to be a useful option for those having such modern products that have it that are affected by the Sonos brexit? I don't have any such, so I can comment or advise.

T

train_nerd

Trending Lyricist I

Progress (not) on Echo Input wired to AUX analog input to A/V receiver (rather than Line-In) on ZP90. Unsure how this reconciles with known low input of Sonos devices described earlier; had planned to trial Echo Input wired to Line-In on Connect AMP linked to A/V receiver also wired with Echo Input device.

Posted to Amazon Forum:

“….Obvious design problem when using 3.5 mm jack to RCA phono input AUX input to A/V receiver. Not apparent that the device output is at typical required Line-In level. Experimenting here as alternative to Sonos components which will be used on legacy devices by Sonos, particularly Play 5, ZP-90, Connect Amp using Line-In input.

Sonos aside, the input signal is waaay too weak to point of device being a "fail" because of this fault. Amazon support not aware of impedance rating/spec for device nor recommended pre-amp for device. Gotta experiement wih pre-amp at my (and your) own risk. FWIW, they offered new device, but no reason to believe that would solve this significant problem for A/V system AUX input users, or others. Disappointed, urgently needs a fix since it really limits adopting Alexa ecosystem in my case.”

Feels like making it work is getting too messy.

M

MikeOinToronto

Lyricist III

Progress (not) on Echo Input wired to AUX analog input to A/V receiver (rather than Line-In) on ZP90. Unsure how this reconciles with known low input of Sonos devices described earlier; had planned to trial Echo Input wired to Line-In on Connect AMP linked to A/V receiver also wired with Echo Input device.

Posted to Amazon Forum:

“….Obvious design problem when using 3.5 mm jack to RCA phono input AUX input to A/V receiver. Not apparent that the device output is at typical required Line-In level. Experimenting here as alternative to Sonos components which will be used on legacy devices by Sonos, particularly Play 5, ZP-90, Connect Amp using Line-In input.

Sonos aside, the input signal is waaay too weak to point of device being a "fail" because of this fault. Amazon support not aware of impedance rating/spec for device nor recommended pre-amp for device. Gotta experiement wih pre-amp at my (and your) own risk. FWIW, they offered new device, but no reason to believe that would solve this significant problem for A/V system AUX input users, or others. Disappointed, urgently needs a fix since it really limits adopting Alexa ecosystem in my case.”

Feels like making it work is getting too messy.

Not 100 percent clear on what you are describing. But if you are saying you are trying to put an amazon echo device to av receiver you would go line out on the echo to one of the line ins on the av receiver. Any line in other than one marked phono as that would be used only for turntables. I have done this before. I may be misunderstanding as my echo dots only have line outs but I believe the higher up echo devices have both line in and line out.

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