The Sonos Brexit and pragmatic ways past it

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
January 23, 2020
570 replies
22877 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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K

KumarAuthor

But the whole thing replies on a mobile app (for most of us at least) and how long will that continue to work with legacy items? I would love them to voice their stance on that too.

@Ryan S has said that there will be an app dedicated to working with systems being used in legacy system mode - it should not matter if all or only some products in such a system are legacy products.

S

shadybits

Contributor I

But the whole thing replies on a mobile app (for most of us at least) and how long will that continue to work with legacy items? I would love them to voice their stance on that too.

@Ryan S has said that there will be an app dedicated to working with systems being used in legacy system mode - it should not matter if all or only some products in such a system are legacy products.

Thanks Kumar, that must have been lost in the morass of venting customers as I didn’t see that particular reply.

Would be extremely handy if all these little nuggets were put into an actually helpful info post by @Ryan S. Seems like all the relevant info is being put in comments and they’re saving the main posts for the PR hot air.

K

KumarAuthor

Digressing a little - I don't know if MBA schools still use the case study approach, but this one looks like the making of classic one, going all the way back to 2005, then to the introduction of Echos, to the IPO, and then to this event. It is still in the making, and ought to be ready for classes starting in a few years, regardless of how things have played out by then.

K

KumarAuthor

Thanks Kumar, that must have been lost in the morass of venting customers as I didn’t see that particular reply.

Morass is right; I have seen the word cesspool also used.

I happen to believe that the rants now are justified, with far less than the usual being poorly grounded this time. But there is a place for them, and my request to not bring them into this thread has been observed, something that is gratifying.

Moving on….

A

amun

Good idea for a thread, @Kumar - I can understand why people are so upset, but I don’t think that Sonos are going to make any major concessions because of all this sound and fury.

I have been running a locked down system (mostly, also locked off from the internet) for a while now and it works fine simply for playing music from a NAS. If I want to listen to the radio side, then I can open it up to the internet again - but I usually keep it locked off.

I’m currently listening to a Play 5 fed via the line in by a Chromecast Audio. This cost me £30. Using Hifi cast I can stream music from a music server on a NAS, listen to radio stations via Shoutcast radio and even listen to 24 bit files (if anyone’s interested) - it also supports streaming from a local device (e.g. phone). It also completely removes the 65,000 track limit and issues regarding the amount of store used. It makes the Port look massively overpriced, IMHO.

Once the signal is in the Sonos environment, it can be used the same as any other line in - e.g. grouped with other speakers, used as the input for another Sonos speaker etc.

I intend to use my speakers/devices until they break - and then I’ll probably buy a decent speaker with a line-in to replace them, using whatever cheap-ish streamer works best for me at that time. Luckily for me, I’ve never been interested in having the same thing playing throughout the house (e.g. party mode), so as long as I can listen to my music wherever I want to, I’ll be happy.

K

KumarAuthor

I’m currently listening to a Play 5 fed via the line in by a Chromecast Audio. This cost me £30…. . It makes the Port look massively overpriced, IMHO.

Once the signal is in the Sonos environment, it can be used the same as any other line in - e.g. grouped with other speakers, used as the input for another Sonos speaker etc.

Luckily for me, I’ve never been interested in having the same thing playing throughout the house (e.g. party mode), so as long as I can listen to my music wherever I want to, I’ll be happy.

I don't remember the exact chronology, but I think CCA came before Echo; I know I have posts here saying that the CCA makes the Connect pricing look more than absurd for single zone use. I use CC for a TV and Firestick for another, and I happen to prefer the Amazon UI, which also probably why I prefer Echo to CCA.

In my case, I too do not need multi room in the usual manner - I just happen to have a very large central open space that covers the kitchen, dining, living and adjacent balcony. Each a dedicated zone, but grouping often makes sense here, so I will need that to continue. I haven’t tried it extensively, but I have a feeling Echo groups can step in to replace Sonos hardware at its real end of life.

K

KumarAuthor

Further to the above, the CCA is an equally capable alternative to the Echo as a way to deliver a Sonos legacy/transition management plan. All that is needed are line in jacks and these are there on every Sonos legacy product at this time.

In future I think there will be more, not less options, notwithstanding the Sonos recourse to the courts to prevent this from happening.

And as it happens, there is something that the Echo has done that has left Sonos standing - constant flow of refreshed products that are easily replaced by virtue of being cheap. I started with the Dot wired to line in on Sonos, and have graduated to the Echo Show 5, that has a very cool display as well, that takes care of album art for music being played. All for my target price point for such front ends - at or below USD 50.

K

KumarAuthor

And an aside - I am pretty sure that this action by Sonos is not going to help them in the case against “evil” Google. Google is savvy enough to have picked up on this firestorm and will look to how best it can be exploited in its defence, if that is in any way possible.

A

amun

Further to the above, the CCA is an equally capable alternative to the Echo as a way to deliver a Sonos legacy/transition management plan.

Well, it would be if Google hadn’t discontinued them - I thought that they were such good value that I bought a few before they disappeared, although I think that they can still be purchased on ebay.

All that is needed are line in jacks and these are there on every Sonos legacy product at this time.

In future I think there will be more, not less options, notwithstanding the Sonos recourse to the courts to prevent this from happening.

Yes, agreed…. The Echo approach is just one - many more will appear through time...

And as it happens, there is something that the Echo has done that has left Sonos standing - constant flow of refreshed products that are easily replaced by virtue of being cheap. I started with the Dot wired to line in on Sonos, and have graduated to the Echo Show 5, that has a very cool display as well, that takes care of album art for music being played. All for my target price point for such front ends - at or below USD 50.

Which is why it’s even more bizarre what Sonos has done… They could have spent the extra money on redevelopment, sorted out the known problems with their initial system design, and persuaded s all that Sonos was a brand that we should continue to trust. Shame, really...

K

KumarAuthor

The CCA was a brilliant product, with a neat switch to provide better quality signals if a HiFi set was the target speaker. At the time, the price was ridiculously low, but I have a feeling it lacked a champion inside a huge Google. The CC for TV is still around though.

But as a replacement for Sonos, I found the compulsion of having to always use the phone to deploy/manage CCA streams to be clunky and I much prefer the Echo which can initiate play by voice AND by phone. The latter via casting or by bluetooth.

So the CCA went into a drawer where it still languishes, because I had the Connect already, and when the Echo came along, it provided a much slicker way to leverage the line in jacks on the Connect.

It may well happen that someone that sees Sonos legacy line in jacks as a starting target market will turn up, to provide this transition with yet another option.

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