Is Sonos S2 a lemon?


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I’ve had Sonos for many years.  My system grew to 8 zones and although there would sometimes be problems there was never something that couldn’t be fixed by rebooting everything from my router through switches to wired and wireless Sonos devices.  Hey ho, this is the price we pay for humanity’s early steps to networking Nirvana (which probably won’t be reached in my lifetime!)

Then came news of Sonos S2.  After getting past Sonos’ poor initial communications, and finding that most of my devices were S2 compatible I upgraded the remaining ones and apart from being annoyed that the new Sonos Port is functionally a backwards step (no volume control buttons, no pause/play button, no optical digital output) I was ready to say ‘Hello’ to S2.

I hesitated.

I had a splendid multi-room sound setup feeding both simple speakers and two traditional hifi stereo systems.  I didn’t want a load of hassle.  Life’s too short to spend hours rebooting, deleting and adding components or hanging on the phone to Support.

So I came to this forum.  Oh boy, am I glad I did?!  There appears to be a constant stream of trouble with S2.  But is this representative?  There may be millions of happy S2 users out there, or millions of people pulling their hair out.  Of course it’s mainly those with problems who come here so the bias toward troublesome upgrades may not be representative.

How do I find out?  It appears that reversing from S2 back to S1 isn’t a supported process so I’m very reluctant to ‘give it a go’.

What is the truth?  Is Sonos S2 a lemon?


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You are upgraded to S2, and don’t currently have any issues.  Why would you go to S1?

The issues I’ve seen, though not something I’ve paid a lot of attention to, is people having trouble migrating to S2, or setting up a split system...which do not apply to you.

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What is the truth?  Is Sonos S2 a lemon?

Not a lemon for me. But functionally for me there is no difference between s1 and s2. 

 Let's seen in 12 months, SMB security fix and new features that hopefully make S2 hardware upgrades really worthwhile. 

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I am running a 3 room setup including 2 x Play5 Gen 2 a Sub Gen 2 and a couple of Sonos Ones.
I have IPhone, IPad, Android and Windows10 controllers.

99% of the S1 to S2 conversion worked well.

I did have a problem on the W10 PC that contains my Music Library. I ended up having to uninstall and reinstall the W10 controller on that PC and re-instate the Music Library setup.

The S2 controller at least “appears” to be the same as the S1 version apart from some cosmetic changes and a couple of new annoyances. e.g. The time remaining for a song being played fades out after a few seconds and you have to click the time-line for it to re-appear.

I agree with Bumper that the true value for S2 probably won’t be seen for a few months when hopefully Sonos will release changes that were previously restricted because of having to support older devices.


Ross.

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You are upgraded to S2, and don’t currently have any issues.

No.  I’m ready to upgrade but hesitating.

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Don’t think it’s a lemon. Upgraded when it was released on a multi-room setup with 3 x Sonos Ones; Beam, Sub(Gen 3), 2 x One SLs in a 5.1 config; 2 x Connects (Gen 2). No issues, but as others have said no features as yet that truly wow. Hi-Res (24/48) from my NAS through one of the Connects to a Naim system is nice for the v. small number of Hi-Res files I have, but it’s Hi-Res streaming from the likes of Qobuz and Tidal that I’d like to see plus direct control from Qobuz.

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Then you don’t currently have a problem apart from indecision :wink:  

You buy any IT component that links to ifi and/or the internet and update and changes will be a way of life.  If you don’t like that then stand alone systems, without links to smart home kit or music streaming services, may be better for you situation.

Given the 100s of thousands of Sonos customers across the globe there are bound to be issues, none I have seen have been widespread or critical.  So no it’s not a lemon, or even mildly citrus :wink:  I have even reported an issue with my Move.  It’s not S2 specific but appears to be wifi interference which i am trying to resolve.

If you are unsure then just wait a while.  The key to most successful updates is a stable interference free wifi and following the instructions and not being rushed.

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If you are unsure then just wait a while.  The key to most successful updates is a stable interference free wifi and following the instructions and not being rushed.

I agree, not a lemon. The other thing I would suggest for a ‘belt and braces’ approach is to restart all your Sonos devices one by one (they may have been on for months without a restart), ensure everything is working as it should *before* starting upgrade to a major release.

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I would suggest for a ‘belt and braces’ approach … restart all your Sonos devices one by one (they may have been on for months without a restart), ensure everything is working as it should *before* starting upgrade to a major release.

I’m sure that’s good advice and when the time comes I’ll follow it.  In fact before I eventually attempt the change I’ll reboot the router and switches before switching the Sonos devices on and checking as you suggest.

So as bockersjv correctly said, my only current problem is indecision!  Thanks to the comments above I’ve fixed that: I'm not going to move to S2 until there are a couple of good reasons.  Good reasons include

  • streaming hires from Tidal with hi-res digital output from my new Sonos Port (that feeds digital into my very high end DAC) so that it’s actually better in some way than the Connect gen.1 that it replaced
  • more sophisticated management of zones, i.e. groups of zones with overlap of the groups if desired
  • a compellingly better interface [Note to Sonos: that doesn’t mean a different colour and it doesn’t mean ‘simpler’ as I’m not a simpleton and don’t find the current interface to be a problem though it could be better.]
  • an iPad app that will work on older iPads so that the ones here and there in my house can be put to an additional use

Until then I shall stay with S1 and remain happy.

 

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I'm staying S1 for now, will wait until there is a significant gain on S2 before considering a swap over.

Hi-Res isn't of any interest to me, I have a Playbar (the ARC is too wide to fit our TV stand anyway) and it's all working perfectly fine on S1!.

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  • streaming hires from Tidal with hi-res digital output from my new Sonos Port (that feeds digital into my very high end DAC) so that it’s actually better in some way than the Connect gen.1 that it replaced
  • more sophisticated management of zones, i.e. groups of zones with overlap of the groups if desired
  • a compellingly better interface [Note to Sonos: that doesn’t mean a different colour and it doesn’t mean ‘simpler’ as I’m not a simpleton and don’t find the current interface to be a problem though it could be better.]
  • an iPad app that will work on older iPads so that the ones here and there in my house can be put to an additional use

 

Do you have any S1 devices? If not you may want to consider the upgrade to S2 so that you get the regular stream of bug fixes and features. 

There’s no guarantee that we will get Hi Res streaming on Tidal. If this is important to you I would add a different streamer to your high end dac and start enjoying that, life’s too short to wait for a feature that may never arrive.

IMO Sonos will never support older iPads, Sonopad fills this niche today, maybe it will work for you.

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Thanks Bumper.  I’ve removed all devices that aren’t compatible with S2.  I take the point about bug fixes and updates but I thought I’d read that S1 would get bug fixes too.  As for updates, yes, eventually I’ll see enough advantages to move to S2.

I have Sonopad on two old iPads (old enough to have 30-pin connectors, not Lightning connectors) but sometimes it’s terribly slow.  Those   iPad’s other apps aren’t anything like as slow so I’m inclined to blame Sonopad.  I dare say you’re right about Sonos never supporting older devices.  I think they’re missing a trick.  It would be a selling point to say that there were apps that could make use of older control hardware.

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@bamber2000  you are correct Sonos have stated that they will continue to provide big fixes

“I don’t want to update to S2. Can I keep using my Sonos system with the S1 app?

You can continue listening with your Sonos system as you do today. Your system will receive bug fixes and security patches, but it will not receive any of the new software features found in S2.”

From the S2 overview page.

Me personally am stuck on S1 for the time being due to my connects but I wouldn't make the move to S2 even if I could until there was a feature that i really wanted or some time had passed and at least the .1/ .2 version had been released.

 

Bamber2000 - was in the same decision boat as you - in fact I have the v1 Connect - waiting on the Port till I see the next step with high res - both Streaming with Tidal and Amazon HD and with real higher resolution of local FLAC files - however in the meantime I have split system with no issues running both S1 (Connect and Connect:Amp) and S2 (several Play:3s and a Beam) - only had to reset the S1 devices after upgrade to S2 and then have them join new S1 setup all good performance and reliability - just anxious for the high res improvements!!

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I just posted a thread because I have been having nothing but major problems since upgrading to S2 a couple of weeks ago.

In my view it is a big-time lemon.

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I'm staying S1 for now, will wait until there is a significant gain on S2 before considering a swap over.

Hi-Res isn't of any interest to me, I have a Playbar (the ARC is too wide to fit our TV stand anyway) and it's all working perfectly fine on S1!.

Keith, please tell me how you are able to stay with s1. when I open my s1 app, it gives me an update screen to S2, and no option to avoid it. So I can't even get to the functions in my s1 app anymore. Help!

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I am sticking with S1, mostly, for now. I did reset a One and set it up as a fresh S2 system, for testing purposes, so I have a simple split system, and I’m glad I did go the whole way.

The S2 app on iPhone has real trouble finding my lone S2 device for some reason, despite it being wired, so I’m glad I am mostly-S1 for the moment. Other 3rd party Sonos apps on the same device have no problem finding it, so its clearly an app problem.

I love my Play5:Gen 1s and an Arc is not in my immediate future, so I have no reason to upgrade any more devices to S2 at this time.

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How can you stick with s1? I have NOT upgraded to S2 but the upgrade screen prevents me from accessing S1

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How can you stick with s1? I have NOT upgraded to S2 but the upgrade screen prevents me from accessing S1


I just used the PC app, which seems to be easier to use for this than the mobile apps.

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I had the same problem as DrVJMJ that the upgrade screen prevented me from using the S1 app, I could only control the Room that the app was controlling before the upgrade screen.  Decided to do the upgrade. Lost 5 of my 6 SONOS devices - all of which are listed as S2 compatible. Still trying to get them to add back in - Search for Missing Device, and Add Product both fail to find them. 

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Hornet 305, there is another threaded conversation in this forum about how to get past the upgrade screen to keep S1 running. No answers yet but we hope it will attract some Sonos attention and a fix. But it may be too late for you since apparently you did the update. So sorry! BAD press for a company hitherto perceived as TOP quality.

Hornet 305, there is another threaded conversation in this forum about how to get past the upgrade screen to keep S1 running. No answers yet but we hope it will attract some Sonos attention and a fix. But it may be too late for you since apparently you did the update. So sorry! BAD press for a company hitherto perceived as TOP quality.

 

There you go… https://en.community.sonos.com/controllers-software-228995/s1-s2-i-don-t-want-to-upgrade-6844685?postid=16453782#post16453782

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Follow-up: Had to Factory Reset each device to add back in.

I have 11 Sonos devices in my system with multiple configurations (play bar, sub, 2-three’s in surround sound configuration; stereo set up in some rooms, some single speakers (1 or 3) in other rooms, and a Play that I take all over my back yard and a Boost).  We have Sonos app on my iPhone, my wife’s iPhone, and my Windows 10 PC.  The upgrade went smoothly - no issues at all.  Everything was up and running in no time and after a couple of months haven’t discovered any issues with my S2 upgrade.