What does the future hold

Yes, I’m optimistic too. All the Sonos original Players are still working for me. It’s appears to only be the old controllers and older accessories that are not quite standing the test of time. 

Over a comparable period, I seem to have set aside more phones, tablets and video products, than Sonos products. 

This is just technology marching forward and I guess we just have to try to keep up with it, if we wish to continue with the road ahead. I find that so much better anyway, than just standing still and trying to use some of the older 'out of date’ products.

I’m actually thinking now of selling-on my older Play:1’s and replacing them with the newer speakers, as I think the newer ‘Ones’ sound better and they have a few more features that I’m now finding useful.

So I will just keep advancing forward with the technology. 

Until the trade-up deal my Sonos were in trickle-down mode and when I got a new bigger one the smaller one went to a location I was too cheap to fill with a new one. (1 → 3 → 5)

While the new stuff is good I don’t see enough difference (for my use) in a Play 1 or One, or the Gen 1 and 2 5s to be worth replacing the old one.

Personally, I think Sonos will be much more circumspect about obsoleting player hardware than is assumed in some of these threads. By ‘obsoleting’ I mean rendering them inoperable rather than simply not adding features. Without wanting to downplay the disappointment felt by their owners, the devices obsoleted so far (CR100, Dock) have been niche, non-player products with easy workarounds.

Once the first player products are obsoleted, it will be a major red flag for purchasers of new equipment. They’ll know that instead of purchasing a product they can expect decades of use from (as I expect from my audio products), they’re instead buying something ephemeral.

Note that there is no hard technical reason why Sonos needs to obsolete any older players. It’s quite feasible for older players to continue to operate using versioned protocols, as is the case in many distributed systems. The older players won’t suddenly stop being able to stream music or to participate in Sonos protocols: it would be Sonos’s choice to stop them. 

Note that controllers present a rather different problem from players. A controller has to work with the full current range of players and new features.

That’s not to say that I’m uncritical of Sonos’s inability to provide separate, ‘legacy’ versions of their controllers for use on older controller devices and OS versions, even if some features are unavailable. However, to some extent there are low-cost third party options that fill this gap, such as Sonopad.

I interpreted the trade-up programme as being about sales generation rather than preparing for obsolescence. If there is any player obsolescence in future, I’m certain it would be accompanied by a similar (or better) trade-up programme, so I have no intention of obsoleting any of my devices.

To clarify, the trade up program isn’t 30% value on the item your trading in, but on the item you end up buying.  So if you bought a playbar, you’d get 700*.30 = 210.  A Sonos One would be 200*.30 = 60.  I believe you can also use this on speaker sets.  So depending on what you are buying, what you could sell for, as well as ebay’s fees and shipping costs, the best choice financially is going to vary.  Personally, I don’t want the hassle of having to sell on ebay, so I’d even pick trade in even if it’s remotely close.

I think the other thing to consider is...if not Sonos, what else? Talking about getting selling off your Sonos as a solution doesn’t make sense unless your willing to just not have multiroom audio anymore, there needs to be something you move over to.  I don’t think there’s a perfect system  out there from what I’ve seen.  Denon, Bose, Bluesound, etc...all have their weaknesses and concerns about how long they will support their smart products.  I would think Amazon and Google are going to do better, but we still don’t know how long they will support their products and the sound quality is generally not as good.   Perhaps a more stable system would be have a more ‘dumb’ amp/speaker  system with Alexa or GA just for control, since dots and mini’s can be had for cheap.  Of course, that has it’s limitations as well.  Again, not a prefect system.

That makes sense to me.  Sounds like cost is less important to you as is the convenience of having a controller than you’re comfortable with and know how to use well, rather than having to consider a different means of control for whatever reason.

I can’t agree on the like/dislike of controllers.  The forum is naturally going to see more complaints that compliments just because people don’t often make the effort to say they like something.  The phone/tablet/PC/mac market is all over the place though and changing all the time, which creates havoc for customers.  I don’t think this is a Sonos only issue though,  but an app developer/smart home issue.

Yes.    I personally don’t see a ton of a value in a dedicated controller.  However, I’m the primary user, so my phone is always on me and ready to use, and we use voice controller rather liberally.   I can see where other household with different lifestyles would find greater use for a dedicated controller, and would have the issue you describe.

I think Sonos has done the best they can in this regarding, by making APIs public and free of charge.  For the most part any content not available on Sonos is due to decisions and issues on the streaming services side, not Sonos.  Doesn’t mean customers won’t blame Sonos and won’t have to spend time doing something about it.

The number of speakers per home sounds about right if I remember Sonos quarterly statements correctly.  However, many of these are soundbars or Amp/Port, which wouldn’t be comparable in any way with bluetooth.  They are also competing with echos and google assistance for those who want voice control smart speakers.  There  are those that are deciding between bluetooth options and Sonos, but I wouldn’t say this is exactly the demographic Sonos is targeting.  You are right though that Sonos is a stronger, better system the more products you own.  No doubt about that.

I don’t think there will be more.  As Sonos sells more speakers, services will have greater need to maintain service to Sonos.

Again, not seeing this. Less difference between a single speaker and a BT speaker perhaps, but not a whole house audio system.

I don’t know what scrap means in this context.  And Amazon/echo don’t really have an interface, unless you mean voice, where Sonos effectively has the same in terms of controlling music.  I don’t know Apple’s but do know it’s limited to Apple services.

Agreed on this.  An Amazon whole house system makes sense if you want ease of use, don’t care as much about sound quality, cheap, don’t care about integrating TV audio, other streaming services, or higher multiroom functions.  That actual fits quite a large group of people, evidenced by the massive sales.

Yes, it most certainly could be.  Sonos does have some patent advantages and such to keep them ahead in certain aspects and has remained relatively service agnostic.   I think Snips takes that even further if Sonos get their own voice assistant.  Perhaps surprising, the much bigger players have not tried to push much into higher market speakers with their systems.   Not sure if they just aren’t interested, want to maintain some semblance of partnerships with Sonos and other speaker makers or just don’t see a market for it.

Apple seems to be throwing in the towel on the smart speaker side of things and backing Amazon in a fight against Google.  At least for now.

Yes, most definitely.

Squeezebox?  I don’t see how that has much impact on the competition that echo speakers offer to Sonos.  I’m not saying echos aren’t competition, they absolutely are. Just that LMS isn’t likely to move the needle that much.

Or because the brand doesn't actually exist anymore, because it ceased selling products many years ago?

Danny,

I’m going to say I agree with pretty much everything you put. And any minor quibbles are probably more nuances than a difference in opinion.

For instance I’m aware that the dislikes of app features are more heavily voiced than the likes or passives. My thoughts are we have had numerous changes of the apps over the years, a number that seemed to offer little benefit than a new GUI to learn. But the functionality differences between desktop apps and phone/tablet apps just seems there to confuse people. You know what you want to do, you know it does it, but you can’t find it. Then eventually realise it won’t do it in the desktop version, or on the controller, or its done differently in the app. Other than Dev cost there is rarely a reason why the Desktop can’t do all the things the App can (TruePlay, the EQ thing, being a rare exception). Simple and consistent is good.

Since we locked down to keep the CR100s I have zero internal support cases from wife/kids as they know how it all works, and it hasn’t changed. It’s primary function play music, is met. (This may change as daughter wants a music streaming service so may have to unlock yet). And it's still the best tech product I have had. 15-years+ and stuff still in use daily. We use the alarms a fair bit to set stuff running, so daily does mean daily.

I think the higher end sound quality is just too small for the big boys to go after 1st round but we have seen improvements in Amazon devices and they are starting to look at higher quality devices. That said I am not certain the Amp/ZonePlayer market may ever really feature i their line-up as the markets are just too small.

I wonder if we will see a much larger ‘whole house piped music market’ sub Sonos standard but good enough and a return to dedicated systems for the enthusiasts. Sonos crossed the line to enthusiasts enough that only the enthusiastic enthusiasts could be bothered not to have the integration. I am less fussed about music than movies, so Sonos Amp stuff is more than good enough for music. But the Playbar relegated to kids playroom and dedicated home cinema still rules the lounge. But in order of price magnitude it is probably 5 times the price of playbar/sub/play1 set-up. Music in the lounge is slightly cumbersome as you have to go and turn the amp on, and change the input, whereas a playbar would be slicker. But it just doesn’t do the SPL of big speakers & big subs.

And the home integration stuff is growing fast. OK we may be ahead of the curve but we have something like 150+ IP connected devices at home ran across 4 VLANs everything from windows, heating, doorbells, cameras, PV systems, the car, TVs etc. Your average joe is going to need an ecosystem to handle this for them. They can’t be expected to put in place VLANs, to manage security but just like home routers have added guest networks (effectively a VLAN) they will need a ‘things LAN’.

I suspect there are at some point going to be some expensive losers in this game both for consumers with redundant systems and for corporates who lose the battle for the ecosystem.

I am clearly not as ‘techy’ as the other contributors on here and a lot of what has been said has gone over my head. However, I have picked up from a couple of threads that people are still using their CR100 controllers: is this the case because mine both became obsolete upon the installation of an update some time ago. Is there any way they can be ‘undone’ for want of a better explanation?

The TLDR is: No.

The longer answer is only if you are running version 8.4 and locked yourself down so the controllers, players, and apps didn’t upgrade. Stopping the apps upgrading was the hardest as would require turning off the automatic app upgrades on iPhones (and not having a new phone either). But switching to Sonophone (an alternative Sonos app) and using CR100s avoided this. So we don’t have anything with a Sonos App. The upgrade path is blocked at the firewall, and everything remains on version 8.4.

Sonos have never allowed downgrading of versions on units so for completeness you can’t reverse.

The downside is we don’t have any new features since version 8.4 and in theory we could loose TuneIn or other streaming service if they instigate a change at the service end (TuneIn/Spotify etc). So far TuneIn and Amazon Prime Music is still operational.

One of the other posters may give you chapter and verse on the massive list of benefits that I have missed out from the latest updates. But I can upgrade if I want to.

Aah, that would imply they knew what they were doing; guess I am even less tech savvy than I thought. To be candid, the reason I feel quite bitter about the relatively rapid obsolescence of my equipment is because I simply bought into a fabulous system and experience at not insignificant cost, and am finding that it is all slowly be taken from me due to constant updates that I have no control over. People have commented on the CR100’s but no one seems bothered that my early iPad has already become useless and my desktop is soon destined to become useless for controlling Sonos.

How do all the people on here control their systems? Say for example a forgotten alarm setting starts playing music at 3.00am in the morning in your bedroom; how do you turn it off? I used to lean over and hit the CR 100 controller; now I have to have an iPad in the bedroom, pinging emails all night! I have to open it, load the Sonos app and then switch off the music; it is totally unacceptable. I even tried purchasing a Sonos one with Alexa but that was more than useless and Sonos admitted that it was unable to link zones or do very much at all that it was also returned for reimbursement.