I wish it was. That would separate the wheat from the chaff.

Not really, it depends why people are getting out of the ecosystem.

I have been looking for the past 6-9 months for an alternative due to Sonos being a closed eggs in one basket solution. When I bought back into the Sonos ecosystem again after a few years away from it, it was an acceptable trade off and risk for me. There were potential alternatives, but nothing that jumped out as an everything I used out the box solution.

The company handling of this release and public statements about it was enough to push me off the waiting fence. The company leadership who set the direction and culture of the company have made it very clear how they view people who purchase their product.

I have found an alternative that does what I need for a multi room audio system and is more open. I just have one Sonos speaker left to decommission having replaced my port, amps and various Symfonisk speakers and lamps.

For your car analogy, in an ICE vehicle it is more a case of if the same garage/dealer breaks/messes up your car do you keep returning to them waiting and hoping they will fix it? Sonos are more like an EV car though, where while you might have bought it, your ability to use it relies on the manufacturer not messing up an OTA update and breaking or removing functionality that you originally bought the car for.

What a generous open attitude. 

You are absolutely right. It’s just that some times I sucked down a rabbit hole when dealing with trolls. I am interested in how a class action lawsuit works and I would be interested in joining one if there was one. This does not mean I am interested in starting one myself. This is a thread for people who are interested in the topic. If your here to tell us we are idiots then you don't belong here. We are all  part of the Sonos community and should  still work together. There are many reasons why it is good to “clamor” for a lawsuit even if one is not going to see a lawyer. We are all aggravated over the situation sonos has put us in. Bitching and moaning to a group of your peers who are in the same situation as you are is a good way to release stress and anger.  There is also a practical side to it. These chats are monitored and some of what is said or at least the feel of the community is getting back to the people in charge. If we yell loud enough they will hear. Further, the more we all talk about it the more people will hear about it. When enough people here about it things will begin to happen. I have already seen news article pop up on my phone. Now imagine someone goes in to his local electronic store for a system. His choice is Bose or Sonos, and he thinks about all the bad publicity about Sonos. What do you think he will chose? Soon Sonos loses 50% market share and Bose has record profits. This is not to Sonos’s advantage to let this go on to long. Yes Sonos says it has fixes coming, that's great, I hope they do because I have a lot of money invested and so do others. And who knows if enough people shout loud enough maybe some lawyer will decide the case has some merit.

What system are you referring to? I would be interested in seeing it. Thanks

Why do people keep referring to their 'investment' , as if a set of speakers was some kind of blue-chip stock?   

Some time in the past you bought an item in the same way you have previously bought other consumer items.

It's irrelevant whether it cost $10 or $1000. You paid the retail sale price. 

You have choices: wait for fixes, mothball your equipment, throw into the trash, or sell on.

Ranting, raving, threatening, insulting and cursing is unlikely to improve or solve the problems the update has caused. 

So I’ve been testing several including Bluesound, Denon, Hifi Rose, but it is Cambridge Audio that seems to be the one for me all things considered. They have a good range of hardware, and the app StreamMagic is superb.

@Atari-rules 
Presumably you are replacing Amps or Ports as Cambridge Audio don’t have streaming speakers, or are you also buying speakers and power/integrated amps as necessary to replace Sonos speakers? Their entry just bring speakers network streamer with integrated amp is quite the price jump from a Sonos Amp.

I do like their minimal design units, not so much the ones with displays, but they weren’t for me. Hopefully you enjoy it and the StreamMagic app continues to do what you need. It also goes through troublesome periods when it gets upgraded and was a concern when I was considering the MXN10.

@Irate Customer 
What I needed/wanted to replace, the streaming services I actually use and how I want to control it were the primary influences in potential choices for me.

Amp/Port only setups are easiest to replace imo, with everything from little pucks to full size HiFi/AVR components if you aren’t space limited available. AVRs and the more recent Network Receivers also come with room correction, sub out and more flexible connectivity.

A WiFi speaker only setup is similarly find the brand with support for the services you use, locations (indoor/outdoor) and room sizes you want and away you go. A big unknown with speakers vs amp/port is how will it actually sound though.

Where it becomes most limited in choice is when you want soundbar/ht + stereo (2.1 / 2.0) + WiFi speakers and Subs across the home that can be grouped, multi-room sync and a single control app with or without physical controls.

The starting point for me, rather than which brands to look at, is work out what you actually use and want from your system.

All of Cambridge Audio is Roon ready. So, always an option.

Well isn't Sonos Roon ready or enabled? 

An excellent reasonably priced mult-room streamer/amp system can be built with Wiim devices, range $99-350 (decent app, very responsive and active support, Roon ready) .  The real problem comes in selecting appropriate speakers - another consumer minefield!

It depends what you need from a replacement.

Currently, Roon brings its own set of issues and headaches and is of little help with a whole home integrated music and home theater solution or wide choice of streaming services. I had considered it in the past for local music only, but the owner push that made it an always on internet cloud dependant service even for local music playback meant it was a non-starter.

In the future it may be an option depending what Samsung/Harman have in store for it. I expect the previous Roon staff setting direction and pushing for cloud will jump ship as soon as their contract lets them as they have already been told to undo some of their previously cloud focused decisions and fix the neglected code. 

I just like to lister to music. High end expensive equipment for me is a waste of money. There is always some background noise. Backyard? birds, plains, cars, wind. Kitchen? stove exhaust, clanking of pots and pans.  Game room? pinball machines, pool table. Office? clicking clock, computer keyboard. Dining room? conversations with friends and family. Most of the time you can’t tell a $200 speaker from a $2000 one. I will spend more for a product that lasts. A system that lasts 20 years is a better investment than one that lasts only 5. I was fortunate that I have an older phone that didn’t update the app so I am running version 16.1 I lost my local library but that’s it. Everything else still works. My work around was simply to connect the line out from my computer to the amp. Not the best solution but it works. And I will continue to bitch, complain and whine to anyone who will listen for the two reasons I stated above. Unfortunately I have to much invested in my system to rip it out and replace it. Does anyone remember Bubble Yum? They almost went bankrupt because someone started a rumor that there were spider eggs in it! Class action law suit? Hell yea!!!!! When the 70 year old owner’s 25 year old wife leaves him because she now has to share there private jet and 75 foot yacht with another family maybe he will get the hint. (I have no idea how old the Ceo. or his wife is before the groups trolls' take me literally).

Yes big time they con people 

Who in right mind would buy system that don't work I despise Sonos con artists 

1 Sonos Arc is $1,499 AUD.

2 Sonos Fives come to $1,798 AUD.

That’s a basic two room, three speaker setup at over $3k. 

Out of curiosity - what system did you end up buying?

I have never been “happy” with the Sonos app, the previous version was clunky - but at least it worked. Given the sound quality and price I was thinking that I’d expand my system with an amp and some Fives that would at least let me plug in a turntable and a DAP so I could choose music without the app.

But the latest app, the lack of support available and the companies public response to the widespread and completely valid criticism has made me think I would prefer to avoid buying anything new from them ever again. 

FWIW the main issue I’ve been having is that the new app simply never loads about 30% of the music I ask it to play. The same music works fine in the native apps for the relevant services, and when I am able to tell my voice activated speakers what to play it also loads fine - it just won’t load in the app. All in all its very frustrating guessing which albums will work and which won’t - or having to try and coax my Google assistant into understanding what I’m asking of it. 

Check out section 13 of the EULA - you have already agreed to arbitration led by the lawyers of the other parties choice in almost every EULA you’ve signed or clicked in the last several years. You probably have the same arrangement with your employer, whether you know it or not.  :)

I’ve moved to Yamaha MusicCast. For my main home theater setup I already had a Yamaha A6A that my Port was plugged into, but the only time I used the Port was to group with another room. Day to day I was using the MusicCast app or alternative control app and never used Sonos in that room.

My needs from my setup are:

• International Internet radio streaming
• Qobuz streaming
• Local music playback, a mix of music and concert videos
• Occasional airplay streaming
• Physical wireless play/pause and volume control ( I use the Ikea Zigbee wireless volume controllers )
• To be able to use local sources without an internet connection
• For everything to work even if the manufacturer abandons or messes up the app.

The Sonos Amps I replaced with V4A AVRs. A big downside is size, the AVRs are huge compared to the Sonos Amp, but unfortunately Yamaha have discontinued the small streaming amps in the uk. I considered their network receivers, but at £450 vs £600-700+ it didn’t make much sense paying the extra.

For the streaming speakers I went with the MusicCast 50s. 2 analogue + 1 digital input as well as the inbuilt streaming and all the main controls on the device as well as in the app.

There were trade offs, but also unplanned benefits.

The two obvious trade offs are size vs the Sonos Amp and Qobuz in the MusicCast app isn’t gapless so live concert recordings and albums that don’t have silence between tracks aren’t seamless. The Qobuz issue is solved by using any other upnp control app that streams Qobuz, or AirPlay from Qobuz instead of the MusicCast app.

Unplanned benefits were a usb-c → hdmi cable means plugging in my tablet or laptop in the rooms with the AVRs is a breeze. The Amp only has an Arc input and I use a 24” monitor rather than a TV with one of them, so now have more flexibility with audio/video in that room.

The huge sub wooofer volume differences between music playback and video playback I had with the Amp are gone. With the Amp a nice sub volume for music streaming was way over the top when video streaming.

I no longer need to convert my digital download purchases from Qobuz for local playback. My subscription means the HiRes versions are usually the cheapest to buy, but Sonos restrict Flac playback to 24bit 48Khz, so I’d usually have to downsample my purchases after downloading them to playback with Sonos.

The biggest benefit for me is while these are MusicCast enabled devices, they are not locked into the Yamaha app as the only way to use and control them and don’t require internet access. The MusicCast side can be ignored and just use them as a multi-room powered speaker/Avr with a separate dap or sources plugged in. While never directly released, the device MusicCast api specs documents are on the internet so anyone can create an app or integration which can control the device settings, playback and multiroom linking. The availability of the api spec and integrations meant I was able to connect my physical wireless volume controllers up to each device myself. Yes, it was more involved than opening the Ikea app and assigning them to a Sonos speaker, but I didn’t have to rely on other companies keeping apps working to do it.

There are many features I’m not using, such as Avr and receiver zones can be turned into rooms in the app. So the 4 zones of my A6A can be made 4 controllable zones in the app. Playback of files from my tablet/phone. Potentially I could dump all my local music on my phone/tablet and get rid of my nas.

The setup works for me and importantly I have confidence that as long as my hardware works, it doesn’t really matter what happens to the app or the continued support of it. 

They told us we need to upgrade our equipment because legacy products will not get updates and now we get updates that are destroying listening experience that’s criminal

Although I am not a lawyer, her in the UK I believe there is a principle of “reasonableness” which the Courts apply to a number of matters, including Ts & Cs.  If that’s true, then I should think it quite possible that a class action might be viable here.  I for one would be potentially interested.

So now “destroying listening experience” is criminal?  Can you cite the statute on that? 

You ‘believe’ that, ‘if’ it’s true, you ‘should’ ‘think’ it ‘quite’ ‘possible’ that it ‘might’ be viable and you would be ‘potentially’ interested?
It’s that level of definitive and confident leadership that is driving class action forward…

There will be no class action because no-one gets past the bluster.

There is always the possibility of a  class action suite. Its incredible what people have sued for and won.

Lord knows Sonos has given us enough reasons.  

It would be so nice to win the lottery and buy  the controlling shares in sonos just so we could get rid of Patrick Spence

That’s the funniest thing I’ve seen on here all week. What good would all those shares be with your inability to run a company? It all of us that would suffer for your lottery fortune.