Just putting it out there. Hope option for Front speakers happen soon.

Depends on how old their testing is. If it’s years old, most people probably already have better Wi-Fi that will handle more devices. That said, Sonos has always required decent Wi-Fi, so it would be nothing new.

I would guess that the volume of returns they would get of people who bought speakers for front but had to return them because it doesn’t work for them, would outweigh any additional sales.  Not to mention that selling products/features that ‘might work’ isn’t good for your brand image.

It’s also my personal opinion that it’s not a good look to sell a $1000 soundbar that needs additional front speakers to sound as good as it could be. No other company does this for a reason.

“Most people”?  “Probably?” I’ve been in software development for 30+ years, and if I ever suggested we develop our software so that it is reliable for “most people” who “probably” have the required hardware, I’d have been fired a long time ago. 

Were I Sonos, I’d be willing to hedge bets people in the Sonosphere are already running ample Wi-Fi setups for the modern connected world. Again, though, that assumes their testing was at least a couple years ago or more. And the issue he mentions may be more due to placement than Wi-Fi capacity. Bottom line, people are already doing this, albeit with SonoSequencr, and loving the results. Pretty easy to caveat it with “must have at least Wi-Fi version blah and front speakers should not be placed closer than blah feet from soundbar.” They could even solve the other issues he notes (tuning/multi-driver speakers) by simply adding center-channel adjustment, which needs to happen anyways, and limiting which speakers can be used as fronts. Era 300s seem better served as rears. After having tried my Era 100s as fronts, I moved those to be rears, where they are MUCH better suited, and put my Symfonisk bookshelf speakers up front. Those are absolutely ideal as fronts. Simply no need for multi-driver speakers, there, the soundbar and rears will still provide immersion effects.

And how long after those disclaimers are published would you see the first post that says “I shouldn’t have to upgrade my entire network just to add speakers to my system!!!!!” and “I should be able to place my speakers anywhere I wish!!”

My bet is under 2 minutes . . .  Matter of fact, I could probably name the poster who does it. 

I’ve also been in software development for 30+ years. Minimum system requirements are nothing new. 

There will always be cranky “get off my lawn” types who will say those things, yeah. The bottom line is Sonos, if not hard-wired, has always required a decent to good Wi-Fi setup. And it’s always been a potential issue placing disparate Wi-Fi devices too close to each other. These things are nothing new, and as Wi-Fi continues to evolve, so too can complexity of capabilities. 

And I think the CEO’s message on reddit is quite clear that they are not at the point where the functionality can be released to the general public.  He did say they are close, though.  So there is that.

Thus the reason for my caveat regarding when their testing took place. I’ve been running the following setup via SonoSequencr for a bit now, and it’s working perfectly: Arc, Symfonisks for fronts, two Sub Minis, Era 100s for rears. Granted, I have FiOS 2GB w/Wi-Fi 6e, but I also have like 30+ devices connected, wirelessly. I’m doing it now, so it can be done, now. Anyways, thanks for the spirited discussion and Happy Holidays!

There’s a bunch of anecdotal evidence of it working.  Unless we were in on the discussions held during the beta, we don’t know how those anecdotes relate to the aggregate.  We also don’t know how Sonos evaluates the effects of an unreliable implementation on brand image, support costs, etc.  

Anyway, Happy Holidays to you too.