let's help Sonos prioritize

Three separate speakers for front channels (plus separate rears, of course) in a home theatre setup. Era 100/300 would be good, or new devices of about that size. 

I wonder what an Era 500 would actually be like. I really like the Era 100 but there is no way that I would replace my Play:3 with an Era 300 and I suspect that the same would be true of an Era 500 as a replacement for my Play:5.

What I would like to see is a new “Classic” range that is focused on those of us who started are Sonos journey when the focus was listening to music from stereo or mono mixes. I’m really impressed by all the clever new spatial capabilities but it is not what I’m looking for especially when it seems to come at the expense of the simple pleasure of listening to music.

The bottom line here is that before Sonos can prioritise products they need to prioritise user types and use cases. If they want to be a TV Audio company that is their choice but it is now what I personally signed up for.

This is all very subjective, of course, but IMO the Era 300’s sound is vastly superior to the Play:3, as well as the Era 300 offering additional capabilities.  So the upgrade would be worth the money for me, but I am sure not for everyone.

With no access to Sonos’ market research, long-term strategic plans, general financials or projections of costs and revenues, I don’t even know where to begin in formulating advice for Sonos on what their priorities should be.  So I think I’ll pass on that one.

Nothing wrong with anyone making feature requests and suggestions, of course.  That is one of the purposes of a community like this.

No one knows. But even with their research they completely missed the mark with the Ace headphones.

And they are in the business of seeing hardware. So giving the option to add front R/L speakers is potentially 2 extra speakers for any household with a soundbar.

I would enjoy the capability to add front L/R speakers to a soundbar. This could also be done with a special purpose soundbar with only the center channel. Another possibility would be a three channel AMP that can be configured for front surround.

Trueplay for Amp and passive speakers. 
Earc and usb inputs for Port. 
 

Well, I think we can safely conclude 

Undoubtedly.  A necessary justification, but not a sufficient one.  Would it sell enough extra speakers to justify the development costs?  Even if it would, would it provide the best return on capital compared with other possible developments?  Clearly, up to now, Sonos have thought it wouldn’t.  Maybe that  will change.

Sonos have certainly made mistakes.  Every company will, although hindsight is a wonderful thing.  There have been more hits than misses.

A multi-channel Amp, L/R/C and Height minimum, usable in the front or rear of the room.

A new design, a set of speakers designed to mount to the back of a TV using the ISO mounting points. Dedicated left and right speakers that would be positioned alongside the TV’s edges. A dedicated center to go below the TV and a height speaker to go at the top of the screen.

A speaker, far larger than the Five intended to replace conventional floor-standing speakers or large bookshelf ones. Adding a variable height stand to the floor model would be a big plus.

Individual single-channel Amps designed to be mounted to the backs of other brand conventional speakers. Maybe a central, multi-channel controller that could handle a multi-speaker Atmos setup. Think add these to replace a wired AVR setup.

Heaven knows what Sonos marketing will come up with but you can bet they will pick a horrible name. :-)

To me the first 2 ideas seem to make Sonos into something it’s not. Sonos, to me,  is about using less speakers, more. Other manufacturers do that better - and you could ad a Sonos Port to those.

I fail to see what a Sonos set top box would ad above an Apple TV or Nvidia Shield - especially if it would be heavily ad based. As I read somewhere: high pricing (because Sonos) and you still lose your privacy (unlike Apple TV).

What would you like to ad to the Ace to make it an Ultra?

The highest priority for Sonos now would be to heal the app, or at least supply more clarity about what works (Sonosnet? Older devices versus newer? Certain combinations of devices?) and what doesn't. Yes it's much better then it was, but I still see too many complaints about slow volume controls. Plex does not work very well on my own system for example: "no content found”. And please make the fault messages more clear than “something went wrong". I can see this is infuriating. More transparancy would be good for Sonos.

I would certainly like more language support for voice assistants. Sonos probably had good reasons to treat Google Assistant the way they are doing now, but the fact remains GA has the widest support for languages. This is a big loss for Sonos customers who do not want to (or can't) use Spanish, French, English or German. 

I like the Arc Ultra (the one I ordered will be delivered tomorrow). Should be way better (especially for bass)  than the Arc.