What does DTS omission say about Sonos as a company?

  • 17 March 2018
  • 5 replies
  • 661 views

Userlevel 1
I've read the lame excuses about the "modern listener" and their habits. But although I could probably get past losing support for my existing DTS content, I'm wondering if I can get past taking a slap in the face from a company marketing a premium product at a premium price.

At the end of the day, this comes down to either pig-headed stubbornness about admitting a mistake or disgraceful greed at the expense of the customer. There is no other way to explain it. After all, we're not asking for HDMI inputs here. Adding DTS support would not affect the simplicity of setup in any way. Ego, laziness or greed are the only possibly explanations. It is clearly neither difficult nor expensive to implement as shown by every single other product on the market.

So it looks like my Sonos experience will end before it even began. I was looking forward to building out a whole home system. But even though this one technical omission would not typically be a deal breaker, the giant middle finger to me the customer it represents is something that I simply cannot accept.

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5 replies

Sigh. Play-Fi is owned by DTS, the company. Play-Fi is used by Sonos’ competitor, which also owns Denon Heos. Sonos is in a huge legal battle with Heos for stealing Sonos’ patents.

Is it clear now, or do you need it spelled out in Crayons?
Userlevel 1
As far as I can tell Play-Fi is a wireless protocol while DTS is a codec so I'm not sure what you are referring to. I'm referring to the codec included in literally every other product on the market.

Regarding what is best for sales, why not both emphasize streaming AND sell to me as well? I'm not market researcher but that seems like it just might work. I'm guessing that including a single universally available codec in the highest priced product on the market might also still leave a healthy margin on each unit.

What's best for sales also probably doesn't include constant complaining on their own forums and online about the inexplicable omission of an obvious feature. For all we know it might have actually been cheaper to have just done the obvious originally than all the time spent since them crafting and communicating the lame excuses for not doing it.

Bias to action Sonos. Bias to action.
For one thing, DTS Play-Fi is a direct competitor. Sonos has ongoing lawsuits with Denon Heos, whose parent company sells a lot of products using DTS Play-Fi. Sonos is emphasizing streaming, where DTS isn't a huge factor. They've done their market research, and know FAR more about it than you do, without question. They will do what's best for sales in their target customer base, not based on random complaints from forum posters with little to zero knowledge of the market that they know very well.
Userlevel 1
The functionality I desire? That would be the functionality offered by every other product on the market when I am purchasing a premium product for a top of the market price.

Sonos product marketing is based on being "easy" right? Having to research which features offered by literally every other product on on the market that might not be available in the highest priced product on the market doesn't exactly fit that description does it? If I'm paying top dollar, I'm expecting not to have to worry about that kind of nonsense, right? It's going to just work right?

This example is exactly the reason why Sonos's current CEO publicly called out his own company on taking the positioni saying that they needed a "bias to action".
Userlevel 7
Badge +22
A potential purchase of a Playbar is thwarted because it doesn't have the functionality that you desire. Rather than try to find an alternate solution you claim this is a slap in the face from Sonos and a middle finger.

Ok.