Discontinuing service and software updates for older legacy Sonos speakers?

Sonos is no longer insisting you update.  You can opt out of updates if you have legacy devices.  

Profanity will get your post pulled, as stated in the TOS. 

Didn’t use any profanity.  Did I say I did that?

Didn’t say you did, just relaying the rule.  

Thanks but irrelevant to my post and do not appreiciate the implication in your reply.  I am perferctly able to express an opinion, that happened to be agreeing with yours, without profanity.

Ahh no, my post critiqued yours so that’s why your false implication….:)

I have no idea what you are talking about, I never saw your post.  I merely stated that the only reason I know of that gets posts deleted is profanity.  No implications, just fact.  

jgatie, why are you usually the bully in the room?

I just received the “notice of old equipment” email and ½ of my 18 Sonos products will be officially UN-supported soon.  Tragic amount of e-waste as a potential result with their “trade-up” program.  Too bad my old, now bricked C100 will be part of that waste stream as well - or??? (see pic) hehe

Please note the lack of profanity...and we’ll see if this one gets pulled.

Pardon me but Sonos calls their products “speakers”.

Despite the glossy ads promising streaming music around your house and the ability to use up to 32 speakers (in the ecosystem), this is not always the reality.

I have two Sonos systems, one in a heavily populated urban city (probably not unusual) where in a small modern house I am unable to play more than 3 of the 8 speakers without dropouts.  I am told this is due to wireless interference and competition causing the source to be unable to maintain enough data throughput to feed all the speakers at once with flac as the filetype used.  But even internet radio will drop out if I try to play it on all eight speakers.   A solution suggested for this was to wire them; hardly the selling point of a wireless system.

The system I use in a much less populous rural location works pretty well but can still suffer from glitches which spoils the enjoyment of the system.

I would have no problem if Sonos and other companies selling similar products made it transparently clear on all their advertising and at point of sale, rather than in the small print which they know no one reads, that their customers were buying a licence to use their speakers AND which is, as you say, “..an integrated multi-room (sometimes) music streamer, with significant reliance on an external ecosystem which includes things like cloud services, streaming services, voice services, etc”.  To which I would add, where the wireless signal is not compromised by house design and/or layout or local interference from competing wifi signals in the neighbourhood and, only for as long as Sonos deems the hardware is not obsolete and, that all the claims made for the ecosystem may be based on best case scenarios.

But of course this is not done because Sonos knows that their market (and the whole market for similar products) would be compromised and would not have grown as much as it has.

I have now decided that I cannot buy any more Sonos products.  I will manage with those I have for as long as possible, wiring some if necessary and, as Sonos decides they are obsolete hardware, they will be added to a scrapheap somewhere.

At some point I will revert to the old way of doing things with one fixed CD Ripper/hard disk player system in each room. It will have wireless capabilities but will not be as reliant on support by means of software updates to the extent that Sonos clearly is.

Had another reply to jgatie pulled for moderation by Sonos, probably due to length.  We’ll see. 

But would add to comment by kassey22000 that by the time you are clicking on install it is to late as you have bought the system by then. 

Funny how bullies don’t get their posts pulled.

I’m with you on this… 

Sonos needs to address why a very expensive speaker will suddenly stop working less than 10 years after purchase... or compromise the entire system - which is what they sold - this needs to be much better explained or they will be significantly damaging their reputation and my trust in the brand - and therefore, any future investment.

I understand new services may not work if they require a bump in hardware but surely they could manage a better way to support system integrity especially as the speaker has always worked fine (give or take) - or the refurbish hardware. 

They seem to be setting down an extremely expensive path with no certainty of how long a product will last or be useful.  Insane.  This needs to be better thought through and explained.  Quickly.

from the number of replies looks like jgatie spends more time here than listening to Sonos….is jgatie a Sonos person?

Now that is a very helpful reply. Thank you.  Hadn’t noticed as I’d given up thinking about it and resigned myself to being controlled by Sonos. 

Do we though get the chance to roll back to software that doesn’t include all the vocie activated control stuff when not needed?   And what if I’ve updated before realising that I could opt out?  Don’t think that was made very obvious.  I certainly missed the announcement.  So if I potentially hobble my whole Sonos system by rejecting updates for reason of ‘legacy’ devices that I may want to use in future, does that mean I will be able to use my old Connect?

I could answer your questions, but I choose not to because you’ve spent most of this thread insulting me.

And Sonos employees are marked as such. 

Not happy. Surely I should be able to use my gen one investments and just not receive updates to just those. I have just bought bought a Move and that's probably gonna need updates so need away of having  different versions on the same network , even if you could not group different versions would be okay

I am in shock! End of software update for older Sonos speakers.

I have been very loyal customer for several years and I have multiple different speakers. Gen1 and Gen2.. For example three PLAY:5 GEN 1 speakers! + New models and sonos one, three etc.. 

I have been paying thousands of euros about my system. I have been getting many new customers for Sonos also because I've been telling how nice system Sonos is. I have been very loyal and good customer all the time. 

Now... I am almost speechless... Is this even legal that you will pay very much about your speakers and in few years later you cant use those at all??

If this is really the road Sonos wants to go then this will be the end of the road for me. It will be 101% sure I will not buy any New products anymore from Sonos. How could I buy because I dont know when those new products are again useless?

And please dont tell me about Iphones, this is not a phone and you can still use an old phone, its not useless even if you will not get the lates updates anymore.

I will start buying speakers from Genelec or some where else if this is the way Sonos will end software updates. I know something also about the business world and if your most loyal customers will get very unhappy then your business is in big trouble. There is many good example about this in the past. You still have a second option. 

the same worries  here, looking at over £2000 to “update” to the same functionality I have now.  I dont use voice activated (amazon or google) so no benefit to me at all ……..  

The big question is whether you will still be able to add new hardware to the system after May ...eg a new room or a playbar …….  or a software update after moving home …… or (who knows?) and still connect to the legacy system.  If not I will have to rething my sonos future, and will be looking elsewhere.  

Any views?

thanks

(pissed off in Brighton)

1 x connect, 3 x connect amps, 1 x play 5, 1 x play3, 2 x ones, ……..….…. expensive

@Ryan S from Sonos stated in the main announcement thread that you will be able to add new hardware to systems that are frozen out of updates.  

it will 

it will be interesting to see how this might work,  ie. will the software in the new items be regressed to the level of the old items or what?  Will there be a downloadable “legacy” iphone and android app and a version for Windows?   I’m currently on a very old software version (due to keeping  cr100s still working) but what happens when I buy 2 new speakers?  Will there be a “legacy” download …. and which version?    Still pissed off at losing windows PC control over updates on the separate system I have in another property - not nearly as useful as the old version (and crazy since the PC is needed to control the NAS drive system and Itunes which holds the songs) 

ah well.

What the alternative options to waste my money on?  any thoughts?

David in Brighton

Same thing with me. I use my system only for listening the music in different rooms. I dont need or want any unsecure voice controls there. 

You can do it also with the speakers from the 70's. So its not a big thing to ask that you can continue listening the music with your expensive system which you have owned only few years. 

From the original mail: "Over time, this is likely to disrupt access to services and overall functionality."

It doesn't say that you cant use coming new features if those are not possible because of technical limitations. It clearly tells that over time it will distrupt overall functionality! And you cant get new updates for the system if you have some old speakers and some which are Gen2.

Of course you could make updates also in the future for the old verions. Just take off that kind of things which are not possible because of technical limitations (for example voice control) and different update for the systems/speakers which dont have any limitations. 

PR disaster?

I bought my 3 Play:5’s in 2017 - 3 yrs support on a household product that should last 20 or more years.. Paid a premium because I believed that SONOS was a quality product. SONOS no longer standing behind their older products (after 3 years!!!!) is an excellent indicator what the reality is. Lack of memory? Can’t do modern things - like what? Listen in and collect personal data for our data collection overlords?

Just play high fidelity music from the internet (and local sources) and be able to sync it in groups.. something I thought the original speakers could do but now can’t apparently or won’t be able to in the future. Also my 2017 Connect is listed as “old” and the 2018 Connect is listed “modern”.. I have to replace the Connect with the new device which is even more expensive so the “30%” tradeup discount is insulting.

I realize of course that future devices may in fact handle video etc so yes of course there probably should be another tier of devices (I like the “classic” idea! ).

Hopefully there are some EU anti-consumer laws that can help cause here in the US it seems we just don’t care.

I have a house full of Sonos and if I start not being able to use my four Play:1’s because I also have Play:5 Gen 2’s, I’m going to go from a maven to recommends Sonos to a maven who trashes Sonos. 

The announcement makes no assertions about PLAY:1s.