End of Software Support - Clarifications

@Ryan S I would respectfully recommend that Sonos sets up a “focus group” of some of your current customers to aid you with your communications on this matter. It is currently clear to me that there is a gulf opened up between the direction of the company and the expectations of your customers. I for one purchased my first systems to play music from the internet or from my music collection is any or all of the rooms I have them in, that is all I expect from my equipment. As long as I can continue to do this until the hardware fails that is all I want from my old equipment.

IN December I bought a Soundbar at great expense at a time when Sonos would have known it was instantly part of a legacy system. That’s not far short of theft.   Backward compatibility is not a new concept.  Sonos have shown considerable incompetence in not designing in the ability to update system dependent components.  You should be doing a recall and updating the memory capacity without charge instead of asking what have to date been loyal customers to shell out significant sums of money to get their systems back into support.  For equipment purchased as recently as 2011 to be no longer supported is a disgrace.  Who would buy Sonos now if they wanted to enter this market.  We have proof that this would be a very poor decision.  

So, to maintain my system as is, with all the updates and ease of use that I am accustomed to, I will have to replace my Connect with a Port? All I use it for is to Sonosify my AV amp and, for what it was, the Connect was already stupidly overpriced IMHO. I know Sonos is a profit based company of course, but I really did feel screwed over with the profit margin on that particular item! And now I would need to spend nearly DOUBLE for the exact same thing (for what I use it for) to keep updates and ease of use? Sorry, but time for me to look elsewhere for a new setup, because this totally sucks.

Well at least when I checked on my account all my Sonos products are legacy so I’ll just wait until they fall over after May and send them to landfill.

Of course it may be months or years before that happens. Either way I won’t lose sleep and I certainly won’t be taking up the derisory trade up offer (trade up to stand still more like). Just pleased I didn’t add a Playbar to the system back in December. My money will go on a traditional AV amp instead.

I did post on the ‘other’ thread, now closed, though not deleted. Having thought further, this is what I want from my Sonos system. 

1. To continue to stream music anywhere in my house from my stored music on the NAS
2. To receive internet radio and stream it to any room in my house.
3. To group any speakers in the house into any configuration I choose regardless of their age.

i do not need

1. voice control of any kind. I have an Echo dot for that (£39).
2. Any particular streaming service because I do not want to be at the mercy of other companies changing their API . I do understand that others may feel differently about this.

in the meantime, and until this is resolved, I will not

1. purchase any further Sonos equipment (we were considering completely upgrading our TV sound system)
2. recommend that any friends and family purchase Sonos equipment as I have in the past and feel deeply embarrassed that I have done so.

I will actively seek another solution for my music requirements from another provider.

Finally I would be happy to pay a reasonable amount to have my early Connect upgraded to the later flavour with more memory.

I was immensely proud of my Sonos system, but now look at it with something approaching distaste.

Interesting thoughts, and in line with the increasingly popular “off-the-grid” and “nature-first” ideas - maybe the future lined up by the electronic revolution - the future we partly got already - isn’t as attractive as expected. It adds new trouble and takes away old value. And I also felt (like you?) that the new things somehow have been made out of a different philosophy of branding and consumerism rather than being a seriously meant technical solution to a wish or a problem; a more or less permanent solution.

Another aspect, I think, is that when we get burned by experimenting with new things we seek back to safe harbour - the excitement of the possibilities can quickly die and leave a room and a need for feeling comfortable instead.

So, done experimenting, now time to just live with and enjoy what worked and what gave us a good experience, abandoning the failed experiments.

I am in the same position as you.  As it happens, I never group my Connect-driven high end HiFi with other speakers, so I shall just separate it off and carry on using it.  And we don’t know yet exactly what a ‘split system’ will look like.  I’m not entirely sure Sonos do yet either.  If you can just ignore the hysteria and wait and see how things turn out you might find the impact on you is minimal, at least for a few years.  I cannot see any gain in taking any action at this point.  Of course, you may use your system differently from me, but I still say - wait and see.

What a fantastic idea!

Yes, I should have clarified that I will wait upon the “split system” thing but it doesn’t sound promising to me… if they called it the “invisibly split system” I’d have had more hope! ;)

It’s too late for me, the trust has gone.

Like many of you I have £k’s of components, Connect, S5, Play 3’s (probably next to go), Play 1’s (yep, probably only a couple of years left for these babies), Play Bar, Play Base, Beam, Sub and the One.  And that was it, system complete apart from maybe a Move, not a chance now though, wouldn’t spend a penny on any more.

I saw the writing on the wall when the replacement programme started and they bricked a friends Amp after he changed his mind.  I was considering buying the Ikea lamps at that stage but worried that if Sonos and Ikea fell out the products would cease to be supported.  Who knew it would be Sonos falling out with their own “legacy” products.

Staggering stupidity Sonos.  You’ll be going out of business.