Retired Sonos Staff

End of Software Support - Clarifications

Dec 8, 2022 11:29 AM UTC
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We announced yesterday that some of our oldest Sonos products will be moving into a legacy mode in May of 2020. Our commitment is to support products with regular software updates for a minimum of five years after we stop selling them, and we have a track record of supporting products far longer.

Here is some public information we’ve shared, gathered into one place to respond to some of your questions in one easy thread, so that people can find the correct information easily.

Beginning in May, software updates and new features from Sonos will only be delivered to systems with only modern products.

After May, systems that include legacy products will continue to work as before - but they will no longer receive software updates or new features.

Sonos will work to maintain the existing experience and conduct bug fixes, but our efforts will ultimately be limited by the lack of memory and processing power of these legacy products.

We don’t expect any immediate impact to your experience, but access to services and overall functionality will eventually be disrupted, particularly as partners evolve their own services and features.

Customers with both legacy and modern products have time to decide what option is best for them. You can continue to use your whole system in legacy mode - in this case, it will stop receiving updates and new features.

You will also be able to separate your legacy products from your modern products, so that the modern products can still receive updates and new features, and legacy products can still be used separately. We’ll have more information on how to do this in May when you can take that action.

Another option available to all customers with legacy products is to take advantage of the Trade Up program, which allows you to upgrade older Sonos products to modern ones with a 30% discount. Trade Up will be open to customers at any time should they decide to upgrade.

We recognize this is new for Sonos owners, just as it is for Sonos. We are committed to help you by making options available to you to support the best decision for your home.

If you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate with asking.

Update 2/22: A message from our CEO

We heard you. We did not get this right from the start. My apologies for that and I wanted to personally assure you of the path forward:

First, rest assured that come May, when we end new software updates for our legacy products, they will continue to work as they do today. We are not bricking them, we are not forcing them into obsolescence, and we are not taking anything away. Many of you have invested heavily in your Sonos systems, and we intend to honor that investment for as long as possible. While legacy Sonos products won’t get new software features, we pledge to keep them updated with bug fixes and security patches for as long as possible. If we run into something core to the experience that can’t be addressed, we’ll work to offer an alternative solution and let you know about any changes you’ll see in your experience.

Secondly, we heard you on the issue of legacy products and modern products not being able to coexist in your home. We are working on a way to split your system so that modern products work together and get the latest features, while legacy products work together and remain in their current state. We’re finalizing details on this plan and will share more in the coming weeks.

While we have a lot of great products and features in the pipeline, we want our customers to upgrade to our latest and greatest products when they’re excited by what the new products offer, not because they feel forced to do so. That’s the intent of the trade up program we launched for our loyal customers.

Thank you for being a Sonos customer. Thank you for taking the time to give us your feedback. I hope that you’ll forgive our misstep, and let us earn back your trust. Without you, Sonos wouldn’t exist and we’ll work harder than ever to earn your loyalty every single day.

If you have any further questions please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Patrick Spence
CEO, Sonos

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M

macallan18

Enthusiast I

which seems like a stupid move.

I’m just speculating here, but you don’t run a multi million dollar company do you? Would you like to? :grin:

Financial history is full of clueless CEOs who ran companies into the ground. A lot of these people get jobs based on who they know. I doubt RIMMs track record was the selling point. A company can survive and even thrive under bold leadership as well as stupid leadership, but if leadership has both traits the company is often screwed.

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Finn1000

Enthusiast I

I have play 5 (2nd gen) & a play 3.

Didn’t think a £500 speaker or any speakers come to that, could potentially become defunct because it can’t handle the updates .

its a speaker, not a space rocket.. please!!!

Although non of this affects my speakers at the moment, the situation has immensely disappointed me.

Very unlikely I’ll be adding any more Sonos speakers to my two, unless there’s a satisfactory conclusion to all this .

Even then , no confidence even if they don’t do it now, they won’t do it later.

Strikes me as a red hearing to try to force customers to prematurely upgrade.

Ridiculous

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smallstool

Enthusiast I

Okay, everyone is venting their anger which is normal.

But can we for a second talk about what options us “legacy” users have after May.

We actually listen to the same, maybe 5 streaming radio channels. Today via Tunein Radio in our house when we dont stream music from our NAS.

Lets say that TuneIn changes something, making me unable to connect to the radio channels because sonos legacy devices can not decipher them.

I was thinking...What if i had another device that could receive the channels, recode them to some format Sonos legacy still supports and the re-cast them.

I dont know if a Raspberry pi would have enough processor power to do this, but there is an option in Sonos “Add radio station” so if i could get the Pi to receive the station, recode it and retransmit it, i would be able to stream radio channels to legacy devices for as long as the program on the PI was updated.

Alternatively i have a QNAP NAS that is always on, is there some app on this, that would be able to do this.

Have a look at this:

Add Aux to Sonos Using Raspberry Pi

:sunglasses:

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Connect Amp x 3, Connect x 1, Sub x 2, Playbar x 2, Beam x 1, Play 1 x 4, Play 3 x 2, Play 5 x 2, Boost x 1, Amp, Arc, 2 x Era 100, 2 x Era 300, Symfonisk x 2, Roam

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Razorhog

Enthusiast II

So my Connect:Amp that I bought in 2017 is End Of Life. A tough pill to swallow. Only %30 off to replace a perfectly functioning amp with the newer model is a tougher pill to swallow. But the Sonos Amp has been out for what, a year now? What if they come out with the next generation of Amp soon? Yay, I’m guaranteed updates for 5 years from when it gets discontinued - that is actually very nice. But if I had waited a bit and got the next one I’d be guaranteed a considerable amount more years in updates.

Anyone that buys Apple products should be familiar with MacRumors’ “Mac Buyer’s Guide” that lets you know if you should buy a certain Apple product based on typical product lifecycle.

Now we’ll need a “Sonos Buyer’s Guide”.

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DK_Madsen

Enthusiast II

Have a look at this:

Add Aux to Sonos Using Raspberry Pi

:sunglasses:

I know icecast, but this is a way to create one streaming channel using a Raspberry Pi, taking an AUX input as source.

What i want to do is futureproof my sonos legacy setup so when tunein changes encoding format and i can not stream directly i want the Pi to be a “format re-encoder and retransmitter”

Kind of like a program that takes a JPG file and transforms it into a PNG

Simple interface

Source stream →

Destination Stream format →

And then i just input “http://192.168.1.100:5000” for station one, “http://192.168.1.100:5001” for station two and so on into “add radio station” in the sonos app

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DK_Madsen

Enthusiast II

Now we’ll need a “Sonos Buyer’s Guide”.

That will be easy

For every product the answer will be :

Dont buy it

:laughing:

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saumil

Lyricist I

Sorry to pile it on, but I’m done with Sonos as well. I loved their products, have bought multiple ones and urged friends and family to buy them. I was considering ‘upgrading’ my home theater system to Sonos, but I realized my Denon amp and Boston acoustics speakers sound as great as when I bought them in 2006. If I decide to upgrade, might as well stick with ‘dumb’ speakers than spend money on a company that forces obsolescence and waste.

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HelterSkelter

Enthusiast II

I love my Sonos system, I’ve had it for years and was about to buy an extra unit for my bedroom - not now.

Like a lot of folks on this thread i bought my system as a high end system (which is what it was marketed as) for digitizing my extensive CD collection. I’m not interested in subscription music services and never will be. I want a reliable good quality system to run high quality music from a NAS. I deliberated for a long time and eventually bought Sonos on the recommendations from Sonos community users and never regretted it. Multi-room was a very welcome bonus that i love, dare i say it feels indispensable. However now i’m thinking… why didn’t i bite the bullet and buy a Cyrus!

If i buy relatively expensive audio equipment i don’t expect to get held to hostage after i have purchased the system. I expect it to do what it says on the tin, and what it was promised to do, until it breaks.

I can understand that there may potentially be issues running old sonos kit with new, but i don’t see that they would be insurmountable, and i don’t see why they can’t keep legacy systems so they continue to do what they have been doing for years - it’s a steady state system.

As others have said, it smacks of cynical attempt to drive sales. I fail to see how anyone with a brain cell would think the 30% discount would tempt sonos stalwarts to fork out their hard earned cash to replace legacy hardware… only to face the same situation in 5 years time. Do they really think we are that stupid?

The final straw is Sonos bricking perfectly good hardware - about as un-environmentally friendly as you can get.

It breaks my heart, and will be a pain in the arse for me but i will be switching. I will be doing my homework on network music players (aka CambridgeAudio) and look for separate multi-room solutions.

So congrats Sonos, rather then me spending my money on more Sonos kit, you’ve pushed me into the arms of your rivals.

I’d suggest moving on pragmatically like a number here have decided to. No longer recommend Sonos to others. Continue to use your system as a legacy system; if you are not interested in streaming services, you’re unlikely to be affected by using a legacy system in any way. If you’d like to expand your system, don’t buy new product, buy additional used-market units that are also legacy and thus extremely inexpensive comparatively. (Case in point: I just got a gen-1 Play5 for 100 USD following this mess). You (we) ought to be fine for years, provided Sonos doesn’t completely go under - that is the true risk in all of this. But even that is remote; I suspect they’d be acquired by another company before shuttered entirely. At any rate, I’m just going to pay attention to what’s happening, and carry on as usual, not being bothered by missing future software updates (which, to be frank, have offered me nothing in several years, except occasional system instability).

This sounds like a good solution, buy second hand if you need and run a complete legacy system. Having part modern in my set-up is a total no go, as a split system won’t work for me.

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IJN

Renowned Enthusiast I

Here’s an extract from today’s Evening Standard:

Spence said the company is working on a way for customers to split these systems so the speakers still work together but receive the appropriate updates for each device.

This reiterates my earlier speculation from a BBC article that its the legacy units’ inability to handle greater memory requirement updates which necessitates creating two populations of Sonos units - legacy and modern. The ES article goes further by saying that the speakers still work together but receive the appropriate updates for each device.

If the storm (hopefully in a train cup) is ONLY about handling software updates and they can indeed work together after having been updated, I’m HAPPY again.

The speakers WILL NOT work together if you choose to update. See reply that I got via Twitter today.

I can see and understand that reply which is consistent with most of what has been said over the last of 48 hours. However @sonossupport are not infallible and it’s a fair bet there’s confusion and mixed message there.

Both my earlier post on the BBC and Evening Standard indicate that the legacy and modern groups are being created to allow appropriate level updates to reach each group, presumably because the legacy components have insufficient capacity to handle what’s coming in software updates and would cause the update to the whole system to fail. The BBC hints, and the Evening Standard states Spence saying : the speakers still work together but receive the appropriate updates for each device.

Therefore, if we are lucky, we separate into two groups for purpose of enabling updates at capacity constrained levels. Lets say we have two types of software - Legacy basic and Legacy enhanced. All speakers can read legacy basic thereby allowing grouping for ALL speakers. However, when trying to run Legacy enhanced, this isn’t loaded into the legacy speakers so will only play on Modern units. It’s bit more difficult than saying trying to run Airplay2 on an older speaker which can just ignore the instruction which won’t have been recognised. However, if say the update is high res streaming, it would not be possible for the legacy speakers to play ball which would either cause the command to crash or the legacy speakers to drop out. It may be that this dropping out can be done automatically when there’s a request to execute a legacy plus command, leaving the legacy group out of the command (just as TV drops the players/ beams out of groupings).

Read the BBC and Evening Standard posts and this is possibly what is now intended, despite what a well intended @sonossupport guy may have been briefed to say. Things may have changed quickly.

If it transpires like I envisage, I’d be happy since we would have lost none of the basic existing functionality; gain limited use of new features and at our choice, can upgrade at leisure to newer components when we require these enhancements in other zoners.

If however, we DO lose WHOLE grouping, my anger and disappointment remains.

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R

RentalGuy

Lyricist III

I have over $5000 invested in my Sonos system. Now you want me to replace my (several) connect:amps which cost $550cdn each and still work fine with new $900 cdn amps, but btw they still won’t support new features because of my other legacy products. Oh, you are going to give me a 30% discount but the new amps are still more expensive than my old amps.. . You are suggesting that I have to buy everything twice!!!! This is idotic and contemptuous of your most loyal customers. If you want us to have new units for future product support THEN GIVE THEM TO US FOR FREE. NOT FOR SOME STUPID 30% DISCOUNT. I am absolutely furious. I was a loyal early adopter who, through my word of mouth, am responsible for tens of thousands of dollars of sonos sales… thanks alot for treating me like **** Sonos.

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