End of Software Support - Clarifications

I don't think the majority of Sonos users want the system to do anything ‘more’, they just want it to play music like it did when we invested, so, your theory is not relevant.

I suspect you are being a troll.

I’m guessing that this has been asked before, but I couldn’t find it, so forgive any duplication. I have just bought a Playbase (still being sold) and have grouped it with 2 x Play 1 (no longersold) - I love this configuration and the way it sounds.

However, I expect Play 1 will be declared legacy some time before the Playbase - if this were to happen then potentially I would not be able to continue using the Playbase in this way. I bought it because I knew it could be used with the Play 1 pair to provide a surround sound experience - if this is not going to be possible in the future then I’m tempted to send the Playbase back.

i suppose the point is that certain combinations of units are very common and Sonos need to think about this. Thoughts?

Greetings, All (though SONOS probably won’t read this; they’ll all be lying down in darkened rooms or revising their CVs).

Having followed this for a few days of days (has it only been that long?), here are my (final) thoughts. 

I’ve been researching and collating quite a lot recently and this is the repository of my current impressions.  I’ll be posting it in both https://en.community.sonos.com/announcements-228985/end-of-software-support-clarifications-6835969 and https://en.community.sonos.com/controllers-software-228995/the-sonos-brexit-and-a-pragmatic-way-past-it-6836056 .  Apologies if this is long; it’s become complex; but is definitely no rant, just my personal views.

The CEO’s email does nothing to allay my own fears going forward.  I have legacy and ‘modern’ (for now) dumb, (not voice) audio devices within ear-shot of each other.  My only route is to keep my system locked in its present form as they confirm that legacy and modern system areas cannot be grouped in synchrony https://en.community.sonos.com/wireless-speakers-228992/will-i-still-be-able-to-group-new-and-old-products-together-and-receive-updates-on-newer-products-6836043 .  I suspect this is a consequence of the decision that SONOS made in its infancy to have distributed rather than centralized intelligence using a Precision Time Protocol (probably IEEE 1588-2002).  This is worth a read: https://www.sonos.com/en-gb/how-it-started but I expect it’s had consequences as soon as the design philosophy was set; the 65k limit for example and the inability to use anything other than PCM stereo.  SONOS architecture was set with “Any Song. Any Room.”  Frankly anything else has always been a stretch and I suspect this distributed intelligence would preclude the much vaulted request to have a central memory hub handling legacy devices.

SONOS’ recent decision over legacy devices may eventually open up lots of new possibilities, which the user community has been asking for on these pages for many years.  These could include bluetooth, and any number of ‘cinema’ enhancements (DTS or Dolby Atmos), but clearly voice seems to be something of a next step after buying Snips (https://investors.sonos.com/news-and-events/investor-news/latest-news/2019/Sonos-Announces-Acquisition-of-Snips/default.aspx).  In order to make use of this it will have to weather its recent storm.  For the time being SONOS is a cash-wealthy company; I think Snips cost $37M and back in September 2019 they announced a $50M stock buy back programme.  They apparently have $298.5M cash (https://thefly.com/landingPageNews.php?id=2957758&headline=SONO-Sonos-approves-M-share-repurchase-program). SONOS has also been bringing to market a lot of new devices and speakers in recent years.  While most of these are just new versions of old, the line-up has expanded with ‘architectural solutions’ (speakers to you and me) and the Move.  I think this has been long overdue and may have tempted new adopters to multi-room ecosystems to plump for SONOS in comparison to any of the increasing number of alternatives, especially for people with outdoor spaces.  The point here is even new versions or old solutions plus the new devices will have been expensive to develop.  I think SONOS has been wise to expand its line-up.

Among technology journalists, the reaction to SONOS’ decision over legacy devices has been a bit of a shrug, in my opinion.  Lots of “Well, what do you expect from tech?”, “SONOS has been brave in coming clean over this” and “This is probably the first, but not the last time we hear of this”.  In contrast, the user community has been livid.  Within a few hours of the announcement the first forum (https://en.community.sonos.com/announcements-228985/end-of-software-updates-for-legacy-products-6835470) had 1378 replies, 53464 views and reached 56 pages before being closed down for reasons that I cannot fathom, except SONOS didn’t like what they were hearing.  The later one (https://en.community.sonos.com/announcements-228985/end-of-software-support-clarifications-6835969) now stands at roughly 2250 replies, 97,882 views and ~103 pages and counting.  Almost entirely universally the comments are highly critical and damning of the recent decision.  They accuse SONOS of being arrogant and the announcement hastily announced, crude in nature and a slap in the face to those who have spent the most over the longest period and who have probably been the most evangelical about the brand for the longest time to friends and family. 

This loss of trust that very many now feel is precisely because most brand or ecosystem adopters don't (can’t) rush out and fill a house with devices; instead they build systems over many years as needs evolve and funds allow and when an announcement of this magnitude drops into the inbox of the most loyal customers then the consequence is the fury that was unleashed.  While SONOS did hint at this in their Annual Report (https://s22.q4cdn.com/672173472/files/doc_financials/2019/q4/52d86c5b-248f-4939-aa85-1489c1828e7f.pdf#page=17) and they spell out very many risk factors that the company faces; these are both external and internal to the company itself and some are as a result of being a relatively small and niche technology entity where the sector is changing rapidly and dominated by some extremely powerful competitors.  Many of these registered risks are probably familiar to business students through to company Directors however, a most relevant risk here it that: “We may choose to discontinue support for older versions of our products, resulting in customer dissatisfaction that could negatively affect our business and operating results.”  I wonder when the Board was signing off this Report whether they really understood the potential for this risk to bite and whether they have accurately modelled it for financial and reputational impact.  Only they know but, I imagine they have been completely blind-sided by the response.  The evidence is here: https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.sonos.com, with 80% ‘Bad’ reviews out of 910 posted and a TrustScore of 1.3 out of 5.  This is just about as low as it’s possible to get since the lowest post is 1; secondly, that this community topic (https://en.community.sonos.com/announcements-228985/end-of-software-support-clarifications-6835969) and the previously closed one (https://en.community.sonos.com/announcements-228985/end-of-software-updates-for-legacy-products-6835470) are those with the biggest number of replies, by far.  Thirdly, their share price has taken a hit (down ~2%, https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/sono), but this will take some time to work through.  SONOS are expected to post revenue of between $1.365B and $1.4B, roughly 9.5% annual growth (https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/01/05/why-sonos-stock-climbed-128-in-december.aspx) though it will be interesting to know more when they announce their most recent financial results and host a Q&A (https://investors.sonos.com/news-and-events/investor-news/latest-news/2020/Sonos-Announces-Date-for-First-Quarter-2020-Financial-Results-and-Conference-Call/default.aspx).  Lastly, though the journalists are a bit ‘shruggy’ the rest of the web is not. A quick online search reveals all you need to know.

Sadly I think SONOS’ philosophy has been crumbling for quite a while.  Recent and not so recent updates that offer system improvements have often resulted in the opposite in my opinion.  Here are several examples:

1    Upcoming changes to ‘On this iPhone or iPad’ Playback (https://en.community.sonos.com/announcements-228985/upcoming-changes-to-on-this-iphone-or-ipad-playback-6826585) is the third most replied to forum topic and describes the loss of a feature.

2    Updates to the Desktop Controller Coming Soon (https://en.community.sonos.com/announcements-228985/updates-to-the-desktop-controller-coming-soon-6813300) is the fourth most replied to form topic and begins with a long-requested visual update, but most people preferred the blue version it seems.  Importantly though this ‘refresh’ removed:

• Setting up or transferring a system
• Adding a player to existing system
• The ability to bond/unbond players (surrounds, stereo pairs, or adding a Sub).
• Registering players
• TV setup for Beam, Playbase, and Playbar,
• Enabling parental controls
• Network settings and management
• Line-in settings
• Renaming a Room
• Opting in or out of a beta program
• Resetting your Sonos account password (you can still do so on a computer via sonos.com)

This turned out to be an attack on many fronts.  Importantly, it requires users to have up to date tablets or phones to do the management of the system, whereas it used to be possible to manage the entirety of the system with the desktop application and allowed older devices to still be used as everyday controllers.  SONOS’ decision here is decidedly anti-ethical and a non-sustainability practise and seemingly against their Responsibility pledge for wider Product Design and Supply Chain (https://www.sonos.com/en-gb/sustainability), but SONOS have never really opened up about this.  Importantly it also prevents users, or installers maintaining systems using Remote Desktop applications, which was nuts.

3    Android Devices no longer able to join SonosNet (https://en.community.sonos.com/announcements-228985/android-devices-no-longer-able-to-join-sonosnet-6825471).  I asked SONOS help about this and their response was two-fold.  Firstly removing the feature, which was little used, apparently (though looking through support revealed a solid fan base) would free up device memory for other purposes.  Also, SONOS sort-of feared it might be related to electronic interference between the network and amplification circuitry.  These are my words but I did have a P5s replaced under warranty for issues around electronic interference, which SONOS said they could not replicate.  At the time it was a fantastic managed-AP though, well if you used Android.

The sad thing is that SONOS seemingly are very closed about their decision making any have never allowed user options.  The system is locked and updates irreversible.  Technically I don’t quite buy this since it is possible to reverse a beta upgrade, so it must be theoretically possible to wind the firmware back.  If I could, I’d probably like to revert to something around the 6.x or 7.x era and if I could fix the volume down ramp I would.

It’s not all doom and gloom as SONOS have introduced a few new features, most recently Amazon music HD though there is confusion about whether it really is HD if it’s called for by Alexa and the company are promising a fix.  Also, the loss then reinstatement of Audible, where the fix took quite a while to be sorted.  And this is the crux of issues into the future.  SONOS has been quite good about telling customers in advance when third party integrations will stop working and have a desire to maintain this, but if you have a legacy device in your system this will stop though when the third party company changes its protocols you will lose functionality and I imagine there won’t be a fix for this. 

Another driver for UK (and VPN) users could be related to the fact that the BBC is due to release a significant update for BBC SOUNDS in 2020 (https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/help/questions/supported-devices/connected-tv) albeit for smart TVs.  It might just be the case that this also brings the on-demand features of BBC SOUNDS to SONOS and other aggregators and streamers, but presumably not if your system is legacy.  The on-demand content of BBC Radio, music and podcasts now through SOUNDS has been a perennial request to SONOS across many request forums.  By the way if you listen to BBC Radio on your SONOS then look at this: http://steveseear.org/high-quality-bbc-radio-streams/ for advice.  While there’s less meta-data available I find these streams more reliable than from the aggregators.  I used to use minimserver (https://minimserver.com/) to handle this, but now access the BBC streams directly.

Final issues: ~7W on ‘standby’ isn’t really acceptable anymore.  It might have been fine when lightbulbs were 60-100W but we can now light a house for the electrical cost of SONOS on standby, but this isn’t a rant!

So where does this leave us all?  SONOS are definitely in a flat spin about all this, or should be.  It’s highly unusual for the CEO to apologise about the way they handled a situation, but they are seemingly staying firm.  As mentioned above if I cannot group modern and legacy then all my system will remain legacy and I’ll probably ditch SONOS, which will be a pity.  A lot will depend on the situation between now and May and also what happens to the company and its customer relations and financial (sales) situation.  At worst I may keep some small areas of SONOS but expect something else to largely take over and the system to be relegated.  I bought into “The smart home sound system.” And SONOS’ “Our DNA – The connected home.” (https://www.sonos.com/en-gb/our-company)  This has to be one system, not two and trading up with a 30% discount when prices were recently raised makes me look the fool.  What this exactly means will depend on imagined future habits and where the software and hardware platforms go, plus what happens to various streaming services.  I don’t think it’ll be BOSE, more likely Yamaha for their integrated amp setup, plus standalone speakers, or something bespoke.  There world is moving very fast!  Will see…, but I will be extremely hesitant and cautious about recommending the SONOS platform to anyone in the future.  The brand has sadly lost my trust, but I understand that everyone is free to make their own decisions. 

Anyway, I hope this post might help you be better informed so you can make your choices.

Cheers, All and well done for reading this far.  Remember, it is only stuff!