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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D

DK_Madsen

Enthusiast II

BTW, not all Sonos products support airplay 2. You can use airplay 2 on modern devices and then group with legacy devices to play that audio.

Not if you want to continue receiving updates for the modern products from May forward.

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D

DK_Madsen

Enthusiast II

Again, show a specific feature where Yamaha makes legacy and modern work together that Sonos says they can’t do.

You’re drinking the SONOS KoolAid. SONOS hasn’t specified WHY they’re breaking their equipment into legacy and modern. I’ve sent multiple requests to SONOS for clarification and have only heard crickets in return.

All the legacy devices are limited to 32 MB RAM and storage. All the modern devices have at least 64 MB RAM and storage. Do the math, it’s not that hard.

But to the point of my conversation with Yamaha, MusicCast products can operate in a Master--Slave relationship. Anything that can go to a modern piece of equipment can be send to a legacy product.

This is EXACTLY what SONOS is saying it can’t do. So there you have it.

Actually, Sonos has done exactly that when it comes to Airplay 2. That has nothing to do with the fact older devices simply do not have the resources to run newer software, it’s apples and oranges. MusicCast would be running into the exact same issues if they had units designed a decade ago with half to 1/32 of the resources of more modern units. There comes a time where you just can’t squeeze any more blood out of the stone.

The problem is that what sonos says is that the blood they already squeezed out of the stone can not be used any more.

The Play 5 and amp’s have a feature set TODAY…

If they just froze the development at THAT stage and THAT featureset and made the legacy units able to function in one big network, with the modern units but only support the features already there today i bet most people, would understand.

This is essentially what they suggest, if you keep everything legacy, but there is no REAL reason (Other than the desire to force people to buy a new speaker) the new devices could not be updated with new functions while keeping the older at the current featureset

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A

audiophile99

Lyricist III

The main advantage and brand identity of Sonos was wireless, multi-speaker INTEGRATION, and with this feature disappearing with the separation (dis-integration) of ‘legacy’ speakers, what market is Sonos trying to sell to? Sonos speakers are too expensive to compete with the likes of Amazon, Google, Bose, Yamaha, etc…, and high quality wired speakers will last for decades without threat of obsolescence or ‘bricking’ software (irreversible disabling of functional speakers). Why should new and/or existing customers invest in the Sonos ecosystem?

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melvimbe

Again, show a specific feature where Yamaha makes legacy and modern work together that Sonos says they can’t do.

You’re drinking the SONOS KoolAid. SONOS hasn’t specified WHY they’re breaking their equipment into legacy and modern. I’ve sent multiple requests to SONOS for clarification and have only heard crickets in return.

Correct. And if you don’t know what functionality changes are going to separate modern from legacy, how can you conclude that the functionality changes would be compatible with legacy? Maybe Sonos is only doing this break to make money, but they have no history of doing this in the past. In fact, they have a history of trying to make modern and legacy products work together.

But to the point of my conversation with Yamaha, MusicCast products can operate in a Master--Slave relationship. Anything that can go to a modern piece of equipment can be send to a legacy product.

This is EXACTLY what SONOS is saying it can’t do. So there you have it.

Yamaha did not tell you that ANYTHING in their modern equipment can be sent to a legacy product. They only told you that Amazon music operates that way. Not all features are the same. That’s where your logic falls apart.

I am not definitely concluding that Sonos has valid technical reasons.for this split between modern and legacy. As you pointed out, there is not enough information to conclude that. The lack of information does not mean that it’s only about money either. The yamaha systems functionality about Amazon says nothing about Sonos.

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Danny

melvimbe

BTW, not all Sonos products support airplay 2. You can use airplay 2 on modern devices and then group with legacy devices to play that audio.

Not if you want to continue receiving updates for the modern products from May forward.

Correct. The modern and legacy products need to be on the same system and the same software version

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Danny

D

DK_Madsen

Enthusiast II

Correct. And if you don’t know what functionality changes are going to separate modern from legacy, how can you conclude that the functionality changes would be compatible with legacy? Maybe Sonos is only doing this break to make money, but they have no history of doing this in the past. In fact, they have a history of trying to make modern and legacy products work together.

Until a week ago Sonos never even suggested that there were or would ever be legacy products that would not be able to retain the same level of functionality as it had at any given time, without sacrificing, the posibility to upgrade ANY device.

That alone is a change.

Sonos has NEVER to my knowledge said that it might be like that some day, and in fact i have seen multiple adverts and statements that has come from Sonos, that would suggest the opposite.

So, no they dont have a history of trying to make legacy and modern products work together...They have a history of making all their devices work together and have used the fact that it was a multiroom system that you just upgrade when the need arrives, in their advertising.

Deciding between :

Keep everything legacy and loose future upgrades for ALL units

Segregate legacy and modern devices into two networks that can not interoperate to get software and feature upgrades for modern devices.

Is a sudden kick in the groin for people that has always been told and believed that sonos is a premium multi room system that is a bit like a lego set...You just buy more bricks if you want to build a larger lego figure.

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D

DK_Madsen

Enthusiast II

Correct. The modern and legacy products need to be on the same system and the same software version

But that is only because sonos CHOSE that they should.

They could have made a final legacy firmware that would still be able to support the functions the legacy devices have today, and made the new firmwares talk to the speakers, using the limited featureset.

There is no law of nature that says that all speakers MUST be on the same firmware.

In a way, this philosophy is a major factor in the legacy units becoming legacy because they fill up the flash file with a firmware that also has all sorts of functions that the play 5 for example does not support.

Why not strip Airplay 2 routines, smart speaker / microphone routines and all routines, specific to the other speakers (sub, playbar etc) out of the firmware and only put core functions from the firmware on that speaker.

Maybe they would then suddenly have plenty of space to even update the legacy devices…

This is nothing more than an obvious money grab.

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melvimbe

If they just froze the development at THAT stage and THAT featureset and made the legacy units able to function in one big network, with the modern units but only support the features already there today i bet most people, would understand.

This is essentially what they suggest, if you keep everything legacy, but there is no REAL reason (Other than the desire to force people to buy a new speaker) the new devices could not be updated with new functions while keeping the older at the current featureset

We can speculate on that, but without out knowing more details about upcoming functionality/changes, and possibly the inner workings of the code that Sonos will never tell us, you can’t definitively conclude that.

Regardless of the answer, people can believe whatever they want, or conclude that whatever functionality change happens isn’t justification enough in their opinion. That may very well be the case, especially for people who have no seen a benefit to any of Sonos recent software changes. It sounds like a good reason to stay on a legacy system, or switch systems if you found a system that you believe better fits your needs.

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Danny

D

DK_Madsen

Enthusiast II

We can speculate on that, but without out knowing more details about upcoming functionality/changes, and possibly the inner workings of the code that Sonos will never tell us, you can’t definitively conclude that.

Regardless of the answer, people can believe whatever they want, or conclude that whatever functionality change happens isn’t justification enough in their opinion. That may very well be the case, especially for people who have no seen a benefit to any of Sonos recent software changes. It sounds like a good reason to stay on a legacy system, or switch systems if you found a system that you believe better fits your needs.

How is it speculation….The Play 5 does this stuff “today”, why would it not be possible “tomorrow”

If the sonos code is so poorly written that it need the EXACT same firmware in every speaker to function, maybe this is the time to begin improving.

Make no mistake, i will stay at the legacy level, i can not remember getting any significant feature in my 5-6 years as a sonos owner, so ill be fine.

The problem is the day, the streaming service i use make some small insignificant change to their stream, that will not work without a small insignificant change, that will never arrive to any of my 9 sonos devices because i have 1 legacy device.

I am going to wait until May and hope they find a way to fix this mess, and if not, i am going to begin looking for alternatives and get rid of the rest of my sonos equipment before it, is also obsoleted.

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melvimbe

Until a week ago Sonos never even suggested that there were or would ever be legacy products that would not be able to retain the same level of functionality as it had at any given time, without sacrificing, the posibility to upgrade ANY device.

That alone is a change.

Sonos has NEVER to my knowledge said that it might be like that some day, and in fact i have seen multiple adverts and statements that has come from Sonos, that would suggest the opposite.

I agree that the communication of this was rather poor. In hindsight, I think they should have done things a lot differently.

So, no they dont have a history of trying to make legacy and modern products work together...They have a history of making all their devices work together and have used the fact that it was a multiroom system that you just upgrade when the need arrives, in their advertising.

Ok, I don’t really care to debate the difference between ‘trying to make’ and ‘making’.

Deciding between :

Keep everything legacy and loose future upgrades for ALL units

Segregate legacy and modern devices into two networks that can not interoperate to get software and feature upgrades for modern devices.

Is a sudden kick in the groin for people that has always been told and believed that sonos is a premium multi room system that is a bit like a lego set...You just buy more bricks if you want to build a larger lego figure.

That is a different point, and I don’t disagree here. This is something that I somewhat saw coming based on my experience in the forums and general understand of IT, but I don’t think Sonos prepared and informed customers of this as well as they could have. Again, that’s in hindsight, so it’s much easier for me to speculate on how things could have been been better if done differently.

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Danny

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