End of Software Support - Clarifications

It is quite possible that for a manufacturer buying in bulk, there is no difference in costs by using the higher capacity chip; the retail prices one sees for any product have little to do with costs, and a lot more to do with what the market will bear.

It is also possible that the 256 Mb chip in the form needed for incorporation into the unit was not even available to Sonos anymore.

I also suspect that it not possible to any more make digital audio kit in high volumes that is NOT Hi Res capable; whether to enable that capability depends on many factors including backward compatibility and music play stability demands.

While I will be staying forever in legacy system mode as far as all my Sonos products are concerned, and have no interest in Hi Res audio, it will be interesting to see exactly how Sonos make use of this additional memory that they will have bought at the cost of significant present user base goodwill. Particularly because none of the present competitors are offering anything more than what Sonos offers today, except the Hi Res thing. I have 64Mb equipped play1 units that could not, even if I wanted them to, do much more than what they already do today, but it will be interesting to see what Sonos does with the 256Mb and then 1Gb expansion of their sand pit. I have a feeling that much of that will be in the sphere of TV audio.

But Sonos says that they need the same firmware on every unit in the system….How will they fit that firmware onto the sub, with only 64 Mbyte of ram and rom ?

This is literally their own argument for not being able to update the firmware in the play 5, that it does not have enough flash and ram to continue running the newer firmwares.

@DK_Madsen, if you take a closer look you’ll see that only the voice-enabled products and the Sonos AMP have got 1 GB RAM.

Sorry I don’t get what you are talking about. The Sub is running the very same firmware build as all the other Sonos products do. You are purposely confusing facts.

@DK_Madsen I see your point about what will happen with the Sub when Sonos firmware starts needing more than 64 mb and it deserves an answer. But I don't know what that answer is.

Further to the above, my 64mb play 1 units of 2014 are also not going to remain modern for long, but as long as they keep doing what they do today, I don't have a problem. But I would not today buy a new 64 mb driven Sub, for concerns of how much more than 5 years life - the present Sonos promise - it has.

Sonos has said that they need to make the Play 5 and a few other units legacy because the firmware HAS to be the same on every single sonos unit in your system, otherwise they will not “communicate”.

The reason they legacy these products is that the firmware can not be held within 32Mbyte anymore.

So when they reach the 64 Mbyte limit, they will have to legacy all 64 Mbyte products as well.

I have earlier suggested that they just make a branch of firmware for the Play 5 for example, where they remove every feature that the 5 does not support from the firmware, as this will offcourse free up some room in the firmware.

Play 1 does not support airplay, alexa, etc, so remove those features from the 5 firmware, then there is room if they need more space for changes to the 5’s core functionality (Streaming from the internet, streaming MP3’s from a NAS and so on) and it will still be able to do multi room, even though the other units get’s new functions and firmware.

Which raises another interesting point. I assume that the Sub being made and sold today is 64 mb. And Sonos is promising full support for that for 5 years from today. 

Does that mean that Sonos will restrict firmware size to 64 mb for the next five years and not use the memory available in the 256 mb and 1 gb units for another five years?

Again, I don't have a good answer to this question as well.

@DK_Madsen Sonos say that unless units are on the same firmware version, they cannot communicate or do multi room. Which is why your idea doesn't work.

Why Sonos says this is not something I can challenge, not knowing what's under the hood of their system. Or, even if I knew it, not being able to understand it!

I’m not in manufacturing and have no idea what sort of deals Sonos made when purchasing it’s hardware components.  As a hypothetical, perhaps Sonos was able to get a bulk rate for memory over a multi year period on contract.  Another aspect is that changes in hardware surely comes with significant costs in testing out the new hardware, sourcing, manufacturing, etc.  The point being that I don’t think it’s simply a matter of slapping in new hardware when the price drops low enough and throwing it out in the market.  That may be the case for larger companies like Amazon who can create a brand new echo dot every year at a high enough volume that associated costs aren’t nearly as relevant, but not sure that is the case for Sonos and other relatively smaller companies.

As far as all the different products using the same firmware version, I don’t believe that means that every piece of code is 100% identical on each product. The same have the same OS and various drivers where it needs to and makes sense, but products that don’t have a certain feature surely don’t have the coding for that feature.  A play:1 surely doesn’t have the coding to support airplay, voice control, or process a dolby digital stream and send channels to surround speakers.  Likewise, a sub doesn’t even need to have the ability to directly stream from a streaming service.  There certainly appears to be a common base code on Sonos products, and Sonos has stated so by saying the share the same firmware version, but I don’t see that meaning that products have code in memory that they cannot utilize.

As far as whether it makes sense to buy an older model like the play:5 gen 2 or playbar right now, IMO, it’s not just a matter of longevity as it is a matter of potential new features that a play:5 gen 3 or playbar gen 2 could bring.  

Considering that Sonos have managed to support up to 15 year old gear until today, they will probably manage to support devices with twice the RAM/ROM of the now legacy gear for at least 8 years from present. A lot can happen in 8 years, the Sub (or any other Sonos product for that matter) may become defective and has to be replaced with a hypothetical 2nd gen Sub anyway for instance. There’s no point in driving yourself mad about anything that may or may not arise in a few years time.