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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Show previous replies

G

Goodbye Sonos

Enthusiast II

Very welcome announcement - too late for me.

I am sitting listening to a pair of stereo speakers with a separate sub powered by a 192kHz 24 bit DAC on a raspberry pi running piCorePlayer streaming from another raspberry pi with LMS installed on it holding my music collection and quite frankly it knocks the sonos kit into a cocked hat by comparison.

I would never have looked away from Sonos had this debacle not occurred - but it did, and I did and now I have a much better solution for me. More pi’s are on order to power other zones.

These pi’s are so cheap and the dac’s cost very little too - incredibly cheap for the astounding quality of sound and the usability of the Squeezer app on Android is great too.

So there it is… too late for me

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User694694

Enthusiast II

Very welcome announcement - too late for me.

I am sitting listening to a pair of stereo speakers with a separate sub powered by a 192kHz 24 bit DAC on a raspberry pi running piCorePlayer streaming from another raspberry pi with LMS installed on it holding my music collection and quite frankly it knocks the sonos kit into a cocked hat by comparison.

I would never have looked away from Sonos had this debacle not occurred - but it did, and I did and now I have a much better solution for me. More pi’s are on order to power other zones.

These pi’s are so cheap and the dac’s cost very little too - incredibly cheap for the astounding quality of sound and the usability of the Squeezer app on Android is great too.

So there it is… too late for me

Sounds like a very cool solution for anyone that likes to tinker and dable.

Translate

G

Goodbye Sonos

Enthusiast II

Very welcome announcement - too late for me.

I am sitting listening to a pair of stereo speakers with a separate sub powered by a 192kHz 24 bit DAC on a raspberry pi running piCorePlayer streaming from another raspberry pi with LMS installed on it holding my music collection and quite frankly it knocks the sonos kit into a cocked hat by comparison.

I would never have looked away from Sonos had this debacle not occurred - but it did, and I did and now I have a much better solution for me. More pi’s are on order to power other zones.

These pi’s are so cheap and the dac’s cost very little too - incredibly cheap for the astounding quality of sound and the usability of the Squeezer app on Android is great too.

So there it is… too late for me

Sounds like a very cool solution for anyone that likes to tinker and dable.

Honestly its so easy to configure - have look at https://www.picoreplayer.org/main_getting_started.shtml

its built on a linux distribution of just 12Mb in size

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S

sonosg

Enthusiast I

Sonos S2 will enable higher resolution audio technologies for music and home theater.

And who will be the first to accuse Sonos of peddling Snake Oil?

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User694694

Enthusiast II

From Engadget:

“Sonos says will enable some new experiences going forward. While the update isn't coming out until June, the company did share a few features that it'll enable. One is a new grouping feature: if you have multiple Sonos speakers in your house, you'll be able to set up custom room groups, like all your speakers on the first floor. Currently, you need to re-group all your speakers on an individual basis, but this should make common grouping configurations much easier.”

https://www.engadget.com/2020-03-17-sonos-s2-app-operating-system-update-june.html

Why does it feel like getting any info about this is like some high school scavenger hunt? Why am I just finding out about this from an Engadget article when on the same say Sonos releases a statement about high resolution audio in the S2 update. If Sonos doesn’t want to release this info, fine, thats their right, but why fragment the information? This is a great feature that I think a lot of people have been asking for and certainly another carrot to upgrade. Why not let us know in the same statement?

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C

castalla

Local Superstar

Very welcome announcement - too late for me.

I am sitting listening to a pair of stereo speakers with a separate sub powered by a 192kHz 24 bit DAC on a raspberry pi running piCorePlayer streaming from another raspberry pi with LMS installed on it holding my music collection and quite frankly it knocks the sonos kit into a cocked hat by comparison.

I would never have looked away from Sonos had this debacle not occurred - but it did, and I did and now I have a much better solution for me. More pi’s are on order to power other zones.

These pi’s are so cheap and the dac’s cost very little too - incredibly cheap for the astounding quality of sound and the usability of the Squeezer app on Android is great too.

So there it is… too late for me

Sounds like a very cool solution for anyone that likes to tinker and dable.

Honestly its so easy to configure - have look at https://www.picoreplayer.org/main_getting_started.shtml

its built on a linux distribution of just 12Mb in size

You should install the Material skin plugin on LMS, and then Kiwi Browser on Android. Fantastic controller solution.

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It's the courageous bee's knees - all 6 🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝. - - - - - Make Sonos Great Again - - - - -

G

Goodbye Sonos

Enthusiast II

Very welcome announcement - too late for me.

I am sitting listening to a pair of stereo speakers with a separate sub powered by a 192kHz 24 bit DAC on a raspberry pi running piCorePlayer streaming from another raspberry pi with LMS installed on it holding my music collection and quite frankly it knocks the sonos kit into a cocked hat by comparison.

I would never have looked away from Sonos had this debacle not occurred - but it did, and I did and now I have a much better solution for me. More pi’s are on order to power other zones.

These pi’s are so cheap and the dac’s cost very little too - incredibly cheap for the astounding quality of sound and the usability of the Squeezer app on Android is great too.

So there it is… too late for me

Sounds like a very cool solution for anyone that likes to tinker and dable.

Honestly its so easy to configure - have look at https://www.picoreplayer.org/main_getting_started.shtml

its built on a linux distribution of just 12Mb in size

You should install the Material skin plugin on LMS, and then Kiwi Browser on Android. Fantastic controller solution.

Yeah I’ve been thinking of installing the MS extension

Translate

K

Kumar

Sonos S2 will enable higher resolution audio technologies for music and home theater.

And who will be the first to accuse Sonos of peddling Snake Oil?

Thank you for that very good question - it raised a good laugh at a time when laughing is more therapeutic/needed than ever. As did the silence of those that maintained that Sonos never blinks in the face of consumer backlash right up to the time they removed the recycling condition attached to the 30% discount - in the face of just that backlash.

It will also be interesting to see how Sonos markets this feature, having gone on record saying that the science does not justify its introduction. But marketer memories are always conveniently short when needed to be so.

Its introduction was inevitable though, and I remain to not be interested in it, so for me staying in legacy system mode remains a no brainer.

More interesting will be to see what genuine new innovations Sonos adds to units no longer encumbered with the need to remain compatible with 32Mb legacy ones.

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A

attacama40

Headliner I

The difference between Sonos and my organisation is that everything would stop, we would fly out and meet in a lofty boardroom (somewhere in Europe and not go home until it was done) and cast a battle plan …. implement and win every one of our customers back. At ‘nearly’ any cost. We would not play with comms and maybe’s we would take the oxygen out of the complainers lungs until they stopped complaining.

Sure. At the end of the day you would have won every one of your customers over at the cost of ‘nearly’ going insolvent.

I notice when the going gets a little tough facts wise that folks like to extrapolate and cut and dice very specific words and word combinations instead of going with the tone and direction :-)

Not to undermine your position or overplay mine but when you live and work in that world then you take a different view. I don’t know your role and experience and would not pretend to. I know mine.

Is about considered comms, is about knowing your audience, playing to them, not at the cost of all else as I’ve mentioned many times in this thread. But clear and early.

We can cut and dice and play games or we can recognise the actions of an organisation …. getting it wrong and getting it right. Being able to recognise both things is dispassionate and honest. I can and have and have thanked them when it appears good and raised comment when it appears poor.

Not that it’s hugely important but I struggle to understand the blind faith and default defence that some folks have.

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A

attacama40

Headliner I

Very welcome announcement - too late for me.

I am sitting listening to a pair of stereo speakers with a separate sub powered by a 192kHz 24 bit DAC on a raspberry pi running piCorePlayer streaming from another raspberry pi with LMS installed on it holding my music collection and quite frankly it knocks the sonos kit into a cocked hat by comparison.

I would never have looked away from Sonos had this debacle not occurred - but it did, and I did and now I have a much better solution for me. More pi’s are on order to power other zones.

These pi’s are so cheap and the dac’s cost very little too - incredibly cheap for the astounding quality of sound and the usability of the Squeezer app on Android is great too.

So there it is… too late for me

And this is the point that some on the thread just don't seem to get .…. how many examples are needed to underline the credibility.

I have also entered that new pool and whilst not quite as far to the deep end as you, I’m not far off.

The announcement I can’t fully absorb yet but it sounds good overall. And either way I appreciate the effort to communicate status. Good or bad. And that is key …. customers can locked into a holding pattern with the right noises regularly made. If you don’t get the messages you will land elsewhere as you have.

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