End of Software Support - Clarifications

@attacama40 : Sonos probably want to commit to a date that is as early as possible, but only once they are sure of delivering on it. At the same time, they must have felt the need to keep folks like you as well as the regulars interested, hence advancing this announcement from the May date they have been talking up for a long time.

It is also likely that the virus thing has played a role in this earlier release because who the hell knows what will be the external situation in May?

I also doubt you will get more clarity from Sonos on this at this time.

Yeah and in a sense that’s ok. As mentioned before, I was one the Audible users who lost Audible for what was it, two years or so … then it came back. Unlike many I don’t mind that so much. 

Sonos may be flimsy at promise dates but (in my experience) when they do deliver, they do so well. The Audible example was a good one for me.

Hopefully the same (in a better time frame) for the High Res thing.

And although I make out I know zero on the HR thing, I did buy Tidal and Roon and did tests with a few pieces and it was sublime. Shostakovich: Chamber Symphony in c minor, Op. 110a. Arranged by Fiachra Trench. Chemical Brothers EML Ritual & Battle Weapon 6. Muse Exogenesis suite. Even an accoustic Foo Fighters track called Come Alive. The difference was night and day when you stop to genuinely listen and with decent speakers. Surprised to say the least.

Knowing about High Res now genuinely keeps my interest. And equally genuinely I was on the brink of buying 4 or 5 new boxes. Purely as I’d waited, had a little money come in and was wanting to. The early year mess sort of spoiled that for me and I wish I’d never read any of it. 

So it is intelligent stuff by Sonos to let this out the bag. it does influence those at the see-saw point (me) …. if it’s in a nice time frame (this year) and really sounds the business then maybe I still get to spend £2-3k+ on new Sonos gear. 

Now if they can just make sure that S2 supports ChromeOS then I will have Sonos tattooed on my arm and raise a flag outside the towers :-) 

In this race you are likely to never catch up if you wait until your devices fail, before upgrading.

When the S1 products finally die, and you upgrade, you will probably upgrade to S3 products and some of your current S2 products will still keep you from updating.

There are plenty of sonos products out there that only has double the ram/rom as the products legacied this May.

Right now i only have 1 legacy product, a Play 5 in my kitchen, but before that one dies, i am probably looking at having to replace my currently 4 Play 1 gen.1 speakers as they will be legacied before the 5 dies.

Better to stay on legacy and then replace the sonos speakers with something else, when they burn out.

I have been looking a bit into converting my play 5 from a sonos speaker, to a “Raspberry PI” speaker.

I recon i can reuse the power supply, the speakers and the amplifier. I could just use the line in, but i think i will see about getting the Raspberry stictched into the Play 5 to be able to bypass anything “sonos” in the speaker.

There is a equally cheap but simpler route to this - wire a Echo Dot to the Line in jacks; job done. Add a Show 5, you get what no Sonos product can do even today, album art. And if you want Echo to voice command music play from your NAS with album art, only then do you need to inject a Raspberry between the Echo and Sonos.

Yeah, but i dont want any smart speakers with built in spy-microphone, my mobile is placed in a shelf in the house where it will not be able to pick up much conversation, i dont like the idea of plastering my house with microphones.

Also, this is just the beginning, when they legacy the play ones i have, i will try to convert them as well, and they have no line in.

Fair enough, but there is a way to address privacy concerns by simply keeping the mic off, or, in the Show, just the camera covered. And either Echo device is still able to work from the phone via casting where Amazon Music is concerned.

If you are going to stay in legacy mode till units burn out, as I am, there will be no need to convert the 1 units when they turn legacy. 

I added Pi because I found out via @castalla that it offered a way that even I could make work, to start getting album art for my NAS - again, something that Sonos does not offer today.

Can one use Pi, with Sonos speakers that lack line in, using them as dumb speakers? I doubt it, but am open to be corrected.

You could simply use a Pi zero  and  feed audio output to the Sonos line in.

But how to get it to start play from the NAS - at this time I have to have an Echo voice command to do that. And that also would work only for Sonos with line in.

How do you suggest that i make sure the microphone is off ?

There is no physical button that cuts the connection to the microphone, just a soft button that tell’s the software to turn off the microphone and turn on a LED to indicate this.

If you think that the microphone can no be turned on even though you have pressed the button and even though the LED is on, i suggest you watch this video.

You may talk about tin foil hats, and you might call me crazy, but i am NOT willing to install microphones in my house, and certainly not microphones from a USA based company, that has been known to collaborate with NSA.

There isn’t an easy way to get to get Pi to display NAS artwork to display on a Show (only way is via Mediaserver skill and even then it’s a bit clunky and a bit hit and miss - it also costs because you need a monthly sub. for the skill to get a premium feature)..  It is a lot easier to set up a pi with LMS and display on a Google Nest Hub - you could sync the Hub and Sonos, so theoretically it could work.  

[Can I suggest we redirect Pi debates to my other thread on LMS ?]