End of Software Support - Clarifications

Whilst I can appreciate the stance as of now you’ve caused irreparable damage to your company. You were made popular by the people who bought your products and trusted your brand, however the people can just as easily avoid your brand and go elsewhere. Sonos do not have monopoly and this brazen ignorance and arrogance by which you’ve alienated your loyal customers and I’ll not be forgotten. Your intention was your original action and had the people on this forum not stood up to you, you were happy to get away with it. Shame on you and the inevitable reduction of the size of Sonos as a brand. The damage is done.

Suggest we back off damaging the brand and give them short time to come back with a road map of possibilities… no doubt they’ll be kicking arse, scratching heads this weekend… what we want is whole home grouping for all current features on all devices and the ability to also access newer features on modern units… a bit like introduction of voice control/ Airplay2 - issue may simple be software for next new features too big to handle for legacy… few ideas of work rounds… give them a short breathing space to draw breath and come back… if its not deliverable, then back to war… treat this as a Christmas Day game of football in the trenches …

Last thing we want to do is PERMANENTLY DAMAGE Sonos and OUR kit if there is a way forward … IF

It's not happening.  New units once updated will not be able to synchronise with legacy units.  As soon as only the latest software will work with spotify etc, legacy units are landfill.

Sonos could choose to implement software that will allow newer units to be a master to legacy units and keep them all part of one environment.  Or they could develop a control box to sit on the network and do this.

The truth is they dont want to, it's far easier to cut loose the "legacy" hardware and hope people will upgrade.  If you are sat on £3k worth of connect amps, tough.  Sonos dont want to know.  They are moving to a 5 year premium subscription model for their hardware and that's it.

I’ve posted a couple of responses and spent hours reading through everyone else's whilst waiting for the ‘heat’ to disperse.

Seems like our loyal Sonos community comprises of a number of different types but principally 2 main ones:-

1. Those with extensive existing speaker set ups who added Sonos components, presumably to enhance the functionality of their existing systems

2. Those, like me, without an existing speaker system but who liked the idea of streaming their music collections throughout their homes and wanted a simple system that just worked.

The one thing that many of us have in common seems to be a lack of interest in ‘new features’!

I am not totally dumb but I don’t have a highly technical understanding of how these systems work. Everyone keeps mentioning APIs on the assumption that we all what they’re talking about - I don’t. When Sonos have introduced components such as Connects, Boosts, Ports and goodness knows what else I didn’t understand what they were or what they did. As a result I have a very simple Sonos set up comprising 3 ‘legacy’ Play 5s and 2 ‘modern’ but discontinued Play 1s. I also have a Bridge that came with the initial Play 5 which I still use but know isn’t any longer always necessary.

Because I don’t understand much of the jargon being used in this discussion please forgive me if this post sounds over simplistic.

I’d been considering buying a Beam ever since I bought a new Samsung TV  last year but it was a big expense and being rather ‘frugal’ I was waiting for a good discount. On Jan 5th this year I was in my local Curry’s store (UK retailer) and the Beam was reduced to £319.99, the cheapest I had seen it so I bought one, brought it home and immediately set it up.

When the Sonos bomb dropped in the form of their e mail announcement it gave me a quandary. Do I keep the Beam and hope that Sonos find a way to allow it to integrate with my ‘legacy’ Play 5s without losing the option for it to receive updates, or do I return it? As an in-store purchase, having now unsealed the packaging and set it up it wouldn’t ordinarily qualify for a refund. I have e mailed Curry’s to ask, in view of the fact that it ‘might’ not now integrate with my system - the purpose for which it was intended, and received an auto response saying they’ll reply within 6 days. As the price at Curry’s has since risen back up to £399.99 I could probably easily sell it on Ebay, possibly for more than I paid, so that is another option but selling on Ebay can be a hassle.

Leaving that aside for a moment, a few months ago some of you may remember there was a widespread problem with alarms whereby the chosen alarm, in my case TuneIn radio, would be replaced by Chimes. Along with many others I was in touch with Sonos Support, who I might just say were absolutely brilliant as they always have been on other issues in the past. The chimes problem which turned out to be a TuneIn issue, was resolved but during the course of my contact with support I mentioned other problems I’d been experiencing such as the queue suddenly playing spontaneously, old cleared queues playing on speakers at the same time as the alarm started playing in the selected room and so on. I was asked how many tracks were in my queue and in all innocence I told them that as I like to listen to my whole music collection throughout the house on shuffle play the queue contained over 50,000 tracks. In my technical ignorance I had no reason to suspect that this would be a problem since in my mind the track limit capability of the system was 65,000 tracks. It was explained to me that my ‘old’ devices were running out of memory and that when this happens all manner of weird things could occur. The solution was simply to disconnect and reconnect all my speakers and in future try to limit the number of tracks in the queue. I followed that advice and haven’t experienced the problem since. It does suggest though that current arguments about memory shortage do have merit but I expect I am rather unique in wanting to listen to my music in that way so maybe not many people have experienced what I did.

Anyway, going back to the Beam,  I need to know, sooner rather than later, whether the legacy and modern systems will be able to re-integrate. If they will it would be worth keeping it, if not then maybe not. I didn’t much care for it at first on discovering that Alexa can’t access my music library (not that I’m that interested in Alexa) and because where it is placed it blocks my TV’s remote receiver but it is growing on me and it was a good price.

I have other questions too. Can anyone in simple terms explain to me what is the practical difference between the latest Play 5 and the latest ‘One’. I expect the 5 to be more powerful but is there any other fundamental difference making the 5 worth £459 as opposed to the One at £199 at their respective RRPs?

With the larger memory of the Latest ‘One’ would I be able to go back to listening to a queue of 50,000 tracks without creating technical problems?

I will not rush to dispose of my legacy Play 5s as, like I said in a previous post, there are uses to which they can be put using the ‘line-in’ function even after they cease to function in their present capacity, whenever that might be.  I’d never consider the trade-in option mainly on environmental grounds plus the fact that the 30% allowance is miserly. However, what might prove appealing to me would be if Sonos were to offer me 3 Ones to replace the legacy Play5s at a heavily discounted price - just a thought, trying to think outside the box to find mutually beneficial outcome.

Reading about all the various alternative systems being discussed is interesting but very confusing to me since all seem to have drawbacks of one sort or another of their own and for me, lacking in technical expertise, one of the top considerations is ease of use and the quality of after-sale support.

If you’ve managed to wade through all that thanks for your patience.

If Sonos does what it says right now and divides the system into Legacy and Modern, with no posibility to sync between the 2 groups and says that it does so, because it is not possible to do it otherwise, and ROON then has a product that enables this functionality anyway, how bad is SONOS gonna look then.

Basically Sonos would have to say “We can’t do it, but ROON can” on SONOS hardware.

The backlash would be even bigger then.

I have left a review of the Beam on Amazon; one which, I hope, damns with faint praise rather than just condemning Sonos outright. The products are still very good; it is the company’s philosophy that has turned sour.

Until streaming service only works with the latest sonos api, then every legacy piece of hardware is junked

Was going to do the garden today but I think a day reading up on ROON sounds like time better spent. 

If it does what folks are saying then £119 a year is no big deal. Ironically I’d have paid that to Sonos for a full solution had they made it an option.

Can the answer really be so simple?

Probably one of the worst decisions/communications I have seen a company do. With just minimal effort you could foresee the backlash from a decision like this. Either the CEO just could not be bothered being involved in the communication upfront or he was not smart enough to understand the consequences of something like this.

It will piss people off, many people buy Sonos know they have a decent second hand value and base their purchase on that, you basically robbed everyone who has the old stuff. You could not give a shit about sustainability and think it is a great idea to throw away fully functional speakers because you want to up-sell. You create uncertainty for EVERYONE that buys a new product that you might brick it or not continue to evolve it in the near future. Sonos, you completely lost it to be honest and I have gone from once being a Sonos fanatic to really just feel you are a shitty company that deserves to be replaced by more humble and supportive companies. 

You only tend to own one mobile phone, so that model works.

Many people have many SONOS speakers all over the house that cost multiple £1,000s - to replace all speakers every 5 years does not work.

I think you are projecting an enormous amount of what you want to see on to the situation. There has been nothing from Sonos in any of these announcements that has entertained the idea that legacy and current will work together. NOTHING. 

The articles in the media you refer to also do not quote anyone at Sonos saying anything directly that changes anything. I think you give the journalists too much credit; some of them are doing the same thing you are and reading the wishy-washy language from Sonos and assuming the most positive interpretation of the ambiguity.

The number one reason to refuse sonos the benefit of the doubt is simply that we (referring to the members of the community who are technical, which isn’t everyone) know for a cast iron fact that there is NO barrier to an integrated system continuing to work other than Sonos’ business decision not to do so, yet Sonos have dodged this point in every statement and forum post they’ve made on this point.

They don’t want your old components to continue to work, they just want you to shut up and buy some new ones. They aren’t trying to do the best they can by you in the face of technical limitations, they’re trying to make the weakest possible commitments they can to make the complaining stop. That’s it.

No it doesn't.  But then some people will be replacing their ZP80s after 16 years. 5 years is a minimum. The ramp up in memory on more modern devices is huge. Yes, eventually that won't be enough, but I am confident that P:5 of mine will be playing fine 10 years from now. Not certain, but confident enough not to be throwing out the baby with the bathwater. 

Just for the record I have 12 Sonos components over 7 zones, accumulated since 2011