End of Software Support - Clarifications

At this stage I’m just glad Sonos haven’t sent me any more ransom demands in the last week.

That first email was so extreme I thought they were going to start sending me severed pieces of my system in the mail.

I agree, the “Same software on all devices” strategy is really dumb.

If the Play 5 struggles with ram and storage, it should be possible to fork out and take the firmware that is barely able to fit the play 5 and remove all of the functionality that it does not support anyway.

Airplay 2

Voice command / Microphone

Functions only used on other speakers...Soundbar, sub, etc.

I would bet they would be able to free up a bit of room.

This would be the legacy software, every time they made changes to the legacy part of the software for all the “modern” devices, they would just need to do the exact same changes in the legacy software.

It can not be the processor that is the problem, because it already does everything today, so why should it not be able to keep doing it...It’s not like anyone is expecting new processor hungry features on the legacy devices.

I would also expect them to do their best to update the legacy software in case for example spotify changes something on their stream….Unless it is something that the processor can not handle, but i would suggest that Spotify would also be interested in keeping legacy support for fear of loosing costumers that would no longer be able to listen to their music otherwise.

Having been a fairly regular contributor to this thread for the last week I agree that all that needs to be said has been said quite a few times now, so I’m ducking out unless Sonos release any new information that substantially changes things.

My parting observation to Sonos would be, don’t mistake this ducking out by me (and the many others that will make the same call sooner or later) as evidence that your strategy is working. I’ve just got better things to do with my time than keep rechewing this fat.

These threads will go dead, the tech press articles will die down but I’m still not going to buy any more Sonos kit. I’m still going to change my advice from ‘yes, it’s great’ to ‘it’s an expensive trap, avoid’.

Maybe the stock isn’t going to crash overnight, but I’d be very surprised if Sonos is still the making the same kind of sales a year from now.

@user_end_of_lifed 

me too.  It has cost me way too much time over the past week.  I am going to leave this thread now and wait until May, when I suspect all hell will break loose again.

And in the meantime, will I be buying or recommending any Sonos products?  Absolutely not!

You’ve hit the nail on the head. Delaying to May is in my mind, crazy. The current customer base won’t be buying or upgrading their units and they will be telling others to NOT buy Sonos. The reviews on the likes of Amazon won’t help either. The customers who do buy either don’t care or aren’t aware of the current situation. But they will in the future and history will repeat itself. Act in haste, repent at leisure, but in this case, they need to repent very quickly. It’s common sense in my world. Maybe when the reality hits the executives and shareholders, will they react quicker. I suspect we’ll discover more on Feb 5 when Partick Spence announces the company’s results. I hope so!

Do we know if Sonos are delivering new firmware for the current ‘modern’ devices in may or new devices? 

Are people upgrading to devices that are about to be phased out?

Good morning Ryan, I for one am encouraged by your message yesterday despite some frustrated days and reading and considering alternatives.

However (and not to add to any already repeated anger) I would repeat my several times posted request (and I think I speak for many folks) that we need a ROADMAP by the end of this week to reassure previously loyal high paying customers.

  We had the original email that lit the fire

  We saw your best intentions to inform - they were appreciated

  We saw your top man’s email to reassure

  …..All Good BUT….

  Now we need a solid WHAT IS IT and WHAT IT WILL NOT BE message by the end of this week.

That’s a good 7 day period since your CEO’s reassurance message and will put 90% of the fire out.

And I don’t mean a ‘WHAT IT IS CHRISTMAS LIST’ but a reassurance or STATEMENT OF INTENTION as to what precisely Sonos aims to do and by when.

For those of us not intent on burying Sonos and who want to carry on buying and enjoying, this will likely be enough to keep us listening and rational. In love with Sonos? That’s going to take a lot more wine, chocolates and roses … but you get the point.

Please drop this on your management teams desk this morning and defy them to say it’s not a reasonable way forward.

Yep I agree aswell, taking up too much time keeping up with this thread. 

As a follow up to my situation. 

I am returning my 5.1 beam system that was mis-sold in November. The situation left me with no Play:5 as it has left the building already. 

I will not longer support a whole house audio system that ‘splits’ into two houses and I informed SONOS that the contimue to market the products falsely on their website.

SONOS have offered to ship me a Play: 5 Gen 1 when I return my system. So, apart from all the hassle of boxing up the 5.1 beam system and getting UPS to pick it up etc I am back to the same system I had in November (once the Play:5 (gen 1) arrives. 

Being a SONOS users for 10 years I must have had a premonition as for some reason I kept the boxes for the 5.1 beam setup (I already have 2 other beams setups)  - maybe I knew I would return them. 

Now I start the search for alternatives. 

Are you kidding? Thousands of euro spent with your products and now I'm officially a rubbish sonos owner.

Thank you everyone

Yamaha MusicCast Legacy Products

I put all my SONOS equipment on eBay the day after the announcement and have been looking into an alternative whole house music product.  Yesterday I came across someone saying the old equipment can’t play Amazon Music, but the new equipment can.  I have Spotify, so I could care less, but I called Yamaha and talked to there tech support.  Here’s my paraphrasing of our conversation:

Me: “I have some old MusicCast products and I’m thinking of switching from Spotify to Amazon Music, but my equipment doesn’t support it.  What should I do?”

Yamaha: “You will need equipment manufactured after 2018 to support Amazon Music.  Here’s a link that shows which products support the different streaming services.”

Me: “So what happens to my old equipment if I get a new product to stream Amazon Music?”

Yamaha: “Nothing, they will continue to operate as before.”

Me: “So how do I listen to Amazon Music in a room with equipment that doesn’t support it?”

Yamaha: “Start Amazon Music in the room that does have equipment that supports it, then group it to the other room.”

Me: “That’s it?”

Yamaha: “Yes”.

SONOS - did you really screw up your equipment design or is this legacy equipment won’t work with non-legacy equipment just a cheap attempt to milk your existing customers out of more money?

 

I was going to buy a Play 1 for my office (I have 9 zones at home).  Because of this $hit$how I bought a pair of JBL Charge 4s for the same price.  They play in a Stereo pair and sound great in my little 14x14 room and I can take them on the beach in the summer.

I advocated for Sonos for 10+ years. I’m responsible for 40-50 zones that friends and family have purchased.

Now I’m done!

I dont want Sonos to die as such…

But on the other hand, i will stop feeding them, and if a lot of other users do this also, this might mean that i, and the others end up starving sonos to death, but i will not accept any responsibility, much like i would not accept responsibility for the starvation and death of a wild animal that tries to bite my hand, when i try to feed it or show extreme disgratitude when i feed it.

Am doing exactly the same. Just found the Sonos boxes in the garage for my Play:1’s and they’re going on Ebay.  It’s pretty obvious they’re next on the block, looking at the specs.  I had no idea about this when I started building my sonos system.

And am also looking at the Yahama Music Cast.   I know it’s maybe a bit hasty, but the lack of further clarifications coming out of Sonos is making me very nervous. Don’t want to be left with a pile of bricks, this time next year and I won’t support a company that seems to be heading down a planned obsolescence route.

Careful what you wish for with MusicCast.  Like Bose, Yamaha has a nasty habit of dropping their entire lineup of multi-room speaker systems when they don’t work out and/or can’t support new features.  Unlike Bose, who have only done it once (after 3 refreshes in 4 years), Yamaha has dropped their entire lineup at least 3 times.  

All Sonos products, whether legacy or modern, supports Amazon music service.   I’m not seeing how your conversation with Yamaha reflects on the technical capabilities of Sonos in any way.   Really, all you’ve provided is evidence that the Yamaha system is not as capable as Sonos. 

To make your point, you would need to find a feature that yamaha is doing with their equipment that Sonos is not, and that the memory/processing of related yamaha and Sonos devices are similar.  Even then, you would really need to do a full feature comparison to make a claim that Sonos design is inferior and/or Sonos is not telling the truth about the capabilities of it’s legacy equipment.

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.  Essentially what Yamaha is doing with Amazon music.  Other than that, there isn’t any specific streaming service that Sonos doesn’t do on all of their devices.

This is so true. I would not jump to Bose. I know nothing about Musiccast, but it's another locked in ecosystem like Sonos. If you can, wait until May before you ditch- unless you are getting good prices for your used devices ,😀

What Bose did to SoundTouch customers makes Sonos look like Santa Claus.  They just stopped selling all SoundTouch products and came out with a completely new lineup that was incompatible with the old.  No warning, no legacy and modern mixed systems, no upgrade discount.  They simply abandoned the devices, even those purchased right up to the very day they dropped the lineup.  All because they couldn’t get Alexa to work on SoundTouch units. 

On the other hand, Sonos had Alexa working on products that were over a decade old.  

Unfortunately you missed my point.  It’s not about which system is more capable, but how future products that add capability are integrated into the existing system.  Unlike SONOS, which is now saying legacy products will not work with modern equipment, Yamaha’s MusicCast, can operate seemlessly with legacy and modern equipment.

Until they drop the entire lineup and come out with something incompatible with the old stuff.  

Again.

For the 4th time.

I can’t find 3 previous variants of MusicCast.  I can find one, the MCX-1000 released in 2003 that was a CD ripping music server with wireless speakers.  It didn’t stream any music from the Internet.  The only thing the current version of products have in common with the 2003 product is the name.

Please source the other two times Yamaha has done this.

That was the first (and it was billed as multi-room) and streaming from the internet was in it’s infancy then.  The two other times were failed attempts that barely made it to market.  The current MusicCast stuff came out in 2015, and you are going to trust Yamaha more than Sonos?  Good luck. 

I got your point, I just don’t see evidence supporting your point.  You’re comparing that whatever functionality Sonos has for modern products that is not compatible with legacy products to Yamaha’s amazon music functionality.  Not all functionality is the same.  I actually gave you an example, airplay 2, where Sonos did exactly what you think they should do, which should at least give you a hint they have made modern and legacy products work together in the past when they command.

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.

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.

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.

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.