Pairing a Play:1 with the new Sonos One

Totally agree about misrepresentation, hence my interest in a teardown and reviews saying different.

How about a comment on the fact I have personally seen through the grills and the differences are so obvious, in my opinion a teardown is not needed?

Yeah no problem. Reviews mention a different internal layout and it's not so easy to make detail out through the grill.

No detail needed. The audio components are quite obviously visually different. The woofers are larger on the One, the tweeters are mounted differently, and the shapes on the tweeter cones are not alike.

So I purchased a new Sonos one speaker just about 30 minutes ago on Amazon. Then I saw a comment on a Youtube review that this doesn't work with the existing Sonos one. That led me to do a Google search. A Google search for "using sonos one with play one" brought me to this thread. Long story short: I've cancelled the order.

A couple things:
- "Sonos One" and "Sonos Play 1" - the naming is confusing. Call it something entirely different. It's a different product and isn't backwards compatible, at least not yet. It's misleading because it makes it sound like I'm getting a better version of the existing product when in fact they're $200 non-compatible speakers.

- When you send this product to reviewers, have them explicitly call out it's not backwards compatible with existing Sonos one speaker. Also, call that out in your marketing videos on Youtube. MAKE IT OBVIOUS TO YOUR CUSTOMERS. DO NOT MISLEAD THEM. Staying quiet about it is just as bad as if you lied to me and said it's backwards compatible. This isn't rocket science, folks.

The fact that you guys withhold that information means as a customer, you have lost my trust. I have one Sonos speaker that I was gifted recently. I liked it alot and was considering purchasing a play 5, one additional sonos one, and a sub. This was going to be over a $1K investment in your products. Because you're not transparent, now I don't trust you guys.

Customer lost. Have a great day.

So I purchased a new Sonos one speaker just about 30 minutes ago on Amazon. Then I saw a comment on a Youtube review that this doesn't work with the existing Sonos one. That led me to do a Google search. A Google search for "using sonos one with play one" brought me to this thread. Long story short: I've cancelled the order.

A couple things:
- "Sonos One" and "Sonos Play 1" - the naming is confusing. Call it something entirely different. It's a different product and isn't backwards compatible, at least not yet. It's misleading because it makes it sound like I'm getting a better version of the existing product when in fact they're $200 non-compatible speakers.

- When you send this product to reviewers, have them explicitly call out it's not backwards compatible with existing Sonos one speaker. Also, call that out in your marketing videos on Youtube. MAKE IT OBVIOUS TO YOUR CUSTOMERS. DO NOT MISLEAD THEM. Staying quiet about it is just as bad as if you lied to me and said it's backwards compatible. This isn't rocket science, folks.

The fact that you guys withhold that information means as a customer, you have lost my trust. I have one Sonos speaker that I was gifted recently. I liked it alot and was considering purchasing a play 5, one additional sonos one, and a sub. This was going to be over a $1K investment in your products. Because you're not transparent, now I don't trust you guys.

Customer lost. Have a great day.

It is compatible, as are all Sonos devices since the start of time. It just can’t be stereo paired with a PLAY:1, because they are different speakers. If Sonos had made them physically more different, there would be no complaints.

Aesthetically speaking, as an owner of two black Play 1s, the black Sonos One looks completely different. You might be able to ignore the smaller differences between the two white ones. So even if they do manage to pair the different speakers up, it’s not going to be much use to us obsessive compulsives. :8

I won't be buying a 'smart' Sonos speaker until I can stereo pair it with my old one. If they don't fix this issue I'll just sell my old one and get out of the Sonos ecosystem altogether. What a joke.

I won't be buying a 'smart' Sonos speaker until I can stereo pair it with my old one. If they don't fix this issue I'll just sell my old one and get out of the Sonos ecosystem altogether. What a joke.

That it the most absurd thing I have heard in a while. So what exactly are you going to buy instead, one of the myriad of Sonos' competitors who don't even give you the ability to pair speakers?

I won't be buying a 'smart' Sonos speaker until I can stereo pair it with my old one.
I agree with you here, Paul: for the price paid, it's not unreasonable to expect more. From my perspective, I've always found the "identical speaker" pairing restriction artificial and limiting. Same goes for bonding constraints. While it might not always be audibly optimal, the flexibility to bond/pair any-to-any adds huge value. Why not have TruePlay do its best to optimize mismatched speakers? Let the consumer choose what is "optimal", adjusting their purchase criteria accordingly.

And let's be real about audio fidelity: we're talking wireless connectivity and medium-bit-rate, medium-quantized content here. This is mid-fi, not high-fi. Sonos is more about retrofitting wireless convenience, and it's pretty awesome at that! So why not optimize convenience and flexibility? Why add arbitrary restrictions? Even my portable bluetooth UE Boom, Megaboom, etc allow mismatched model pairing. It seems spiteful that Sonos would intentionally hobble such capabilities. That's something I'd expect from Cupertino...

I'm curiously watching and testing the Chromecast evolution. It's come a good ways in its short lifetime. With new standalone speakers recently joining its lineup, Sonos will hopefully step up their game too.

Even my portable bluetooth UE Boom, Megaboom, etc allow mismatched model pairing.

Not so. While I am not familiar with all such speakers, the ones I know stereo pair only where the models are the same. And in the case of the UE Roll 2, two will not even pair in stereo. What they will do though, along with many others, is double up by having two or more playing the same music in perfect sync. Some will do this across different models. To allow for better music coverage of large spaces.
Sonos does this across all its models, including the One. Where identical models are needed by Sonos is for stereo pairing, where one speaker plays the left channel and other the right.
Anyone that has used HiFi speakers, and Sonos speakers easily qualify for that tag, knows that a stereo system consists of two identical speakers for the stereo pair to be wired to the stereo amplifier.