Is the Sun Setting on Sonos?

Interesting.  (but who spends 55 million on a house?) 

Answer: The people that buy companies in distress and flip them for a profit 2 years later. There is a whole other world out there that most of us don’t know about. $55 million is pocket change. A millionaire these days is middle class. Billionaires are just the entry point for the ultra wealthy. That’s why I’m saying there is a disconnect between those who run a company and those who buy their products. At some point, probably soon, we’re going to see the breaking point.

Viva la Revolucion, eh? 

Hahaha. So true!

I do find it quite ironic that Sonos appear to be in a similar situation in the audio/streaming world that blackberry found themselves in in the mobile world given their current ceo.

Sonos have gone from being a successful market leader with some clear unique selling points, to a stagnant incumbent, stuck in the middle, being squeezed on all sides in both the mass market consumer, traditional av and custom install worlds with their USPs rapidly disappearing.

If Apple or Amazon wanted to, they both own a roughly equal share with 2 of the 3 largest music streaming platforms with paying subscribers excluding China, deep enough pockets and the in-house technical skills they could out do Sonos. One of Sonos’s few remaining USPs is their native Apple Music integration.

As you say, the ever shrinking AV market has led to companies being little more than brands within a larger parent. It ends up like the car industry where historic brand loyalty and snobbery is the main decider because underneath that they’re the same. Things like Heos and BluOs can easily be expanding across brands, but I don’t really see either of them likely to take over the custom market.

I both like and am amused the way Yamaha just seem to quietly and happily do their own thing on their own timescales, with little fuss. Seemingly ignoring everyone else’s headlong rush into the yearly product upgrade cycle trap. They still publish technical dimension diagrams and have started publishing security update lifespans on their av products, acknowledging they will need to support and release updates for speakers, AVRs for X years after bringing them to market.

I do wonder whether Samsung/Harman buying Roon could be the shake up needed for multi-room and multi location. There is certainly potential between Samsung’s Electronics, Display and Panel manufacturing side of the business, Harman’s in car and in home audio side along with the stated commitment to expand, support and increase other brands as Roon endpoints. Samsung and by extension Harman certainly have the design, manufacturing and software ability to keep everything in house and expand Roon beyond what it is now.

Rather than having to pick a single or limited number of brands for an installation and be limited by their products, you choose Roon as the control platform and then select from a very wide range of Roon endpoint products across manufacturers and designers to suit a clients taste, which covers not only in home, multi-room but extends the same platform to anywhere the owner and family are outside the home via Roon Arc or an evolution of it.

The Roon route is another 'road to perdition'.  First, you need an always on Roon server - and it can't be something like a discrete raspberry pi. 

No, you need something chunkier, like the new low-cost Nucleus (450 usd) and about a foot square (!!!).  It might work on that old laptop you've still got, if you're lucky. 

Okay, now you need a subscription (180 usd/year or 850 usd/life). 

Now, you're all set, if you have Tidal and Quobuz. Forget Spotify, and Radio such as BBC Sounds, FIP from Radio France, and Radio Paradise interactive.

Your local files are okay, however.  And, you do get a nice app.

Interesting that you mention Yamaha. I had totally forgotten about the MusicCast product. We took on an existing Yamaha system at a new client’s home and we were all impressed with the functionality. It was straight forward and easy to navigate for the most part. I’m really surprised that product hasn’t moved up the food chain. Could it be that Sonos sues anyone that starts playing in their sand box?

For now, as mentioned before, we try to match the clients’ needs. Typically they already have Sonos in their other homes, so it’s easier to stick with one app. That said, the younger, less affluent mass market is likely to jump ship after this latest debacle and just bluetooth their way through music playback. Other than their phones, they don’t care about brand loyalty.

My only issue with MusicCast for my use is that Qobuz doesn’t stream gapless using the MusicCast app. Any other client, such as bubbleupnp, fronting the receiver with bubbleupnp server to make it an Openhome renderer and it is gapless. Local network files are also gapless. It just seems to be one of those Yamaha may get around to it in their own time things.

Can do some funky unexpected things with it as well. Connecting Bluetooth speakers or headphones to my A6A and linking via musiccast to another Yamaha device (V4A), all 3 devices play back synchronised. I have no use for linked Yamaha devices and Bluetooth headphones/speakers to be synchronised, but it just works. 🤷 Linking my A6A and V4A there is no audio delay or sync drift between the two when stood in a doorway between rooms.

I don’t know about other regions, but in the UK, Yamaha are expensive when compared to the usual Sound United suspects purely on features and at the moment not as easy to get hold of. Even though generally well reviewed, they don’t seem to be in favour with uk buyers these days 🤷

Yes, Yamaha is a little more difficult to acquire here in the U.S. Since our company isn’t a dealer, we have to search for availability at the typical consumer outlets. During the pandemic years (late 2020 into early 2022) we couldn’t get anything with an amplifier in it. Every product, brand, model across the board was unavailable and it made for a very stressful situation. We couldn’t finish projects which meant we couldn’t get paid.

After that experience, there has always been a lurking concern that some other major event is going to happen in the world that disrupts the supply chain again. If China were to invade Taiwan, every industry in the world would be affected. There are endless possible scenarios of catastrophe so we try to get ahead by ordering everything we need for a project waaaayyy before we actually need it. This locks in pricing, insures availability and brings piece of mind. The downside is that the product may not be the latest and greatest once it’s installed.

It would be nice if countries like the U.S. and the U.K. would bring manufacturing back within their own borders. For the sake of stability and redundancy, we need high quality chip manufacturing in the U.S. We have become dangerously reliant on China for everything… including medicine.

And who do our wonderful politicians blame for China's success story? Well, the Chinese themselves! Hypocracy writ large. They are the authors of their own downfall, but point the finger of blame at everybody else except themselves. 

Isn’t that human nature….. to blame everyone but themselves? The U.S. blames every other country for its problems, as I’m sure is the case throughout Europe. Going back to my original observation, companies have had to find the balance between morality/national security and making a profit. Rather than working within the confines of their own borders, they’ve chosen to outsource all production to countries that will do whatever it takes to eventually dominate. China has mastered this, and is rapidly outpacing the rest of the world in technological advancements. It’s an excellent example of complacency, thinking that they (China) will never catch up. We (collectively) have brought this on ourselves. How it all plays out in the future is an educated guess but I have a feeling there will be a new sheriff in town before the end of this decade. 

With Roon in its current state, I wouldn’t wish it on anybody, but Samsung/Harman bought it for a reason and I doubt it was for the small audiophile user base. With the latest roadmap Harman have already removed the always on internet requirement and moved development to focus on the previously core offline parts that were neglected in the rush to make Roon an always on cloud service. I think we’re still months away from getting a clearer understanding of what the Samsung/Harman direction and plans for the product are.

In the scale of a 50-400K custom audio install, I doubt a couple of K on a central music hub is a deal breaker and as the installs get more expensive and integrate deeper with the whole home, would expect to see the usual designed for custom install suspects running the different parts, multi-room audio, home theatre, lighting etc integrated together for ease of use. I may be completely off the mark though.

And who do our wonderful politicians blame for China's success story? Well, the Chinese themselves! Hypocracy writ large. They are the authors of their own downfall, but point the finger of blame at everybody else except themselves. 

And so history repeats. Politicians all over the world love a different country or clearly define group to point the finger at. It gives a common “enemy” to try and rally the population behind to justify a varying range of questionable policies being introduced while trying to hide previously decisions under the rug.

The global supply chain is far more complex than just the politicians, companies desires for reducing costs, even consumers have a portion of blame to shoulder. If you ask the mass market “Would you like to buy product A for 1000 or an identical, but locally made product B for 1,500?” Which do you reckon the majority will choose?

Aside from the political “friends” shifting for protectionist reasons, events over recent years really showed just how fragile things like the adoption of Just In Time production for almost everything are when applied to a global supply chain. Aside from the pandemic which was a rare event, the limited global shipping routes make even a simple mistake, such as the ship blocking the Suez Canal in 2021 impacts costs and timescales of delivery.

For the US, UK and Europe to bring manufacturing back on shore it’s a difficult task. People don’t want the big plants on their doorsteps, the companies aren’t interested in paying out of their own profits to build all the facilities and train staff up so then the government needs ever more outlandish reasons or “here is some money” incentives to persuade companies.

The UK even has a joke of a “Made in the UK” scheme, which when you examine the details of how to qualify doesn’t mean anything like what it implies.

Unfortunately it is always the consumer who suffers in the end while being told it is either for their or their countries benefit.

 

And so history repeats. Politicians all over the world love a different country or clearly define group to point the finger at. It gives a common “enemy” to try and rally the population behind to justify a varying range of questionable policies being introduced while trying to hide previously decisions under the rug.

The global supply chain is far more complex than just the politicians, companies desires for reducing costs, even consumers have a portion of blame to shoulder. If you ask the mass market “Would you like to buy product A for 1000 or an identical, but locally made product B for 1,500?” Which do you reckon the majority will choose?

Aside from the political “friends” shifting for protectionist reasons, events over recent years really showed just how fragile things like the adoption of Just In Time production for almost everything are when applied to a global supply chain. Aside from the pandemic which was a rare event, the limited global shipping routes make even a simple mistake, such as the ship blocking the Suez Canal in 2021 impacts costs and timescales of delivery.

For the US, UK and Europe to bring manufacturing back on shore it’s a difficult task. People don’t want the big plants on their doorsteps, the companies aren’t interested in paying out of their own profits to build all the facilities and train staff up so then the government needs ever more outlandish reasons or “here is some money” incentives to persuade companies.

The UK even has a joke of a “Made in the UK” scheme, which when you examine the details of how to qualify doesn’t mean anything like what it implies.

Unfortunately it is always the consumer who suffers in the end while being told it is either for their or their countries benefit.

So how does it change in the future? Is it going to be something radical? Or will everything in the world be manufactured by one or two companies? And those one or two companies are run by the government (or maybe they run the government)? And the consumers work for those same one or two companies to get an allowance to buy the things they make? Perhaps one company makes all the widgets in the world and the other makes all the food in the world. If you don’t show up to work, you get digitally erased from the world. You can’t buy anything, can’t travel, can’t whatever. Everyone will be enslaved by the system. I’d like to think this won’t happen in my lifetime, BUT, considering what I do for a living, I know the technology already exists. It’s just a matter of getting people comfortable with having absolutely no freedom.

Oh well, nothing we can really do about it when they keep everyone divided.

How’s the UK doing? It’s a beautiful country. We visited 5 years ago. Absolutely loved getting out of the big city and road tripping to Penzance and the Cotswolds.