Sonos Grandfather or Hardware Trade-in Programs


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Back in April, Sonos sent out its official AirPlay 2 support e-mail. I headed straight to the blog post to confirm the rumors about having to buy new speakers to get what I've wanted since I purchased my $2,000 Sonos theater sound system less than 2 years ago (PlayBar, Sub, & set of Play:1s). Alas, it was true. After contacting Sonos support, I learned I can't simply replace one of my Play:1s with a Sonos One—surround sound won't work properly—cha-ching, another $400 in less than 2 years of buying a $2000 sound system!

Now, I understand the need for new hardware to support AirPlay 2, however, Sonos has missed the boat for an existing customer appreciation hardware upgrade program. As a former Product Marketing Manager for a technology company, I've dealt with with both software and hardware upgrade issues for existing customers. And, obviously, it's much less costly to upgrade software. However, since my days in Product Marketing, hardware manufacturing methods have continued to improve which has led to significantly lower manufacturing costs. To that end, if Sonos really wants to "Value" its customer base, then how about one of two hardware upgrade programs:

• A Grandfather Hardware Discount Program: Those Sonos customers who purchased a complete theater sound system with a minimum purchase of a PlayBar, Sub, and a set of Play:1s within 2 years of the release of the Sonos One speakers get a 20 - 30% discount on the purchase of a new set of Sonos One speakers. This discount has to be a "REAL" discount. The typical 10% discounts don't get anyone's heart started nowadays.

• A Hardware Trade-In Program: Sonos offers Sonos Ones at a 40% - 50% discount with the trade-in of an existing set of Play:1s. And, to make it easy for those customer who may have discarded their Play:1 boxes, they can return their existing Play:1s in the Sonos One boxes—they seem to be very similar in size. This is a win-win because existing customers get a much more gently priced set of Sonos One's and Sonos can sell the used Play:1s as refurbs.

I was planning on purchasing another Sonos theater sound system for my master bedroom, however, unless Sonos really reaches out with a hardware upgrade program like on of those I just detailed, I will be buying a different brand from now on.

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Ok people, let me provide this clarification—could not edit my post after I submitted it (many forums offer this, but this one does not). I did quite a bit of research prior to my purchasing my Sonos sound system. In addition, I contacted Sonos support and asked about AirPlay suppprt (not AirPlay 2 because it was still an unknown) and was told it would be coming (that was in July of 2016). I also asked about HDMI supporting surround sound (Cable TV box HDMI connection to TV—using optical out from TV to PlayBar). To that end, I did my homework, but was misled into believing the system I wanted to purchase would support AirPlay, but that support never came.

So, Mr. BMW: if u were told by BMW the car you were going to buy for your wife would later have CarPlay support with just a simple firmwate update and that update never came, you would've been a quite disappointed when full CarPlay support was available in next year's mode only.


If Sonos in some ‘official’ capacity stated specifically that the system you were purchasing would support Airplay then I can understand your frustration. If you have wvidence of that then I’d expect you have solid grounds for a claim. I purchased the exact same setup PB+Sub+2xP1s less than three months ago, I was hoping for Airplay 2, but knew about the potential limitations so figured it would be a nice to have, I’m not expecting a fefund. Ironically had I purchased from directly from sonos I could have sent them back. But I did not recall any firm commitments for any of those devices to receive Airlay2. I’ve added an AppleTv which can act as a bridge to Airplay for the legacy kit so not too bothered. I’m more interested in the new HDMI device and await the 6th with some hope. Tech moves on. Carplay is not all that either so I’m not that fussed either way 🆒
Nope. Still not buying it.
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I can’t believe A Sonos phine rep in 2016 said airplay was coming. A Best Buy rep yes. But if it happened that person didn’t have a clue what they were talking about. If you really need airplay I would install one of the server side work arounds to make all airplay enabled.

Regarding surrounds. We have long had suspicion that pairing a non-capable and capable may be an issue. Look at how Sonos was firmly planted on not pairing Sonos One and Play:1. They may have know at that time pairing the 2 would loose future stuff from working (like in this case airplay).
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Nope. Still not buying it.

He’s already bought it. I think it was a discount that was being saught for an upgrade 😉
Baseman1968: where did you hear about the One speakers may not have AirPlay 2 support when set as rear speakers? I had 2 very lengthy conversations with 2 separate Sonos technical reps and was told this would support it. I figured I double my Sonos conversations this time so I wasn't misled a second time.
I didn't hear it. But I know that you can't use the rear speakers to create a Sonos net, because they are connected to the PLAYBAR via a 5 GHz net. Therefore I don't see AirPlay working like that.

Actually this conversation above has had me thinking, as I have always thought you can't (easily) group bonded speakers unless you decouple them first.

The Sonos blog announcement only talks about sharing/grouping the three specified Sonos AirPlay devices with their older legacy speakers, like a Play-3 for example, via grouping, but how do you group a Sonos One that is already bonded to a PlayBar?

The announcement seems to say (by omission) that the PlayBar is not AirPlay compatible, so I guess that means the Sonos One will need to be decoupled first and then grouped for AirPlay purposes.

Perhaps I'm just not reading these two 'official' documents correctly?

https://www.sonos.com/en-gb/airplay

https://blog.sonos.com/en-gb/airplay2-coming
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melvimbe: If you re-read my follow-up post, you'll see that I wrote, "I did quite a bit of research prior to my purchasing my Sonos sound system. In addition, I contacted Sonos support and asked about AirPlay suppprt..." Honestly, does ANYONE read things carefully before making a post anymore? My speaking with a Sonos rep was in addition to research I had conducted.

Having worked for Apple for a number of years (large K-12 account sales), I met quite a number of people in Cupertino whose role was to maintain relationships with manufacturers—I got to be good friends with the person responsible for working with Mattel and learned a lot. Anyway, let me assure you Sonos was well aware in October. Why else did they increase the processing power within the Sonos Ones?

For me personally, I don't care to use my Sonos speakers to control tech in my home. I simply want support for AirPlay (now AirPlay 2). Why, because I want a much easier way for guests to be able to play their music from their devices when they visit. And, I want an easier way to play ALL my iTunes music (library and Apple Music). With the Sonos iOS app, most of my playlists don't appear.
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Be so funny if sonos announce a trade in or discount scheme for existing plybar owners next week when they announce the ‘next gen’. :8
Then it looks like you will be buying a Play:5, a One, a Playbase, or the new HT unit being announced June 6th.

Like the rest of us who bought older units and want Airplay 2 support. No grandfather, no trade in, no nothing. Just like every other piece of consumer electronics.
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Or run server software to make them all show up in airplay
Or run server software to make them all show up in airplay
The old Apple Airport Express was quite good too for those with a Sonos Line-In port. I still use that.
[...] Having worked for Apple for a number of years (large K-12 account sales), I met quite a number of people in Cupertino whose role was to maintain relationships with manufacturers—I got to be good friends with the person responsible for working with Mattel and learned a lot. Anyway, let me assure you Sonos was well aware in October. Why else did they increase the processing power within the Sonos Ones?[...]
Mattel the toy makers? What have they to do with a tech company like Apple? Regarding compatibility, the ONE will not be the only model supporting Airplay2 'natively'.
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HEOS updated their whole line like a year after they introduced it. No update for those that got the earlier model. Same kind of situation but Sonos is like what 15 years between generations. I think that is pretty excusable that the older gen now doesn't get the new shiny stuff.
I believe half of what I read, and none of what I read from the OP. Nothing but unprovable resume claims, Cupertino blah blah blah name dropping, and imaginary conversations with Sonos reps.

Mattel the toy makers? What have they to do with a tech company like Apple? Regarding compatibility, the ONE will not be the only model supporting Airplay2 'natively'.


https://shop.mattel.com/shop/en-us/ms/mattel-games/apples-to-apples-party-box-bgg15

😉
melvimbe: If you re-read my follow-up post, you'll see that I wrote, "I did quite a bit of research prior to my purchasing my Sonos sound system. In addition, I contacted Sonos support and asked about AirPlay suppprt..." Honestly, does ANYONE read things carefully before making a post anymore? My speaking with a Sonos rep was in addition to research I had conducted.


Of course I read it. Why would I have mentioned that I didn't think a tech support rep was a good source of info for upcoming products and features if I didn't read what you wrote? As far as your other research, I'm not aware of what you read. I don't think Sonos official announcement says enough to draw conclusions. Maybe there is something else out there that has more details, but I don't know of it.


Having worked for Apple for a number of years (large K-12 account sales), I met quite a number of people in Cupertino whose role was to maintain relationships with manufacturers—I got to be good friends with the person responsible for working with Mattel and learned a lot. Anyway, let me assure you Sonos was well aware in October. Why else did they increase the processing power within the Sonos Ones?


Well, I'm sure the cost of better hardware has gone down a lot in between the initial release of the play:1 and the release of Sonos One. So they could afford to increase the processing power. More importantly, the Sonos One was not created specifically to support Airplay 2 and whatever else Apple wants to do. It was created to do voice control, which I'd have to believe required more processing power than the play:1 could have handled.
I for one bought 2x ZP-100s over a decade ago, and like OP am outraged that Airplay 2 wasn't considered as an upgrade path back when Sonos was first being formed. If I knew then what I know now, I would not have wasted my money on 12 years of wireless music streaming.

Can I have a refund for the hardware controller that was rendered obsolete by the app? Sonos surely knew that the smartphone revolution was just around the corner...
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I can't believe how they scrimped on the memory in my ZP-80 either, they should have known I'd be needing more in just over a decade.

More seriously, how many devices do you have in your house that are still being updated and supported by the manufacturer after 10+ years? My Sonos ZPs date from 2007, the oldest still supported non-Sonos device I have is a 2012 Nexus 7.
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I can't believe how they scrimped on the memory in my ZP-80 either, they should have known I'd be needing more in just over a decade.

Quite appropriate sarcasm. Lol. Some ppl really make you wonder on these boards.
I'm in the same position. It would definitely take a trade-in program to get me to buy any more Sonos products. We're completely fed up with Sonos, and hearing that barely 2 years after buying my first Sonos speaker they've finally added AirPlay, but we have to buy all new equipment, just felt insulting. I was assured I would be able to use my existing music library without Airplay, which turned out not to be true in any useful way, and I feel stupid for letting myself fall for the sales pitch.

After giving up waiting for a good Airplay speaker, I bought a Sonos speaker with the understanding that I could use my existing music library, only to find that I would have to download whatever I wanted to my phone to do it. I have Apple Match, and all the music I already own, and every CD we ever bought is in the cloud and plays flawlessly to our iOS devices. The music won't fit on my phone, and my husband and I have no desire to fiddle around making new playlists and download them every time we want to play music, so we hardly ever use the Sonos system. We could listen to Pandora or Amazon music, but we really would like to listen to our existing wonderful library, instead of music Pandora has picked for us.

When Sonos Connect amp came out and I heard I could connect an airport express to it, hook up our great Polk Audio speakers and use Airplay by using line in, I bought one of those, only to find that line-in is super glitchy, sometimes works with sort of anemic sound that requires I turn the volume all the way up to barely hear it. Other times won't work at all. It seems after every software update, it all stops working and I have to troubleshoot and re-figure out where the ridiculous Sonos app has hidden all the features I need. So we don't use that either. The app is so strangely designed that it takes a vast amount of hunting around to figure out where to turn on line-in, or to reconfigure rooms, and it seems like when I get back to it, I always have to figure out how to use it again, because it's not at all intuitive.

When I heard a few months ago that the newer speaker (mine's only 2 years old) will be Airplay capable it was like a slap in the face. Why not just a firmware upgrade? And then today, I received a message that I could buy a new $600 connect amp to get what I thought I was supposed to be getting with the first one. As if. No way am I coughing up another $1000 for Sonos products that didn't do what I was told they would do the first time around. Sonos is okay for listening to Pandora, but for audiophiles with a decades-old collection of music and years worth of playlists already set up - it's infuriatingly useless. We gave up a long time ago. Sometimes I'll turn an Amazon or Pandora music station if we're leaving the house and want to make it sound like someone's home, but for music we actually want to listen to when we're home, It's not functional. People don't seem to understand why Airplay is important but here's the deal: We spent years setting up a music library and playlists and would like to be able to play that music - those playlists. Not start all over again with someone else's idea of what we want to hear, like Spotify, Pandora, etc. We also listen to podcasts and audiobooks every day while driving around and exercising. With Airplay, we could continue listening when we get home with just a click or two. We listen to a lot of Ted Talks and music on YouTube. Airplay would allow us to play them on the speakers. It seems like every day, there's something I would do with Sonos if it could do AirPlay. But having been burned so badly the first time around, I'm in no mood to reward Sonos by buying yet more of their products. Obviously, I need to get an Apple Speaker, which I would have bought when it first came out if I hadn't blown my speaker budget on these silly Sonos toys that are only good for listening to subscription services. Sonos without Airplay is just a Pandora accessory, not a serious option for listening to music. Sorry for the rant, but these Airplay announcements were like waving a red flag for me.
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Hi LoydC, there isn't an upgrade or trade-in program, but I would like to comment on something you mentioned.

When Sonos Connect amp came out and I heard I could connect an airport express to it, hook up our great Polk Audio speakers and use Airplay by using line in, I bought one of those, only to find that line-in is super glitchy, sometimes works with sort of anemic sound that requires I turn the volume all the way up to barely hear it. Other times won't work at all. It seems after every software update, it all stops working and I have to troubleshoot and re-figure out where the ridiculous Sonos app has hidden all the features I need.

Regarding the anemic sound, go into the Sonos app > More > Settings > Room Settings > Line In and set the line-in level to a higher number. That increases the audio level that the line-in is played at, to begin with. Also, if you set the line-in to Airplay and call it Airplay, it will increase the buffer (and the audio delay) but it will also be more resilient which helps fix any audio cutouts you might have.

Also, if you had any Sonos player that can receive the AirPlay 2 stream, like a Sonos One, you could play AirPlay to that player, then group it in the Sonos app with any combination of your other speakers and have them all playing that AirPlay 2 stream.