Its not like I blast them so they are perfect. When the whole house is in sync and your walking from room to room it sounds awesome. And I wanted to get something that would let me use airplay 2 integrated. I didn’t want external speakers I would have to leave on at high volumes so I can also have volume control. I even set an automation that would turn down the volume once it stops playing for 5 minutes so you don’t blast it when you try to connect back.
The WAF is high. She’s even impressed when I’m controlling everything from my watch while laying in the pool. Thats always fun to do. HAH
Yes, but your not missing a ton in S2 or your justified to move on from that one device.
taken from FAQs
Why would I split my S1 and S2 products into separate systems?
Some Sonos products require the S2 app. The only products that currently require S2 are products released in 2020: the Arc, Five, and Sub (gen 3).*
Keep in mind the list of devices that are NOT S2 compatible is the oldest of the old. Really do most people even know what what they are? How many here have even heard of a CR200, let alone own one?
So yes and no. If your not done building out a system, I could see where it MIGHT be an issue. IME people don’t build out a whole house audio system over decades. Most people build them in a few years if not all at once.
If you did build your system out over decades, like I did, you’ve gotten years of enjoyment and you ROI is more than satisfied. There are few thing you can buy for a couple hundred bucks and get a decade plus out of. And the very old stuff is worth replacing. IMO
Then one might ask, why did they release it at all? Why did they put themselves and the rest of their community through all of this?
The conspiracy theorist in me has a plausible reason, they thought they could get away with it, they thought no one would call them on it and thus set a precedent for the future of slowly phasing out products not because they don’t work but because they want their customers to have to make another purchase from them. The SaaS model does not work well with the audio field because speakers do not change all that often, hardware or software, there are speakers from the 80’s that still hold up today and when was the last time there was a new audio standard, for music that is.
I get it, they are a business, they must keep updating and producing products to stay relevant and if the market is not going to cull their products through obsolescence, then they must force it to stay afloat or risk saturation, but as a consumer I don’t think they should get a pass for it.
Yes and no, for their Connect, Connect:Amp, and Play:5, iirc if they are manufactured before 2015, they are considered legacy now, and at the worst case, 6 years, it is not that great of a life for a speaker imo.
Oh, I just remembered, one of the other biggest gripes I have with the system is how they handle “Trueplay” and the fact that if you are not an iPhone user, you now just have an objectively worse system than everyone that does and there is no workaround. I am not sure how they cannot do what every other Room-Correction system does and just provide a microphone for calibration, you could even get a microphone that just plugs into the Type-C or 3.5mm jack on your phone. Hell, Dirac Live is one of the best room-correction softwares out there any they have Windows/MacOS/Android/iOS apps.
You know I consider you a friend, so under the bus you go. Ignorance and misunderstanding is what made this ‘minor hardware limitation’ in to a major PR issues.
Only these devices with release dates. Are S1 only everything else in the ecosystem is S2.
I mean there really isn’t anything more for me to go on because Sonos is notoriously stingy with the details, especially when it comes to specs, which I think they have said was so that people don’t “unfairly” compare their products to their competitors, which I think you can guess what I think about that.
Take for instance that S2 compatibility page you posted, great it says which products are not compatible, but does not actually tell you how to identify them. It only says well, check our app it’ll tell you if you are affected, but that doesn’t really help me who is looking at this from more of a theoretical and case-study perspective.
Oh one other thing that I just remembered that Sonos is still better at is the Alexa integration, it is basically as seamless as anyone could want. There is MusicCast support for Alexa, but it is ehh at best, it does not support the speaker device type and as such does not duck the volume when a wake word is heard and does not play music directly to the speaker when part of the same group. You can get music to play to MusicCast via Alexa, but IME it only works like 30% of the time, and seems to be highly dependent upon whether or not Alexa thinks the “scene” is active.
The microphones on the Beam are amazing. I could have a loud tv show playing and once I say alexa it lowers the volumes and answers. I’m always surprised when it hears me.
It really depends on what your goals are, Sonos is a no-fuss system for mainly background music, imo, that is a bit more expensive than the competition up front and more expensive for any additions. You get rid of that no-fuss requirement and the price of competitors goes significantly down, especially with Alexa.
I think it definitely has it’s place for a certain subset of people, but it also has plenty of faults to contend with that, imo, most people seem to just gloss over because it looks pretty and works OOB.
I have heard, well not heard personally but you get what I mean, I have heard that the gen 4 echo devices sound really good now. The reason I suggested alexa was purely because of the 3.5mm audio out jack, which you can pair with really any speaker setup. I personally have an echo flex using some old logitech computer speakers and an echo dot with a Klipsch Promedia 2.1 set from Costco, which in my testing is as good if not better than a stereo pair of Sonos Play:1 speakers, for less than half the price.
I just brought the Sono’s arc and two of the SL and sub and my tv has never sound better. It hard to beat the Sono’s brand of speaker at least for me. I had a set of Klipsch and gave them to my grandson.
I bought a new house that has a multi zone whole house speaker system. I added a serial port controlled matrix switch and multizone amp.
I use a pi running node red to control the matrix that gets setup messages over matter. My primary node red controls all the tts and music controls to set all of the different speaker zones. It is still a work in progress, but the foundation is there.
