I've got lots of Sonos speakers, one in every room of my house. Before Soundcloud was an option I wrote my own SMAPI service to get that going for myself. Then, when I switched from Mac to Linux I created my own client app [1] to control my speakers.
I feel Sonos have really missed a trick by not opening up their API more. Most of the features I had a reverse engineer or check from other libraries. Their own apps have also not exactly gotten better. For example, I _HATE_ the unified search feature, it makes the search slow and sluggish. Controlling the speakers from Spotify directly also never worked glitch-free for me. Other niggles have to do with the grouping features, which are also a tad flaky and sometimes time out or only partially group.
Most of all I am annoyed by the frequent updates asked for, without the ability to "pin" the speakers to a version and download a specific version of the client app.
All that said, I love their speakers because they sound good. The old Play 3 and the Amp especially. I feel they should focus their efforts on making the apps snappier and faster, not much more feature rich.
I was sad when they integrated Alexa into the Sonos One. But it did make the Play:1 cheaper, and there's really not much room to improve on that speaker. Love it. I just hope they keep making Alexa free options.
Keep telling Sonos this. I do it at least once a month when I get stuck on a con-call where I'm waiting for others. Go to their site and pop open a chat. Tell them how much you like their products without "assistants", let them know how many of their speakers you own and then let them know that not having options without a microphone mean they will lose your business. Every time I do this they are very courteous and state they will put it in for management to review. Not sure what type of request they issue, or if it's just a patronizing response, but like others I like the product but will not continue to expand my Sonos ecosystem if forced to choose. I don't have a ton of their speakers but a Play 5, Play 3 and 4 x Play 1. Enough to be annoyed that I might not be able to expand that depending on the path they take.
But only on their newer devices! Would be ok if it was that you needed only one new “airplay 2” device on the network to act as a bridge but no, it will only work on the new ones (or a one and a play:1 in stereo)
They said if you have an AirPlay 2 capable device you can use it to pair with older speakers. It's right in their most recent press release on the matter.
I don't agree with Amazon selling Rekognition to law enforcement, and I don't agree with their warehouse conditions. I do know many folks who are at Amazon who work on hardware and software for Alexa. The Amazon bit isn't true. There isn't anything nefarious going on. It's really easy to jump on this bandwagon and crap all over these companies. You don't really know what you're talking about. I think Amazon is legit wrong on some things, and people who work there agree with me actually. But again, your claims about Alexa are conspiracy crap like you hear on Alex Jones.
You may be right but you missed the point. Amazon "could" start spying on you with a flip of a switch and there is no guarantee it will never happen. Even if their intentions were pure, they can be easily subpoenaed to do nasty stuff.
Layman question: what is better in Sonos comparing it to good bluetooth speakers? Are there excellent bluetooth speakers?
I wanted to buy a Sonos but I am very confused if this will seamlessly work with the usual applications. I don't want to start firing a lot of neurons (e.g. reverse engineering) just to play audio an hour before going to bed.
Sonos, IMHO, works great when you have multiple speakers setup. They do well because the technology is almost dummy proof and reliable
Edit: was just going through their s1. Seems like most households have 2.75 speakers on average:
As of March 31, 2018, our customers had registered over 19 million products in approximately 6.9 million households globally. Based on customer data, we estimate that, on average, our customers listen to approximately 70 hours of content per month and to approximately 80% more music after purchasing their first Sonos product. We also estimate that our customers listened to five billion hours of audio content using our products in fiscal 2017, which represents 33% growth from fiscal 2016.
Totally this. Sonos’ multi-room support is amazing.
I have 6 different Sonos systems in my house (living room, kitchen, bedroom, workshop, front yard, backyard). It’s wonderful to be able to play audio through any random grouping of speakers, all of which are guarenteed to be in sync as I walk between rooms. You can even plug in an analog source into any one of them (e.g. for a DJ setup at a party) and stream to the entire house — again, all in perfect sync.
They even work in areas where WiFi is weak, because they create their own independent mesh network.
I’ve yet to find anything else that works as reliably.
Sonos sound bloody good. I have a modern Play 5 and a 1. They absolutely fill the (12x6 ish = 60m^2 of ground floor in my house which is quite open plan). The phone app works pretty well and I have a Samba share for CDs. However it will only support SMBv1 which is a bit crap. In the past Jeremy Allison has actually offered to assist in fixing that but nothing happened. I use firewall rules to fix up security. Another crap thing is that the app is unable to find speakers on another VLAN. I wanted to lock down the speakers on my THINGS (no internets unless I say so) VLAN.
Anyway, if Home Assistant and https://www.home-assistant.io/components/sonos/ are unable to work the way that I want them to then Sonos will be relegated to "pretty but crap" status and fall off my list. I'm sure there is another way of delivering sound using wifi and IoT.
I own an IT consultancy and am evaluating stuff in this sphere. Some of the modern IoT stuff gets wow status and some doesn't but the times are changing very, very quickly. I'm slowly putting together a portfolio of products and parts. I'd like to include Sonos but the jury is out.
To answer your question: a single Play One in your bedroom for good night music will work very nicely and I don't think you will be disappointed - they do sound gorgeous.
I agree with the comment about their app (iOS). It really sticks out when you’re in the native music app, previewing samples which you can’t stream via your own Sonos set because of lack of support for airplay (coming soon I’m told, and there’s also air-connect for Linux and macOS which is great, only don’t like having my computer on just for that).
The sonos app must go and let users use whatever app is best for them. Also, not being able to remove the mandatory tunein service is really making me hate using their app.
It's cool that Amazon's product is more advanced, and that's interesting technically... but what does that have to do with the Sonos IPO?
Beats cost $18 to make.. cheap plastic.. nothing premium about them.. they even put a few pieces of metal in it so they feel sturdy.. People love(d?) them. Sold for $200/pair. Company sold for $3b.
The bill of materials isn't the sole determinate of success.
Totally aside... I don't really understand why beats gets singled out so often, when it comes to cost of components. IDK, I feel like beats doesn't get enough credit as a company.
First, if you look at a shelf of products (say an airport gadget shop), beats is not the worst value on the shelf. Most beats products are OK. Half the gear (in general) in those shops is crap.
Second, Beats did a good job on "product". They understood what price ranges to target. The understood what each form factor was for, and how to explain this to consumers. Beats' actual competition was earbuds, not alternative "studio headphones." They knew which sound qualities (bass, basically) customers would want, for the music they actually listen to while walking around a mall.
They aren't always the best price performance across categories, but they aren't crap either.
Anyway, the reason I think they deserve credit is not that. They understood the implication of "wearables." They are the ones that managed to build that company, with a foot in fashion and another one in electronics. Part authority on what's cool, part predictor of what's cool.
If you do the bill of materials test on versace it won't go well.
Compare beats as the fashion-tech-wearables brand to all the smartwatch attempts at similar. Beats stands out.
I'm sorry but their sound quality is pretty abysmal for the price; there is a reason they're lampooned. I agree that a lot of the headphone market is poor but 20 minutes of googling will get you some good headphones for a decent price. That aside, I certainly agree with you they were able to build a brand, make mostly junk products pretty fashionable and sold a lot of merchandise.
You can say that about literally any major electronics brand. About 5 years ago I googled for the new "oneplus" which turned out to be a great phone at half the price of Samsung or LG. Unknown brand. Great deal. I was happy. Bought again.
I also once bought soy sauce that wasn't kikkoman, half price and it tasted good. Go figure. This doesn't make Samsung or Kikkoman "junk." It makes them a brand name.
Maybe I should put this differently....
If Beats announced today they are putting major effort into smart watches, I would expect to soon see lots of people wearing them. I'd beats to make smart watches that people want because they're relevant piece of culture and utility.
If boss or plantronics announced the same... I wouldn't.
Yes I totally agree people really do buy things because of celebrity endorsements and don't do their own research before buying most things. Its mind boggling to me but hey to each his own. Tangent-y but I feel the worst for the people who have their iPhone/Apple headphones turned up to 11 b/c the earbuds don't fit their ears well, and you know, everyone in the bus/metro/subway with them that have to listen to their music bleeding out of their ears, too.
I think if we reduce this to "people buy things because of celebrity endorsements" than there isn't much to talk about.
Xerox invented the modern PC, Apple spent the next 30 years applying celebrity endorsements and marketing nonsense to make money. That's the story. I think this is very wrong.
If you are selecting a component to put in a device, this is a mostly objective question. Price. Objective quality, longevity. For a person to get value out of a thing, you must cross into more "subjective" territory. If you refuse to rely on anything that is subjective, nothing about humans makes sense. Why do people want to look cool anyway? Why are people listening to music?
In fact I think the psychology behind celebrity endorsements and advertising is particularly interesting and there is a lot to talk about.
Unfortunately, this topic, audio quality, is extremely subjective, yes, like someone mentioned in another comment to my original post. But objectively the audio response of Beats are very bass heavy and, in my opinion, the high end response is lacking, but other people really enjoy their beats headphones so thats up to them. Although, the divers in Beats, for the price, are objectively a poor purchase. You can get stronger and clearer drivers in other headphones at a fraction of the cost. I'm not really sure where the last bit of your posts ties in with what I've been saying but I totally agree people will be people, especially when the topic is complex and they can just buy what Harden/KD/etc. wears and be happy.
The difference here is that Beats are not as good as the audio enthusiast equipment, and they're multiple times more expensive to boot! Your comparison would only have been apt if Kikkoman was actually worse than the offbrand soysauce, still 3x more expensive, and people breathlessly defended it in forums and concerts while mindlessly repping the brand with t-shirts and other swag.
Depends on what you mean by sound quality. If you're looking for reference sound, then yes, they're bad. But if you just want something that sounds good, they they fit the bill[0].
Yeah but the other half of my point was if you want something that "sounds good" you can spend 1/4 of the price of Beats for similar ability. Its a brand effect. I personally use a pair of 15 dollar JVC marshmallow earbuds that fit my ears perfect for about 50% of my listening (gym, walking in the city in the summer, etc), but if I'm spending 200 on closed or over the ear headphones you should expect a lot better response spectrum that what Beats provide. Maybe junky products was a bit harsh and I should have said expensive for the quality.
They get singled out because the people that inevitably come to breathlessly defend them won't just admit why they own them: because they're a fashion accessory with brand recognition. It's like people who claim they buy $900 Balenciaga shoes because "they're comfortable." I would bet my own life that they're no more comfortable than a nice pair of $100 shoes from the "non-designer" rack at Nordstrom, but people will fall over themselves defending why they spend what they spend for designer brand accessories.
> They aren't always the best price performance across categories, but they aren't crap either.
If Beats owners admitted this then they wouldn't have become a meme. Unfortunately most I talk to will claim that they're the best headphones on the market, and will refuse to accept that they could have gotten better audio quality from "less cool" brands for $100 or less.
To be fair I have started buying higher quality sneakers a couple of years ago and I am not going back.
There is a huge difference between the low cost ones and let's say 200-300$ sneakers.
My ETQ low 3 are insanely comfortable, are made of good material that age nicely, and are basically built like a tank (vibram soles, stitched + glued elements for maximum durability, etc).
For Balenciaga you pay the same level of craftmanship + trendy design and brand recognition.
I don't think you can really compare this to Beats though.
They are pretty awful at their price point, but audio quality is something most people don't really pay attention to. It has big basses is enough for most people. The same way that Samsung's oversaturated screens look amazing to many consumers.
And for Beats, I would say of why you pay is for the brand..
My question is still the same. Why are beats singled out so much? This comment (beats is crap that suckers buy, basically) is nearly guaranteed to sit at the top on any thread about beats on the internet.
"They are not the best performance per dollar you can get."
OK. This is true. It's also true about every electronics brand that exists. It's almost the definition of a brand, with a few exceptions where "best value for money" is the brand. There is always some under appreciated brand with great value that no one knows about.
Consumers (especially with portable & wearable gear) care about aesthetics, brands and other things that they might value even if you don't. This is a fashion item as well as electronics, after all.
Same question, why beats specifically? Why not Apple, Samsung, Boss?
> Same question, why beats specifically? Why not Apple, Samsung, Boss?
To some degree, that question sounds like "whataboutism".
However, all big brands receive their share of Internet criticism, especially if they release a high-priced form-over-function product. Recent Apple laptops come to mind. Is Apple being singled out? They own Beats, right?
One of the other differences is that the other brands you mentioned are much more highly diversified. Even Bose sells more than just "wearables" (and within those, they sell an electronics-heavy version with noise cancellation).
> This is a fashion item as well as electronics, after all.
That alone gives you an adequate explanation. If it were pure fashion, it would probably get the same criticism, except that it wouldn't get any attention in those (or this) forum in the first place.
You may disagree with the validity of the criticism, but surely you at least recognize its existence if not prevalence among the technically-inclined.
What is your source for the $18 worth of parts? How are you basing the sound quality? Keep in mind there is much more investment that goes into a consumer product, especially one like any of the Beats. There is design, engineering, marketing, testing, lawyers, copyrights, logistics/shipping...
Many expensive headphones use plastic because of weight. Even the Sony MDR-Z1R have plastic. One of the only headphones I know that don't was the Sony MDR-R10, but from my understanding of the history of those, Sony was actually losing money on every pair sold ($2,500/pair).
I'm not saying Beats are great, but they get picked on for reasons. It seems almost like a meme and they aren't a terrible product. They work well for what they are meant. People like the way they look. They are supported by one of the most iconic companies in the world and sold in every Apple Store (and many others) with a large variety of different models and colors. Bring them into any Apple Store when something goes wrong and even out of warranty you can sometimes get help from a Apple or a Genius and/or a replacement.
> I'm not saying Beats are great, but they get picked on for reasons
The reasons are that anytime they're [rightfully] critisized in any way, a horde of obvious Beats purchasers comes and defends why it was reasonable for them to spend $350 on a pair of headphones with similar sound quality to a $50 pair from a different brand. They'll never admit they bought them for the name or the fashion appeal, they'll always claim that they "sound amazing," and pull up some irreverent review from Vice or similar saying that Beats are passable. If people just admitted that they don't give a shit about sound quality and want to look cool to their friends then I don't think it would have become such a meme.
Those are some shallow and some honestly awful reasons to pick on one's choice of headphones and the people who buy them considering it's not your money being spent buying a pair of Beats headphones. It's theirs. They worked for it and earned it. I don't feel inclined to explain my financial decisions to random joes on the internet either.
And maybe they do sound great to that wearer. You don't know. What sounds good enough for them might not be great sound to you. That's perfectly fine. Maybe they did buy them for how they look. Why make that your business? Why do you even care that that's why someone bought the headphones? I go back to my earlier position: it's not your money being spent. It's theirs. Taking people to task for subjective things like this seems like a very strange thing to lord over people for IMO.
You sound like my friend who gives me hell because I bought an Audi instead of the BMW he recommended. He says “the BMW has much better cornering!” and I say “my car has great cornering!” and he sends me some data as if I care. I simply liked the car I bought better than the one he recommended.
Not really a similar comparison at all. It'd be more like if you bought a Lexus ct200h, and your friend told you [rightfully so] that you spent an extra $25k to glue a Lexus logo onto a Prius.
Technical people like to ignore branding to the point that it becomes ridiculous. I'm not calling you out, BTW, just using you as an example. Audi vs BMW... does it really matter? There are minor differences here and there, but really it's another place where you're paying for the brand. When it comes to performance/build quality/technology, a Toyota Camry is by and large the same as any luxury car you can buy. The difference is the brand name and the "feel" (which is hard to quantify, so much so that it kinda comes back to the value of the brand).
When I bought my first luxury car, I had friends recommending an Audi. Seemed like marginally better value for the money, a little better MPG, some marginally nicer interior features, etc. But in the end I went with the BMW because every time I look at the A4, all I see is a Jetta for twice the price. The fact that Audi is owned by VW and the cars are based off the same platform is a turn-off for me. It has nothing to do with the features or the performance or the "feel" of the car... it's just a brand image in my mind. A Lexus is an expensive Toyota. An Audi is an expensive VW. But a BMW is a BMW, they don't make anything else. My 3-Series isn't anything but a 3-Series.
I know that sounds ridiculous, but when it comes to premium products, it's not always easy to quantify why you like one over the other. A lot of the time it comes down to irrational things like adjacent brands or the way it makes you "feel". Everyone can discount that as much as they want and say JVC has better sound for half the price of Beats, but it doesn't change the fact that the people buying Beats don't care about the sound, they care about the intangible benefits that the brand gives them.
I have yet to see an AWD Jetta with all the features same generation A4 has. But from the purely branding point of view BMW does have that advantage of not sharing their parts bin with "lesser" brands. If you look purely at the specs, it's a tougher choice, although BMWs might be somewhat faster for the money...
For what it's worth, the Camry (an excellent car) is front wheel drive and many luxury cars are rear or all wheel drive. This makes a difference in driving dynamics.
Fun thing is that rear wheel drive is cheaper, and harder to drive ... and yet you're right about the luxury versions using that.
Almost everybody agrees they're harder to drive, and that the drivetrain is much cheaper (because the driven wheels do not rotate, so the mechanics are incredibly simpler)
And you can say, that makes it less likely to break. Technically true, but this is not something that breaks often, nor can you reasonably expect it to break (essentially only under enough mechanical stress to be bending/breaking the axle (a thick all-metal pipe), and at that point I guarantee this won't be the worst problem you have). It's just not the weak point of any car, so it won't ever make the difference between a car that keeps driving and one that does not.
Which makes this weird, because you're paying a lot more for an objectively worse product, which causes more mistakes in driving and is therefore more dangerous, for some bragging rights. I'm probably a geek because this just seems incredibly stupid to me.
Sweet deal for the manufacturers though: charge a lot more for a much cheaper product that's also simpler to design.
The Beats meme is outdated and tired. Their newest models with the Apple wireless chips in them are actually quite good - they balance a lot of qualities consumers care about well. The sound is great (just check the reviews), and the wireless connectivity is the best in the market. They also integrate really well with the Apple ecosystem due to the A1 chip. They also look better than 99% of headphones out there and that matters to people.
If aesthetics, wireless performance, portability or integration aren’t import to you and the only thing you care about is raw sound quality, that’s fine. Beats probably won’t fit your requirements. But the vast majority of people want something that balances a lot of different qualities well and Beats does that today (maybe not so well in the past).
As for the price, what good active noise canceling headphone on the market isn’t at least $350?
FYI: I have the Sony WH1000XM2. I paid $400 for them. I tested all ANC headphones on the entire market before settling on the Sonys. Beats were not the worst by any means. They gripped my big head too tight and hurt so I couldn’t consider them. Other than that, the A1 chip was amazing for connectivity and the sound curve was great for hip hop. They were also much more pleasing aesthetically and more portable than the competition. Ultimately comfort was the #1 thing I was looking for and they didn’t check that box.
Similar to you, I'm shopping a pair of wireless headphones right now. I am considering Beats because of the reasons you stated, but also most sites have the latest Studio model at only $230. While the Sony model you mention (which is my number one choice right now tied with the H9i), are most places $350 ($450 for the H9i). Given I'm buying these mostly for convenience first and portability, and given they are wireless sound quality is not the most important attribute. I'm going to take the best, maybe even considered bad choice, for me and my uses.
If you listen to any music that is remotely bass-oriented, the Bose falls flat on it's face. It's unfortunate because I actually think it's the most comfortable and lightweight option in the market. The noise canceling is also some of the best I've ever experienced.
The sound though, just can't keep up with any of the competition. For some people this isn't an issue - so they love the headphones, as they should. For someone like me who listens to a lot of hip hop and electronic music, it's a complete dealbreaker.
The wireless ANC headphone market is in a weird place right now. All of the headphones do some things really well, but have major tradeoffs to make one way or another. It all comes down to which tradeoff you want to make and what part of the experience is most important to you depending on your use-case.
Like I said, I've tried nearly every option in the market. Maybe I should write a blog post around this since I've invested so much time into it already.
Possibly, because Bose has been doing "Beats" thing since there were Beats. They sound pretty bad regardless of the price, and for the price they are atrocious.
I see way more people criticize Beats on the internet than any "horde of obvious Beats purchasers" defending them. I think the criticism is just a meme at this point.
Since nobody's answering. Amazon is demonstrating a possible further branching into the augmented speaker market, and demonstrating a quality build that suggests improvements still to come - that is a great threat to any incumbent (can one call a firm pre-IPO that) that is a lot smaller. Sonos is left to carve a niche in the non-augmented digital speaker market. Other comments on this thread show that at least their capabilities app-wise are mediocre. Going heads-up with Amazon while lacking skills in your obvious market... that's a risky gamble for an IPO investor. (Can't say I totally buy that, but the technical teardown was very cool.)
Yeah, the point is that Amazon's design costs more to produce and they sell it for a lower price. The Sonos design is more typical and $200 is probably closer to a "realistic" price.
In other words, the design details from the teardown signal that Amazon is willing to eat losses on hardware, whereas Sonos can't afford to. Sonos doesn't have the alternative revenue streams that Amazon (and Google) have, making it hard to compete head on. I do think there is a niche for Sonos though, offering more music-focused options and sticking to the truly premium/high-end market, which Amazon seems less interested in. Google seems interested in that market segment with the Max, but I think they are still testing the waters so Sonos can still compete.
They had 1.5b in revenue in 2013 (the year before apple acquired them). Apple started talks just 4 months after beats music launched, and was said to put a price on it of $500m (out of the $3b):
It was talked about when it was acquired. Beats streaming was mostly just their MOG acquisition at the time. The streaming service was a fraction of the purchase price.
That was my thought as well... It was an interesting (if pretty high level) teardown, but all the leaps from a part to what that part "means" seemed like the author was trying to backfill a narrative.
This is not directly relevant to the article - more a critique of the Sonos product which I've wanted to get off my chest.
I was a Sonos skeptic then a convert before becoming skeptical again. I stopped buying after the third Sonos 3 speaker.
Some basic features are missing which mean that users like me are clearly not a focus. Primarily I want to play my own, ripped-to-FLAC media.
The most irritating thing is that users have been requesting these features for 5+ years on the fora.
A random list of grievances:
- No regain support - this renders the playlist feature useless unless you want to constantly fiddle with the controller to adjust the volume between tracks.
- No cue support (i.e. single FLAC with a .cue file) which allows transitions between tracks. This breaks play back for lots of classical, Opera, ED music and classic rock albums like the Beatles' Abbey Road.
- Multi-disc support is poor - no grouping or separate disc images. 2 CD boxsets are o.k. but larger (4+) are unnavigable.
- Can't handle higher than 16/48 digital rips.
- No airplay, bluetooth, etc. support. This means you cannot use Sonos to replace all audio speakers in your home.
- Wierd/undocumented rules for file naming - silently ignores tracks with quotes, colons and maybe others (these are the ones that hit me)
- Finally the controller software has gotten worse with every update: poor album art caching, illogical navigation, confusing search, artist search cannot find tracks on compilations, etc.
Then again, it seems going the "smart speaker" route has boosted their revenues. I have no interest in such functionality so I guess I'm not the target market for Sonos.
This is a pity because much of the package is quite compelling and it wouldn't take much effort to support libraries (rather than streaming).
I bought one and spent three days trying to fight the software. Seems Sonos are aiming for a cut of the streaming revenue: if you already own the music you’re a distraction.
Once I discovered you can drive the Sonos as a passive target from a DLNA device, things got much better.
Most of your complaints are perfectly valid, and some of the reasons I stay away from Sonos products.
But the "Can't handle higher than 16/48 digital rips" just bugs me. Digital sound for human consumption absolutely does not benefit from higher sample rates or bit depths than that. None whatsoever. Just downsample your "hi-res" collection using SoX or a similar high quality resampler to 16/44.1 or 16/48, and be done with it.
This is a bit of an interesting side discussion (I use sox indeed to down sample) but I've recently changed my stance on this after reading the results of some blind testing of MQA (24-bit at 192KHz or something like that) recordings.
My knowledge of analog and digital signal processing is superficial but I think I can at least understand the arguments.
I used to buy your argument on why sampling at more than 48KHz is a waste of time. The argument goes something like: humans cannot hear frequencies above 20KHz (less for older people) so as long as we sample above the Niquist frequency (40Khz) then the audible frequencies can be perfectly represented. 48KHz > 2*hearing range so QED, higher frequency sampling is at best a waste of time and may even make the sound worse.
The credible counter to this argument that I've read is that
this argument requires being able to perfectly filter out the >20KHz frequencies before you sample. A perfect filter with an exact 20KHz cut-off does not exist in the real world - some of the audible range gets affected at the high end and also some >20KHz signal gets through. One of the resulting artifacts is pre-imagining (like a subtle-reverse echo).
If the blind testing of MQA compared MQA encoded tracks with and without MQA decoding, they were actually comparing MQA to 13-bit audio, as the (lossy) MQA data is encoded in the last 3 bits of "noise". That can definitely be heard on dynamic tracks. But CD-quality audio is 16-bit, which does not have an audible noise floor for music.
>"The credible counter to this argument that I've read is that this argument requires being able to perfectly filter out the >20KHz frequencies before you sample. A perfect filter with an exact 20KHz cut-off does not exist in the real world - some of the audible range gets affected at the high end and also some >20KHz signal gets through."
You don't need to cut off sharply at 20kHz, you have a band of 2.05kHz (for 44.1) or 4kHz, even with a non-oversampling DAC. Piece of cake for digital filters even 20 years ago, and reasonably possible even with analog filters.
But it's not even relevant for most people, since most DACs oversample to at least double sample rate, and can thus implement smooth gentle filters with no issues. That gives you the benefit of smooth filters you mention for high sampling rates, without wasting any storage space, making "hi-res" music pointless.
My understanding was that the blind tests were not as naive as that and the comparisons were with full 16/44 recordings and playback.
Funny enough I have read that article on xiph.org - which is a good read - and was completely convinced.
But listening to guys like this https://youtu.be/geaoEt-9V-w has made me question this. He claims that in practice it is impossible to perfectly band-limit a signal (whether with digital or analog filters) and this gives rise to artifacts in the reproduced signal which can be observed by oscilloscope. And yes the guy seems to know what he's talking about but I'm happy to be corrected on that.
Having said all that, I've little interest in the top-end audio market so it's somewhat irrelevant to my needs. Support for hi-res audio is pretty down my list of irritations with the Sonos, to be honest.
Oh jeez, not that guy. He's a former hifi salesman, with only a very tenuous grasp of the technical details. I've experienced this countless of times, the salespeople completely buy into the "high end" mumbo-jumbo and don't bother to actually learn the technical aspects.
It's very common for them to show some minor effect on an oscilloscope, but ignore the fact that any artifacts from ringing and such would be close to the Nyquist frequency and below -80dBFS in the signal. In other words, utterly inaudible. For all their talk about trusting their ears, they seem to conveniently forget that maxim the moment it doesn't suit their made-up arguments.
Yes, in theory you cannot 100% perfectly band limit a signal. However, in practice you can band limit it well enough that any artifacts are either very close to or actually below the noise floor, and thus completely irrelevant.
On the complete opposite end of the scale of salesperson:tech guru, the article I linked was written by none other than Chris "Monty" Montgomery (xiphmont on this very site), who among other things founded the Xiph.org free codec foundation, and either was fully responsible for creating the Ogg container format, the Vorbis, FLAC, Speex and Opus audio formats, and countless other technical achievements, or at least had a big hand in them. Free and open digital audio owes a gigantic debt to him, and if anyone knows their way around digital audio, it's him.
They still lack HDMI too on their two older sound bars.
I ended up going to Denon HEOS AVR which works great as a fully featured home theater amp (DD+ and DTS-HD) with wireless rears and similar casting abilities.
Out of curiosity, why do you need HDMI on a speaker? Especially considering that you don’t know how much latency the TV’s signal processing is introducing into the chain.
I just run an optical cable from my TV to my Sonos soundbar. It’s simple, it works, and I know that the audio will be in sync. And as a bonus, the cable’s thinner.
(I do wish they supported more audio formats though, with DTS and Atmos notably absent.)
> Out of curiosity, why do you need HDMI on a speaker?
Well, my TV doesn't pass through anything other than stereo over optical, so lack of HDMI adds on the expense and hassle of an additional HDMI switch with audio extraction to my AV chain if I want 5.1 audio.
Optical also doesn't have the bandwidth for higher-resolution formats. This means, for instance, that's it's impossible to play Nintendo Switch audio in anything other than stereo on a 5.1 Sonos system, as the Switch only supports LPCM audio output. (Also can't do Atmos over optical, but I tend to believe Sonos when they say that it doesn't help with actual sound quality with a regular 5.1 setup.)
> Especially considering that you don’t know how much latency the TV’s signal processing is introducing into the chain.
I don't know that I'd trust TV manufacturers to have lower latency on video input than on audio output, so this seems like a bit of a wash. Furthermore, the Sonos app has a setting to adjust audio latency. Personally, I use my TV for games and with a desktop PC, so any significant video latency isn't acceptable anyway, regardless of video sync.
> No airplay, bluetooth, etc. support. This means you cannot use Sonos to replace all audio speakers in your home.
Not ideal, but you can hookup an AppleTV to line in on a connect:amp and airplay this way.
Insanely expensive buy in for that feature. I just happened to have the amp as my first sonos product and an appletv I no longer use (switched to Fires)
Yes - this is what seems to be the recommended solution.
But as you say, it's insanely expensive particularly as my main use-case which was to allow my partner to listen to youtube videos from her iphone.
And as well as the expense - I don't have an AppleTV or Connect:amp sitting around - it feels kludgy to me as it involves a needless round-trip between digital and analog. Also it's not user-friendly - to listen to a youtube video cast from my iphone requires fiddling with 2 apps.
Seems like you've had a lot of experience with the products from Sonos.
When it comes to file naning, no same system wants to handle colons and other special characters. I know Macosx and classic has allowed it, and taught users bad manners.
You're thinking like a computer programmer who doesn't want to quote or escape their command line arguments. Non-technical users just want to write meaningful strings and wouldn't understand why a period should be allowed but not a colon. MacOS got this one right. For user-visible names, try to be as permissive as possible and allow as much unicode as possible.
Agree that he's "thinking like a computer programmer" with respect to the distinction between periods and colons, slashes, and so forth. But Unicode is different. If you can't type it on a keyboard, it doesn't belong in a filename.
I agree that for shells, some scripting languages and the like, file names with punctuation and other special characters can be challenging.
But Sonos doesn't have to do any "handling" here - the user never gets to interact with the network paths/file names so they should (I think) be treated as opaque identifiers.
> "Interestingly, this is the same system-on-a-chip used in the 6th generation Amazon Fire HD; maybe Amazon had a few extra laying around?"
A little-known fact about the echo smart speakers is that they run a minimally modified version of FireOS at their core. In fact, many references to the Fire tablet lineup can be seen around the echo firmware. Using the same SoC makes sense in this regard as it allows for a more unified build process by enabling kernel/driver/firmware blob reuse.
The original Echo ran something akin to the Kindle e-reader Linux-based OS. Once the Fire Phone failed, many Android engineers were absorbed into the Echo projects and the follow-on products seem to have been migrated to FireOS (or vice versa?).
There are some sparse details about the original Echo floating around[0], but I couldn't find the specifics.
While they may be able to share some firmware, I'd still wager their kernels/drivers/firmware blobs are different enough due to drastically different components interfacing with the SoC. I personally question the value of putting Android on non-mobile screen-less devices (forgetting about the Echo Show).
I'm not sure we should be forgetting about the Show; I can't imagine that Amazon wants different kinds of Echo to have different operating systems, and once you've got the screen, it makes more and more sense to reuse your existing systems.
You're implying Amazon knows what it wants. They thought the Fire Phone was going to be huge. They thought the Echo wasn't.
While reuse is nice, optimizing for experimentation and different products is probably more useful. Given most of the magic of Alexa lives in Amazon's servers, there seems to be less incentive to use existing solutions over what makes sense (and is cost effective).
I was about to buy some Sonos stuff but asked if I needed to go online to activate them (I claimed I did not have internet), and sure enough, an internet connection is a requirement. So sorry Sonos, I am buying an appliance which I expect to function independent of your company for years to come. If that can not be guaranteed then my money will stay in my pocket and I will continue to use my open-source cobbled together solution even if it is slightly less polished and convenient.
I get what you’re saying, but Sonos works differently than a normal speaker. It is playing the music, not your other device. The app is a control. So if you turn on music and leave with your phone, the music keeps going. When other people connect, they see your music and services, not theirs. It’s its own thing - not just a speaker.
That said, your point about, “will it continue to work if sonos, the company, is shut down?” Is a valid one.
I'm not sure why any of the things you describe require a Sonos operated service.
An app on the smartphone should be able to communicate directly with your Sonos via Bluetooth or local WiFi. The Sonos can then (over the local protocol) inform the app of what services and media are available on that Sonos unit.
A not-so charitable guess would be that Sonos keeps close tabs on what you listen to.
Sonos is intentionally making the internet requirement more onerous.
About a year ago, they started requiring you to create an account to add new speakers. Now, the app is displaying threats to remotely disable my $2800 speaker setup if I don’t create an account.
The funny thing is that I plan to more than double the system, and they’ve severely pissed me off (if they’re now willing to pull basic functionality, what do they plan in the future?)
Anyway, it occurred to me that, with the right software, you can probably get comparable audio quality for much less of a markup with a raspberry pi, and maybe an external DAC.
I don’t have time to write the software, but maybe someone else does.
(And, no, amazon/google/apple’s competitive offerings aren’t an attractive option for me)
I’m bearish on the 12 months post-IPO because they’re intentionally creating a user revolt to juice the pre-IPO finances.
Snapcast works like Sonos. Open source and runs on a raspberry pi (but probably best to run the server on something beefier). I put a Chromecast Audio on external USB line-in for compatibility with Spotify etc, and mopidy for local audio.
Take a look at Libratone [0]. I love my Zipps. Bonus is the inbuilt battery; so you can take it anywhere. Appears as an audio output on all Apple devices, so can be used for anything. Also works standalone with internet radio stations. Nice bit of kit. Should be better known.
Your approach definitely isn't a bad one; a few weeks ago I had trouble connecting to Sonos's network, so I couldn't stream anything from Spotify/Amazon/etc, even though they worked on my network for me. It's worrying how easily these (expensive) speakers could become bricked.
I still love them, mind you, I would just be hesitant to invest in them further.
"I was about to buy some Sonos stuff but asked if I needed to go online to activate them (I claimed I did not have internet), and sure enough, an internet connection is a requirement."
My own experience, having owned a sonos system since 2006, is that the system will work just fine with disabled Internet but it flails badly if your network connection has a lot of packet loss. >50% packet loss, it seems, is not a failure mode they have tested.
I have not added a new speaker in a few years, though - is it really true they will require a login/profile ? I wonder what value my Fakey McFakefake profile will add to their IPO ...
So he spends what looks to have been a substantial amount of time carefully disassembling and commenting on the manufacturing processes and material quality of two speakers, without ever even looking at the actual speaker cones and housing at all? Seriously? I kept waiting for there to be SOME discussion of the actual speaker itself, and even went back and re-read, figuring I must have missed it... but no. Nope. He actually managed to do a teardown of two speakers without ever actually looking at the most important bits. Wow.
you seem to have completely missed the point of the article. it isnt a speaker review, it is an analysis of the strategy of the company developing the speaker. the audio quality is not germane
He correctly identifies the silicon labs Zigbee/Bluetooth chip but then remarks the Zigbee is not used? It's one of the major selling points of the Echo Plus and it was sold bundled with a Philips Hue bulb for launch. After this I doubt this guy really knows what he's talking about. Nice teardown though.
I don’t think it matters that the Echo Plus is technically more advanced and that Amazon owns more of the stack.
If the Sonos One looks better, is heavier, and costs more, then Sonos might be able to sell the product further up-and-to-the-right on the Veblen good chart.
Maybe.
I’m not convinced going public for these one trick ponies does anything other than let the early investors cash out.
I’m just a layperson when it comes to these matters, but wouldn’t Sonos have been acquired if their product-market fit was believed to be worth something?
Acquired by who? It's a luxury niche brand. Acquisition by one of the giants they integrate with (Apple, Amazon, Spotify, etc) would inevitably result in vendor lock-in (Apple buys them and now Amazon Music doesn't work anymore), which would be devastating to their reputation and customer sat. A "neutral" giant (LG?) could pick them up, but why? Who wants to diversify into luxury home stereo? That leaves major audio companies (Sennheiser? Bose?), but those are mostly already luxury brands, and cobranding ("Sonos by Sennheiser") could get complicated.
The nature of the market Sonos is working in means that whatever P/M fit they have is potentially compromised by being acquired. Weird, but that's luxury goods for ya.
Read this for the interesting deep dive into the parts used and the insights on manufacturing process and cost of manufacturing.
Wished the article would have also covered the tweeter and midrange on sound quality. That seems necessary given its a breakdown of a smart Bluetooth speaker.
Other than that, I don't see much value in the business insights the writer has reached.
Aren't most PC speakers ie. integrated amplifier / 3.5mm input (is that what they are called?) inferior to having a separate amplifier, and a DAC?
I used to buy PC speakers before I realized that I was paying for a new (but shitty) amplifier everytime I got a new set of speakers.
Audio path is as such:
Digital File -> DAC -> 3.5mm -> Amplifier -> Speakers
Wireless audio path can cut the DAC out in well designed systems.
In any case, I think most people, even smart hackers in our group, think that they can get amazing PC speakers..audiophile quality. Its a popular misconception. But once you think about the physics of it, of course a 3.5mm cable isnt delivering enough voltage to physically move speaker cones back and forth.. So these "PC speakers" have really cramped amplifiers inside, dealing with very high voltages.
Invest in a good amp for the main sound setup that you care about. Youll have to buy new speakers with balanced red and white thick gauge cables but you'll get much better sound. It saves the environment, optimizes the process.
I recommend Peachtree [1] The amp has wireless streaming, mobile apps, USB audio from PC, skipping analog conversion. Absolutely stunning quality.
I'm not sure why anything needed to be taken apart for him to reach his conclusions?
Amazon is manufacturer and retailer (so no double margin), they own the Alexa IP which does the real work in both cases, and has deep enough pockets to try out this market (so they don't even need the margin).
If I had to have a reason why Sonos might still be worth something it's the luxury brand value. Like owning a B&O stereo in its day. Yes you can buy cheaper but are you a real connaisseur then?
From my quick review, Sonos is actually the most functional device now. I couldn't find another one which works with multiple (grouped) speakers on wifi, uses Google Play and Spotify, and allows DLNA input. Are there any non-luxury brand alternatives which fulfill this?
"I'm not sure why anything needed to be taken apart for him to reach his conclusions?"
I would guess because he wanted to talk about the manufacturing and this gave him an excuse. It is an interesting approach but I do agree that it isn't a necessary one.
I'm deeply confused why the person writing this thinks speakers are a technology that even can be "disrupted", let alone all the stuff he does that is for all intents and purposes just reading tea leaves^H^H^H^H^Hspeaker casings.
Sure, the manufacturing is interesting, and there is some truth to the smart aspect of the sonos being kind of "bolted on", but the attempt to read an entire companies outset from the manufacturing processes they use is just stupid.
As much as software likes to go on about "disrupting" this and "reimagining" that, manufacturing, particularly large volume manufacturing is extraordinarily staid, and different companies have in-house experience with different processes. Switching processes just because something is new and shiny is just not done, because the retooling costs are enormous, and you may not have the in-house familiarity with the new processes.
Really, what it sounds like to me is that the engineers at Sonos are far better at designing things for production. They didn't need to use fancy new tools, or design extremely exotic moldings. When it comes to cranking out a product, the LESS fancy new processes you use, the better in almost every case. It means the processes you're using are more predictable, you have more vendors you can use (because they're more broadly available), and you're likely to maybe have a old guy or two in house who's use process XXX for 40 years, and can tell you in excruciating detail every single little thing you have to worry about before you even start production.
Basically, this is a single decent point (sonos is a speaker company adding smart shit, and amazon is a internet-of-shit/retail giant adding speakers), buried in a whole lot of hyperbole and bullshit.
And most of the value added is in the software. The hardware is just an active speaker with the equivalent of a raspberry pi attached. Not new tech.
I owned a set a Sonos speakers for about 5 years now and I am in the market for a better replacement. The software has become unusable, the speakers keep depairing, not managing to read the network drive (and shockingly only support SMB1). But all the alternatives have moved into stasi-style “a mic behind every radiator”. I feel slightly out of choice. I just want the music not the spying.
I have a Chromecast Audio, plugged into the HiFi amplifier and good floor-standing speakers I've owned since I was 21. I use BubbleUPnP to control it, and have MiniDLNA running on a small server to share my music. (Though there are other ways to expose a music collection from a phone, NAS or whatever, or skip both of these and use Spotify or similar.)
I don't know if Google log every track I play — the Chromecast doesn't work if my Internet connection drops — but they haven't got GDPR compliant permission from me, so perhaps not.
Streaming the audio directly from my MacBook is unsatisfactory, it drops out a lot. So the soundtrack to a film playing on a laptop can't be done this way, I would instead plug the laptop directly into the HiFi. The equivalent setup works on Linux with an ethernet connection, but was a hassle to configure and get working so I haven't bothered with my new Linux computer.
I only have the one pair of wired speakers, I haven't tried the multi room feature.
Your comment would be better without the name calling.
My thought was: interesting teardown but where’s the support argument. Scroll, scroll, scroll, ah! Three points at the end, Ben reckons Amazon will win because:
The thing is, all those points are true, but they have zero to do with the hardware design.
If the guy want's to make those points, make those points. Don't pretend to extract them from the hardware with some sort of bizarre hardware phrenology.
So they appear to be a leading-edge wireless speaker manufacturer who woke up one day and found themselves to be a little less leading-edge than they thought they were. They are now trying to make up for lost ground by using Amazon's IP and storefront to compete with... Amazon.
So I can see why the author of the article is bearish on these guys.
I don't know if anyone ever looked at the mechanical prowess of b&o back in the LP day.. but they were basically crap. Crapper than crap. A Garrard turntable and sme arm beat them hollow. But.. b&o had charisma and marketing. Bests for profit giant isn't to be best, it's to be sexiest. Sonos is a sexy brand.
Obligatory: SlimMP3/Logitech's Squeezebox[0] was the best.
Very similar line-up to the original Sonos boxes, except they released a lot more speakerless hardware. Open source server (that could be run from the Touch model) which is still maintained and improved. Streaming options. House-wide sync. All for half the price of the Sonos.
It's especially galling reading that list of Sonos complaints. We've got regain support, good .cue handling, 24/192 and higher playback depending on your hardware, you could even do bidirectional Airplay and bluetooth (with some kicking and screaming)... And oh yeah, you could make your own players because it's all open source, open spec.
And a feature (for me), none of this smart rubbish.
For those of us that have a household full of it (and spares) it's still an amazing system... but Logitech ultimately binned it. I guess only selling one pile of kit every 15 years didn't seem good enough business for them.
"Obligatory: SlimMP3/Logitech's Squeezebox[0] was the best."
It has been a while since I thought about this but I think the primary reason that I opted for a Sonos system (in 2006) vs. the squeezebox system was that the squeezebox required server-side software to function ... whereas the Sonos could connect to any old SMB share you pointed it to.
So in my case, my FreeBSD fileserver could (and still does) feed my Sonos system - with no software to be installed anywhere.
The Squeezebox was my fave too. I owned the v1, v2 and v3. The audio was pretty amazing for the time. In the end I ended up using it as a digital streaming service.
The closest I've seen around now is https://roonlabs.com/ -- it's pricey but does many of the cool the things Slim/Squeeze used to do (and a little more).
As another longtime fan (with an apartment full of Squeezeboxen) I was reflecting on how Slim Devices's main competitors at the time, Sonos and Roku are still around whereas Slim is a ghost in the Logitech graveyard.
I've only used Squeezebox and Roku pivoted to video so I can't compare there, but was Sonos' unhackable yet easier to set up approach better, or could Slim have improved their product more to compete in some way?
To Logitech's credit they are continuing to keep the server updated, but it does seem like the big obstacles in the long run will be keeping it integrated with an evolving world of streaming and podcasts.
Given all you need to run LMS is a Raspberry Pi 2 era CPU and some storage, they could very easily, and very cheaply make a WPS/bluetooth/NFC pairable device you just drop in your network and you've got LMS with a writeable Windows (samba) share to store music. And an app for fruitier configuration (as well as the current webapp).
Streaming services are already largely integrated. Logitech could formalise these relationships to protect them in the long run.
Basically, a few engineers there could pivot on what they've got and have prototypes out in a week. As I've said elsewhere, they really do have all the pieces of the puzzle, sitting gathering dust... They just choose not to do anything with it. It's infuriating.
In DIY circles, that ecosystem seems to be still somewhat alive (with client software running on Raspberry Pis etc), which is pretty telling about the alternatives...
Oh definitely. Yeah, I've got 4 real ones and 4 DIY squeezelite's in rotation at the moment.
And even while you can build you own, the used market is still strong. Hardware that's been used daily for 10 years selling for 70% its original retail pricetag. Practically unheard of for consumer tech.
Basically, Logitech are idiots. They could keep selling what they did and still make money but it'd be trivial for them to step back in and pick up development, but hey ho.
It's certainly alive. I have two of the hard players (including an original ethernet SLIMP3!) and two soft players. You can turn any spare smartphone/tablet you have lying around into a player by hooking it up to a cheap BlueTooth speaker dock and installing an Android app.
The "downside" of course is you have to run your own server. For those of us who want to have control, want to maintain our own music libraries, and want everything to be open source, this is an advantage. But I can see why this is not for everyone.
You can pick up the old players on eBay although some of the rarer/better ones are not cheap.
I'm pretty sure the holes in the Echo Plus aren't drilled. That would be crazy! Perhaps it is injection moulded with an internal draft and then drilled out afterwards.
Also I have previously looked at these holes and wondered how they manufactured it, and the holes are clearly made in 6 groups with the same angle of hole in each group. This is how you'd do it with injection moulding - a load of pins attached together.
If you were CNC drilling them you'd use a CNC lathe and the hole axes would all be normal to the surface which isn't the case.
I have a strong feeling Sonos will end up like Aiwa[1] (the original brand) because they're in a very similar situation as Aiwa was. Aiwa died because of a combination of bad technology bets, not being able to cope up with technology fast enough while simultaneously struggling to fight a then monopoly (Sony). I did a couple of teardowns and found some interesting technical choices - The company, even in its last breath didn't let go of its "signature" design and sound of loudspeakers. They were later acquired by Sony and shut down for good after failed attempts at rejuvenation.
Audio is an unforgiving market. It will be interesting to see how Sonos survives.
I loved the teardown and the article as a whole but that header was MASSIVE. On my 13" MacBook I could see very little content. I ended up deleting the header + nav and that mad it much better but I would have expected it to slim down or hide once I scrolled down.
I think the author misses the point of Sonos somewhat. I don’t think they aim to dominate the smart speaker market. They seem to be a fashionable upper midrange device that is as much for status as it is a speaker. They market Sonos speakers as a fancy home speaker that also happens to support Alexa. Amazon is more the mass market option and just aims to put Alexa in every home.
Sonos will never take over the world but will be an established niche player.
I would also agree with the sentiment of no Alexa in my home. I was an early adopter of Amazon echo but I have given them away and will never have one in my home again.
I wish the author had focused only on doing a straight-forward teardown and comparison of both products instead of inserting random comments, jokes and business opinions.
I used to own a ton of Sonos speakers and absolutely loved them. But the software was just too damn buggy. Ended up giving them away right around the time WiFi support rolled out and the speakers refused to stay connected.
I’m hoping for the best for them. Their customer support was absolutely top notch. Talked on the phone with an engineer from Europe on Christmas Eve trying to solve a weird bug in the Mac app.
Amazon sells nearly all of its Echo products through their own retail channel, this means they don’t pay a margin to other retailers. I can’t think of a single consumer electronics company that sells tens of millions of units directly to consumers like that.
Doesn't Apple sell far more (of its own manufacture) than Amazon, directly to consumers as well?
No, we didn't stock iPod/Mac competitors. There was good competition for cases and other accessories, but we weren't told the margins between suppliers for those. All I knew about margins was that Apple stuff was ~6-12% depending on the product, accessories were great, and software was excellent at 50+% margin (except for iWork/iLife), but we didn't sell much software.
Somewhat related question: I quite enjoy such articles where people take apart consumer electronics, although I don't know the jargon ("an extruded plastic tube with a secondary rotational drilling operation" - wat?). Does someone know accessible resources (as in "no dry textbooks") for mechanical engineering?
I own Sonos One. Love it when the wifi connectivity between my cellphone/laptop and my Sonos don’t die. Iisten Spotify and some radio podcasts. The sound quality is great, especially the bass is pretty good. I wish there’s a bluetooth option which would offer better connectivity quality in short range.
I bought a Sonos One for my partner and regret it.
One of our use cases is playing audio from videos of dance classes. But it can't do this, because the WiFi streaming protocols are set up for linear streaming, using long buffers. That kills the ability to do frequent seeking and looping of sections of a video. Yet the most basic of crappy Bluetooth speakers has no trouble with this.
It never occurred to me that a premium wireless speaker released in 2017 could not do this. My fault, of course, for not researching it thoroughly enough. But Sonos's also, for arbitrarily restricting a perfectly sensible use of generic hardware like a speaker.
I'm not going to buy Sonos, Amazon Echo, smart TV or any other "smart" device. They all have some things in common: vendor lock-in, manufacturer having more control over the device than the owner does, and little control over your own data.
For many websites it took quite a lot of effort to comply with the GDPR requirements. Updating the devices firmware is harder. Without OTA capabilities it may even be impossible. Soon we may hear some news about manufacturers with unscrupulous practices being fined and kicked out of the European market.
I can’t speak to their “smart” aspirations, but...it’s surprising to me that the author lauds the Echo. Sounds like that speaker is far more demanding to manufacture, which...isn’t necessarily a good thing.
this site format makes me feel like I wasted lots of money on my computer monitor, because 30% of it is taken up by enormous banners on the top and bottom of the screen...
I feel Sonos have really missed a trick by not opening up their API more. Most of the features I had a reverse engineer or check from other libraries. Their own apps have also not exactly gotten better. For example, I _HATE_ the unified search feature, it makes the search slow and sluggish. Controlling the speakers from Spotify directly also never worked glitch-free for me. Other niggles have to do with the grouping features, which are also a tad flaky and sometimes time out or only partially group. Most of all I am annoyed by the frequent updates asked for, without the ability to "pin" the speakers to a version and download a specific version of the client app.
All that said, I love their speakers because they sound good. The old Play 3 and the Amp especially. I feel they should focus their efforts on making the apps snappier and faster, not much more feature rich.
[1] https://github.com/pascalopitz/unoffical-sonos-controller-fo...