What cracking open a Sonos One tells us about the Sonos IPO
blog.bolt.io
blog.bolt.io
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...
https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/19/15356108/bose-connect-pri...
Google and Amazon wants to spy on you.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/19/15356108/bose-connect-pri...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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?
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.
[0] - https://www.theverge.com/2016/1/27/10840614/beats-by-dre-hea...
> 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 $100 or less.
There is a huge difference between the low cost ones and let's say 200-300$ 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..
"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?
People shit on Bose all the time. And justifiably.
Apple is in exactly the same cohort, but RDF is strong.
Samsung is great hardware, shitty interface (touchviz is pure garbage). But people don't defend it like they defend Apple, Bose or Beats.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The same person who wrote this article about Sonos, also did a tear down of Beats headphones:
https://blog.bolt.io/how-it-s-made-series-yup-our-beats-were...
I was wrong. It's actually closer to $20.
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.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-paying-just-under-500-mil...
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).
(edited for formatting)
Once I discovered you can drive the Sonos as a passive target from a DLNA device, things got much better.
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.
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).
>"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.
Read this: https://www.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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)
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.
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.
There are some good reasons to allow filenames with Unicode characters, but there are about a zillion good reasons not to.
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.
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.
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).
0: https://labs.mwrinfosecurity.com/blog/alexa-are-you-listenin...
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).
That said, your point about, “will it continue to work if sonos, the company, is shut down?” Is a valid one.
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.
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.
Here is a link to a thread with people that have better reasons to be annoyed than me: https://en.community.sonos.com/controllers-software-228995/w...
I still love them, mind you, I would just be hesitant to invest in them further.
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 ...
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?
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.
I didn’t realise the group owned so many labels.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Sonos just looks and sounds mediocre.
Disclaimer: I'm a former B&O employee, from before they started going downhill.
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.
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 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.
I would prefer a different manufacturer of a similar device, but I don't know of any.
Granted, it needs a Mac to steam the music to it, so it’s not a stand alone.
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:
1. OEM & retailer
2. More of the stack
3. Diversification
But, you don’t have to win to be successful.
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.
You make good points, and I generally agree, and upvoted your comment.
Can I not call foolish things foolish?
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.
Sonos were always wireless remote speakers, as far as I recall.
Sonos was what you had when you wanted steaming audio around the home well before it became popular with the advent of these new tangled gadgets.
Is that a typo or is it a new(to me) adjective? Curiously apropos, regardless.
It was intended to be newfangled.
I coin a new term: tapographical error
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.
Le sigh.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squeezebox_(network_music_play...
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 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).
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.
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.
Utterly pointless and a waste of time and resources to implement.
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.
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.
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.
Audio is an unforgiving market. It will be interesting to see how Sonos survives.
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.
It felt unnecessarily forced and clickbaity.
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.
Doesn't Apple sell far more (of its own manufacture) than Amazon, directly to consumers as well?
Apple margins are non existent. Companies sell Apple stuff because they have to.
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.
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.