As it stands, Sonos is effectively buying their old speakers and then throwing them away. Could they not recoup their costs and avoid e-waste by simply selling the used Sonos devices into a market that can't afford the brand new ones? I thought this is how most phone trade-in programs worked, which seems like a mature process now.
Then they would have to continue supporting those devices, which isn’t part of the planned obsolescence business model. It would also dilute the luxury brand halo that Sonos has tried to cultivate.
It’s more like Louis Vuitton getting into the secondhand market. They too would (and do) destroy merchandise rather than let it get sold at a discount and dilute the brand value.
They’ve actually done a pretty good job of being backwards-compatible and even enabling features on older speakers if they’re grouped with newer ones. For example, having an AirPlay 2 speaker in a group means that all speakers in the group will receive sound through AirPlay 2, even if they didn’t support AirPlay in the first place.
You can already buy louis vuitton at the nordstrom rack.
The model for highly disposable luxury technology is Apple. Apple is also the model for refurbished goods. These things aren't mutually exclusive. You can tuck away a refurbished part of the site just out of the eyes of the majority just like Apple does.
It's worth noting that other than the physical controller devices (which were discontinued in favor of mobile apps but still given a generous lifetime), Sonos still supports all of their hardware from the very first speakers / amps that they released.
Not that this makes their current actions ok, but at least they had been trying until now. I think they are now realizing that having a product that doesn't have built-in planned obsolescence may be hurting their profits
Wonder how long these apparel companies will keep it up. I remember reading not so long ago that some well-known clothes companies realized that people are interested in buying used high-quality clothes, and so they started manufacturing new clothes using worse materials and process but to the same design as quality ones, and then sell these fake-used clothes as "worn".
Isn't that basically the "Outlet Store" model? New clothes made to lower standards but ostensibly sold under the illusion of being "last season's overstock" of the high quality normal version?
Sonos could immediately cure the worst of these image problems by setting up something so you could re-license a recycled device for the $120 value (or whatever the amount is) someone got for hitting recycle.
It's not clear to me from the information here that Sonos themselves can't refurbish a device that's been put into recycle mode. This seems to be a technique to block third party refurbishers only.
It appears they can, but choose not to. This way they can ensure that less used units are available on the market, forcing people to buy a new unit instead.
Patagonia was started by a rock climber who sold his hand-made climbing gear into the free market. He was well rewarded for doing so and from that was able to grow into the Patagonia many of us know and love today (indeed my favorite clothing company).
The company is not only run on a capitalist basis, it's the reason it exists in the first place.
But yeah, it's true they're more conscious and environmentally friendly than most. And I think they play an important role in pushing back against fast fashion, which is incredibly polluting and wasteful.
I believe that Patagonia cares about the environment and wishes there was more they could do, but I think they are absolutely driven by the forces of capitalism, whether they like it or not, and it’s visible in their current practices. They run holiday ads and promotions, they open new stores, they release a new line each year. Yes they sprinkle in campaigns and messaging to not buy new unless you really need it and they facilitate recycling/reuse of their past products, but capitalism still forces them to seek growth, relevance, and sales to survive, which they do. Not faulting them for it, just wishing it wasn’t that way.
They are literally doing exactly that. You can take your old speaker into a Sonos store or ship it (on Sonos dime) back to them. They then refurbish and resell, and you get a discount.
This story is at best lazy reporting with many facts left out or unresearched.
I already replied to your other comment but in the interest of correcting this misinformation, you can neither ship your bricked device to Sonos nor bring it into a Sonos store.
What’s intensely frustrating about this is that audio equipment is one of the few areas where old high end kit is still absolutely fantastic for current users. I have an NAD 3020 from the 1980s which works perfectly with the same pair of speakers that it was bought with. I can’t say the same about other tech, but audio just doesn’t age at the same speed.
I can’t say the same about other tech, but audio just doesn’t age at the same speed.
People's ears have not changed, and the ability to reproduce sound has been nearly perfected. If you're not too picky/audiophillic, like most people, the requirements are even lower.
Literally the only "improvements" that are ever going to happen to audio in your lifetime will be a) internetifying it and b) adding more restrictions to how you use it.
We've hit peak audio (best reproduction, no restrictions on usage) and it's only downhill from here.
I look forward to my 2025 speakers that only work for an hour a day unless I pay for extra time credits.
"Do you wish to play a) music b) music and local radio c) music, local radio and podcasts [BEST VALUE]?"
People's taste has changed though. Your speakers from the 80's generally can't be driven as loud with current music, as modern music tends to be a lot more bass heavy (obviously a lot more pronounced with techno and other electronic music, but also with pop music).
The response curve from speakers has also reflected that, a lot of them are bass boosted in the amplifier or are designed with a bass boost in them.
I have some fairly nice speakers from the 70's (a couple of different sets, one homebuilt), and Pink Floyd and Jefferson Airplane sound a lot better from them than Katy Perry or Tiesto.
Sure, but new Sonos speakers are not that. They are a moderately okay speaker with wireless networking and control software that consumes an app-mediated digital byte stream, and then in the speaker decodes it to audio to perform playback.
If you want good speakers, you don't buy a device that's 50% streaming audio circuitry, you buy a same-priced speaker that's actually a good speaker.
I think one of the interesting aspects is that performance plateaued in a lot of ways.
If you look at the S/N and distortion specs on a new affordably priced receiver, they won't be meaningfully better than a mid-range unit from the late 70s/early 80s. All the new HDMI and 20.7 Dolby Surround does nothing for two-channel MP3s or CDs.
Because the performance is equal, it's allowed build quality to shine. 15kg of heatsinks, capacitors the size of Coke cans, and big old TO-3 transistors are probably going to outlast propriatery digital doodads and amp-on-a-module designs built to minimize costs.
I'm more of a JVC fanboy myself, but I've been working on a Kenwood KR-6200 recently. 45 years old and one dead bulb. Unacceptable!
Ehh, S/N has improved so much since the 80's that the noise floor of today's low-end receivers are significantly better than basically all high-end equipment from back then, especially if you include the DAC.
What's the current best alternative to a Chromecast Audio, now that they're discontinued and no longer as readily available?
My current living room setup is a Chromecast Audio connected to an AVR via the optical out connection, which powers my speakers, but I'm curious if there's any alternatives. The eBay sellers are really starting to price-gouge, and I'm not naive enough to believe that my Chromecast Audio will last forever.
I'm kind of glad I went with Squeezebox (formerly slim devices) 10 or so years ago. The entire server and client system is OSS, written in Perl on Linux (OK, that bit's annoying now, but was nice when I still used perl). The audio hardware is (still) great, and the software is hackable and I can SSH in to my speaker and change things if I need/want to. Most annoying thing is the constant cat-and-mouse game with hacked-on suppport for streaming services.
My speakers are twenty years old, but I got them last year. I am probably their fifth owner, as there is an entire community passing these things down the chain. In a similar vein, I've gone back to my TAG watch as my Apple Watch 1 just popped its screen off.
> audio equipment is one of the few areas where old high end kit is still absolutely fantastic
Yep. I picked up a massive old high-end Denon receiver with pre-amp inputs and use a cheap newer receiver to decode surround digital audio and pump it through that 40 pound beast. Sounds incredible.
Indeed, and it won't lose any value as you use it either. In fact, a lot of vintage equipment only gains value. My speakers are older than me by more than a decade (1972) and cost me £10 plus about £15 to repair the foams that perished a few years ago.
A pair of good speakers is the most useful equipment in audio. If I'm a millennial audiophool and want 192 kHz / 32-bit PCM, I'll simply put a new DAC in front of the original Hi-Fi amplifier. I won't throw the perfectly usable system away.
Even 256kHz 48-bit can't even get close to what I need when it comes to pitch-shifting an audio sample up even one single octave. It produces audible 'warbling' like a poorly-encoded MP3, or a badly-fatigued guitar string.
It seems like a lot of commenters here (as well as the tweets) are totally missing the purpose of the recycle mode.
If you want to sell, give away, or otherwise let someone else reuse your Sonos, then DON'T PUT IT IN RECYCLE MODE. Easy peasy.
Recycle mode exists for when you intentionally want to get a Sonos trade-in credit for recycling your speakers for materials. But because you don't send the speakers directly to Sonos (instead to a local recycler), they have to trust you're actually recycling it instead of keeping it or selling it. So the recycle lock is a clever mechanism to ensure that. Otherwise you could "cheat" by getting the credit AND still using/selling your speakers.
So if you want your speakers to be reused... don't take the credit!! Donate or sell them instead! It's your choice.
It seems to me like overall it's a good set of incentives. The credit helps encourage people to recycle them at all instead of just throwing them in the trash, right? But doesn't prevent people from otherwise selling or donating them. Since it gives the consumer all the choice, this seems like a win for all sides, no?
People understand the purpose of it quite well. They just completely disagree with your analysis.
First, the most environmental form of recycling is for an object to be reused as is. So, if any item is given to a recycling center, if the recycling center can just sell it directly to someone else, then it's much more environmentally friendly.
Second, the credit doesn't encourage people to recycle them at all instead of throwing it in the trash, there's no verification that they've given it to a recycling center. The only thing is that after the recycling mode is enable, the device becomes a useless paperweight.
So it's an extremely environmentally unfriendly policy from a company who pretends they care about the environment.
> So, if any item is given to a recycling center, if the recycling center can just sell it directly to someone else, then it's much more environmentally friendly.
I think OP's analysis did cover that. You don't have to put it in the recycle mode. You can sell it yourself or choose not to get the credit so someone else can "Recycle" it by reusing it.
I do agree with you that people could still put in the trash, but I also think that's where good recycling programs matter. It shouldn't be hard to recycle an electronic. It should be as simple as recycling paper or glass, especially in an age where almost everything is electronic.
No, you are totally missing the point of the recycle mode: the recycle mode is there to gain control of the devices after they have been initially sold to ensure that they will not be resold or given away when someone upgrades resulting in countless instances of good gear ending in the landfill or having to be recycled at substantial cost to society by dangling a small advantage in front of the original buyer.
Recycling effectively is the same as throwing them in the trash in this case. There is no need for this. Sonos could just as easily offer an upgrade discount to people who bought their gear originally but they are scared that this would affect their ability to sell to other people so they create what is called artificial scarcity.
And that should not happen with things that are still serviceable, especially not for a company that claims to have sustainability as their motto.
"To add insult to injury, there are complaints on Sonos' support forums from people who've managed to accidentally put their devices into recycling mode, and been told by Sonos support that there's no way to stop the countdown, forcing them to buy new devices after 21 days."
and
"From what our eBay guy can tell, the bricking isn't even in hardware; you can't recover it if you're good with JTAG, because it's blacklisted as "recycled" on their servers. There's nothing stopping these things from working except Sonos says they can't."
> been told by Sonos support that there's no way to stop the countdown, forcing them to buy new devices after 21 days
> you can't recover it if you're good with JTAG, because it's blacklisted as "recycled" on their servers. There's nothing stopping these things from working except Sonos says they can't.
These two points are not compatible with each other. If the only effect of recycle mode is that the device gets blacklisted on a Sonos server, then Sonos is trivially able to undo the effects.
How can it be that this is the top voted comment, with such a glaring logic flaw?
There is literally no way for them to verify that you didn't just throw your device in the landfill after enabling recycling mode and pocketing the cash. So this "functionality" does no good at all, other than to recruit the customer into their planned obsolescence program while praising the company for their "green" policy.
And it worked like a charm. Just look at how many people upvoted this comment, signifying their praise of the company for this terrible program!
It's a common marketing stunt and techniques with similar harmful effects were applied to other things as well, e.g., nicotine or prescription drug marketing. Public good is only a secondary objective in the american-style capitalism.
> But because you don't send the speakers directly to Sonos (instead to a local recycler), they have to trust you're actually recycling it instead of keeping it or selling it.
And to be clear, either keeping it or reselling it would be better for the environment than recycling the device. It's completely backwards to design an environmental program around making sure that people don't secretly do the right thing behind your back.
The fact that there are multiple highly-rated comments on HN looking at resellers and saying, "well, obviously they shouldn't get Sonos credits" shows how poor of a job our society is doing educating people about how reduce-reuse-recycle actually works. You don't have to check for people abusing the system. The people abusing the system are the environmental success stories. If a bunch of people participate in the trade-up program and then secretly resell their devices, that is a good thing that should be celebrated.
If anything, Sonos should be offering more credit to those people, not less.
Please stop using word "recycling" in the wrong way. Sonos used this word purposefully to promote the deactivation of their devices, which has nothing to do with real recycling:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/recycle
Sonos will pay for you to ship your recycled speaker back to them to be recycled. Not only do they pay for this shipping and recycle the speaker, but they give you a 30% credit. Hardly zero cost to Sonos, and considering the thriving market for refurbished speakers from Sonos it seems pretty clear the old speakers are being reused. Overall, sounds like they're doing exactly what they say they are.
The recycle credit is 30% off a new Sonos product, which, as far as I can tell, is worth around $100.
The linked tweet says the recycled Sonos would have been worth $250 on the secondhand market if not recycled.
It's extremely doubtful that the recycle credit is intended to prevent a second-hand market, and far more likely accidental. It does seem like a trade-in credit would work better, but nothing prevents third parties from offering a trade-in credit above $100.
There's no part of me that follows anything you said.
We absolutely understand what the intention of the button is.
I do not understand the actual sane incentive for anybody in this transaction.
How would Sonos be worse off if those machines weren't wasted?
You get a sale either way; you reward a loyal customer for an upgrade either way.
If it weren't a large company, I'd say they do it out of spite - but in reality, it's just the bizarre, surreal method large corporations end up with ridiculous policies through a set of seemingly logical steps.
>>they have to trust you're actually recycling it instead of keeping it or selling it
Why? What is the benefit to them (Sonos)? What is the harm if you DID keep it?
>>The credit helps encourage people to recycle them at all instead of just throwing them in the trash, right?
There's absolutely positively nothing about this mode / button that prevents people from throwing it in the trash. In fact, by any logic I can see, it does the opposite and encourages them to chuck it in the garbage - since it's now a worthless non-functioning brick.
>>the recycle lock is a clever mechanism to ensure that.
Let us please NOT call this travesty "Clever". At least not outside of SV tech-bro blinders culture :O. It does NOTHING to ensure recycling.
>>Otherwise you could "cheat" by getting the credit AND still using/selling your speakers.
Oh noes!
Wait.. HOW would Sonos be at all worse off? How would ANYbody be impacted for the worse?
>>this seems like a win for all sides
Sonos didn't get anything out of it. Recycling company got less out of it. Earth got less out of it. And there's no reason I can understand why consumer has to go through that hoop to get an upgrade credit.
Seems like a lose-lose for all sides.
----
I'm not going to downvote, because you made a lucid argument and downvotes are for those who do not contribute to conversation, not for disagreements. I'd say your post contributed a lot to conversation, seeing the number of comments:).
But I fail to understand the argument you're trying to make and the framework / world outlook where it makes sense.
I'm willing to be persuaded otherwise but need a lot more to even begin changing my mind :-/. Just because consumer "have choice", doesn't make one of the options automatically sane.
This is the dumbest thing ever. Sonos never receives the materials so you don't get credit "for recycling your speakers for materials", they somehow give you credits for destroying a piece of hardware so that it cannot be reused.
They literally get nothing, except to make their devices more rare by having old ones bricked. Which is WRONG, in this world of increasing waste.
Your idea that this somehow overall is a good set of incentives seems to be based on two things: One, that people would otherwise just throw them in the trash, which isn't true. Two, that it's somehow a good thing to give customers the choice to brick it for no other reason than Sonos credit.
This is purposeful marketing misinformation. The goal here is to incentivize a naive customer, apparently including you, to make their devices non-reusable and to buy new devices. This has nothing to do with recycling, yet Sonos purposefully uses this word, because in this way they achieve their goal.
Well, this is where the industry is going. The latest buzzword we hear in the industry is called "product as a service" — you buy a product, but still don't own it. You have to keep paying them for using your own property or else they remotely brick the device.
First gen Ipods were a prime example, but now everybody seem to want to do the same.
We recently had a prospective client who had an idea of very cheap internet connected Ipod clone, who of course had a "genius business model" of jacking the price n-fold after sale under a threat of remote bricking.
> Well, this is where the industry is going. The latest buzzword we hear in the industry is called "product as a service" — you buy a product, but still don't own it, and have to keep your subscription going so the seller don't remotely brick your device.
This is exactly what Cisco has done in the small/medium sized business market with their acquisition of Meraki. Pay forever or your router and wifi stops working. It's abhorrent.
It's also the direction Microsoft has been slowly moving Windows. You think it'd be bad if your router stopped working when you stopped paying, imagine the same scenario for your operating system.
It's certainly unappealing to me as an individual, but I am sure plenty of businesses wouldn't even blink at paying an ongoing charge like that (as long as the router in question was getting timely patches etc.)
> This is exactly what Cisco has done in the small/medium sized business market with their acquisition of Meraki. Pay forever or your router and wifi stops working. It's abhorrent.
That crazy ass low price you paid on the hardware? Yeah it was a loss-leader with the expectation that you must be a SaaS customer for life if you desire to use it.
It isn't difficult to understand, you just are religiously against it.
The traditional rental model — you borrow a physical device (a VHS recorder, say) and have to give it back if you stop paying — was, I think, one that was environmentally friendly, because the vendors make the most profit if the devices last a long time and never need replacing.
Unfortunately, you can also make a profit by following the environmentally destructive route of making the user buy themselves a brand new device and bricking it when they don't keep paying the separate subscription.
> You buy a product, but still don't own it, and have to keep your subscription going so the seller don't remotely brick your device.
That’s absolutely not what’s happening here. I paid £169 for my Play:1 five years ago, and it’s still working as well as the day I bought it. I haven’t paid them a penny since.
This eco trade in may be a bit sketchy but absolutely no one’s device is being bricked without their consent.
Sure, today. But what happens when Sonos decides they "don't want to support your Play:1"? Maybe because it's a "security issue" and they place your Play:1 in "recycle" mode for you and give you so many months to replace it? Think about this from a longer term point of view - this is just an A/B test by Sonos. They can brick your device from remote, so there's no guarantee that at some point they won't.
Did you read the twitter thread? Recycle mode bricks the device without communicating clearly to customer it's a kill switch for perfectly functioning hardware.
I had (still have in a drawer) a 1st gen ipod, but used some gnu audio software (I forget what) to encode (encrypt?) and transfer music I had ripped from CD's I own. I never used itunes.
I think it wasn't until later generations they made this more difficult.
Yes. It is painful to realize that Apple has turned into that. My reference example is a Mac Mini and MacBook Pro which I bought around 2012. Both still work, and are upgraded with dual SSD and 16GB RAM. It is, however, not possible to upgrade or even reinstall the OS. Linux is now the only option, which without they would be useless.
With my latest MacBook Pro, I already know that there are no upgrades, the keyboard is almost broken, and that its lifetime is determined through policy. Question is; will it be the hardware or software which determines end of life?
> It is, however, not possible to upgrade or even reinstall the OS.
I don’t feel it’s fair to expect a vendor to actively develop major feature upgrades for a seven-year-old computer.
What keeps you from downloading and installing macOS High Sierra or Mojave on your 2012 hardware? Both versions still receive security updates, don’t they?
This is where the investor backed audio companies are going. There will always be independent companies that don't have huge financial pressures that will be willing to sell complete devices at a one time fee
Separate from this issue here, Sonos should be off your list. The UX becomes progressively worse and opaque, your time will be wasted owing to mandatory software updates, needless churn, etc.
I have been a user since 2014, and I emphatically will not continue to be their customer once my existing devices bite the dust.
They will brick your older speakers or remove functionality. I have 7 Sonos speakers, spending $3-4k on them because quite frankly I love them and the technology was great. I bought a soundbar for my TV with sub and surround speakers and they sound fantastic, and being able to use them to play music was amazing.
But then they started removing functionality from their app, and the Play 1s don’t even work with the iPhone anymore unless you have a streaming service or you set up a music service. The ability to just play music and then play it on your speakers is gone. And they don’t give a fuck. They are completely unapologetic and they just forget about their older speakers like a bad habit and that’s why I will never buy another one again.
And their app is getting worse, they are forcing logging in to monitor your usage, etc. It’s infuriating. Their technology was amazing 5 years ago but now it’s annoying.
I bought two speakers they stopped supporting new features a few months later with no plans to support them. I would highly recommend against them. On their own the devices work “most of the time” but i have more trouble with them than I ever expected to have. I’ll never buy another Sonos product.
Same here. The only way to get these kinds of asinine behavior to stop is to hurt them in their pocket book; since it's apparently the only thing they care about.
I'm curious what you would recommend instead. Everyone is listing speakers they bought decades ago but what are the latest non-sonos speakers that people like?
You probably don't need a virus or anything running in the end user's network.
If your Sonos can access the API to mark a device as recycled, so can you. So if you can predict serial numbers or just bruteforce them (depending on how complex they are) you might be able to brick every single Sonos out there...
I highly doubt they assign unique keypairs etc. to every single device...
So Sonos devices need "activation" via some server on the internet? Why? If I just want to stream audio within my own home, why is internet even necessary? And what happens when Sonos goes out of business and the servers are shut down?
I just don't understand why people keep buying such things...
I recently bought a couple of Netgear Managed Switches (for Business)⁰ and in their datasheet they list "Local-only management" as a feature. Only after they arrived we discovered that you only get limited functionality in the Local-only management mode, you have to register the switches to your Netgear Cloud account to get access to the full functionality.
Reading up on it, this was achieved only after a community outcry because in the prior firmware versions the switch would have to connect to the Netgear Cloud on every bootup.
Needless to say I would not have bought the swiches if I had knew I needed to register them to Netgear Cloud to have access to the full functionality specified in the data sheet. If I had bought them as a consumer, not as a business, I would have returned them immediately.
You should return them to the middleman, accompanied with a small note about the false advertising and claim a full refund. Make sure to order something from the same vendor that does work.
They seem to be one of the few brands that give good audio quality and modern convenience at the same time.
For example, I was looking for a device that would (1) be placeable on my living room furniture[1], and let me use a couple of trusty Monitor Audio speakers both (2) for playing music (e.g. from my phone, computer or streaming sources like Spotify) and (3) for TV audio, as those speakers sound much better than a modern soundbar. And that (4) could be expandable to surround sound in the future.
I painstakingly examined alternatives in the market. There were many devices that covered the three latter points but the overwhelming majority were AV receivers, which looked great from the audio and flexibility standpoint but were at least 30 cm deep. Not useful for me, as the furniture in my living room is 28 cm deep (wasn't the point of flat screen TVs to no longer need deep furniture taking lots of space in the living room?). I found like 5 or 6 devices that would physically fit. But most of them had no flexibility for surround expansion AND no WiFi, only Bluetooth playback.
Finally, only two devices ticked my boxes and physically fit: HEOS AVR (around €1000, 27.4 cm deep) and Sonos Amp (around €600, 21.69 cm deep) which wasn't even out yet.
Since 27.4 cm deep was still quite dubious for my 28-cm-deep furniture, I finally waited for the Sonos to come out and bought it. Sonos wasn't especially on my radar, as a relatively traditional audio amateur it's not a brand I trusted, but there they were, the only ones offering the product I wanted. And indeed, it works well, it powers my speakers nicely enough and it's very convenient. I'm watching the TV, want to stream something from Spotify: TV audio is automatically muted. I stop listening to Spotify: TV audio comes back.
Why no one else has made a device that can provide good TV audio and good music playback in a shallow form factor still escapes me. I don't think my requirements were so weird, in freaking 2018.
[1] Sorry, I'm missing the specific English word for the specific piece of furniture in the living room where one has a bunch of books, CDs, mixed souvenirs and the TV, so I'll just call it "the living room furniture".
The word you're looking for is "entertainment center", but yeah, weird there aren't more products available for that niche! There are lots of home AV receivers that might fit the bill but they tend to be pretty large units.
I feel like 30cm max depth is going to be a problem for most audio gear. So-called compact ones seem to optimize for height, with depth around 40cm [1], and the shallower ones [2, 3] seem to be around 31-33cm. Get a deeper console?
> Why no one else has made a device that can provide good TV audio and good music playback in a shallow form factor still escapes me. I don't think my requirements were so weird, in freaking 2018.
Am I right in thinking that Sonos fits your requirements? I've found their speakers to be excellent in a small package. I was after the 5s but someone lent me a One as a test. A pair of them are excellent imho.
I cut a hole in the back of my living room furniture so that the AV receiver sticks out the back and seeing as rooms often have skirting boards it gives me the few extra centimeters needed.
The convenience seems to be worth the risk, IMO. The Sonos sound quality is great for the form factor/space, I don't have to run wires anymore, and I'm not lugging around a bunch of bookshelves and making room for them + a receiver... I'll go back to that world if I have to, but for now, the Sonos stuff was more appealing after a couple moves and starting from scratch.
Because they want to stream audio from streaming services, which have APIs that change regularly, and require some level of DRM and subscription management. If you just want to stream audio from a local server, buy a squeezebox device. (They went under a few years back, the demand wasn't there, but they did have exactly the setup you want)
> stream audio from streaming services, which have APIs that change regularly, and require some level of DRM and subscription management
That's a good point and it makes it even more important to push back - abusive, customer-hostile business models don't just affect the direct customers, they spread and infect everything downstream.
> I just don't understand why people keep buying such things...
You can't really tell if the device can be remotely bricked (that easily) or unless someone's already been burned. I miss when companies would advertise their products as "cloud-enabled" so you knew exactly what to avoid.
People still steal smartphones, despite them being locked down with thumb and face scanners along with being traceable. It seems to be a hard market to kill.
I feel bad about it but I rather wish it worked this way for expensive power tools. I don't want permanent drm for tools I just want a one time lock that is forever disabled upon purchase. Perhaps electronically while being purchased.
That isn't accurate. Sonos works perfectly well on an isolated network, reading your music from a local SMB share or getting it from the line-level input of any Sonos on the network.
About 8(?) years ago my wife tasked me to get a whole-house audio system that was simple to use. After reading a lot, sonos was the clear choice, though pricey. We started with two play:3's, then added a play:5 and two more play:3's. And things were good.
But for the past year the system has been a mess. Music stutters, some units can't be found, some units fail to upgrade through multiple retries/reboots. I've wasted so many hours relocating them and connecting the misbehaving units to an ethernet cable trying to get them to update.
Eventually things get working again after hours of blind tinkering, but then a month or two later it happens again.
My wife looks to me as the tech guy to solve it, but it is far more opaque to debug then when PCs misbehave. Yes, I know about the secret diag menus and login, but they don't really help me.
The point is: my wife resents that the system doesn't work, and I resent that I've wasted so much time and my wife thinks I'm shirking because every time it comes up I groan and put off the pain of getting it working again.
I won't brick these -- I'll find some use case where they do work, but I'll get some other system to make my wife happy, even if it means spending another $1200+.
Honestly, it sounds like you have some kind of local 2.4 GHz interference problem. Try unplugging unnecessary wireless devices or moving them well out of range while troubleshooting, don't run microwave ovens until you've ruled them out, and keep your phones and other gadgets well away from the affected hardware. See if you can make friends with someone who owns a spectrum analyzer.
Before when I said I had spent hours trying to debug this, I did exactly that. Turned off every single wifi device in the house, turning off every printer, phone, and the ring doorbell. I tried bringing up one sonos device at a time to figure to figure out if one of them was causing problems.
Also, I used wifiman on my android phone to sniff out other networks. Finally, I am lucky enough to live on 3.5 acres so there aren't any nearby wifi access points.
Anyway, another comment has pointed me to the apparent solution: the sonos bridge device apparently is not essential -- just connecting one of the speakers via a wired connection makes it the bridge for the sonos network.
Okay, I’ll throw my hat into the unsolicited troubleshooting advice ring— I had similar problems and it ended up being that the Sonos Bridge is no longer supported. Once I removed the Bridge from my system and plugged a Play:5 directly into the network, all the weird issues you described that I too was having resolved themselves. YMMV.
Sonos speakers form an ad-hoc mesh network. Although I know that I get > 50 Mbps to every spot in my house where there is a speaker, it shouldn't matter. If the router to sonos #1 gets a signal, as long as sonos #2 is in range of sonos #1, sonos #2 should be served even if it can't see the router.
I was going to buy a Sonos speaker, but this changed my mind. I'm not buying a device that was built to be bricked.
I would have bought a Sonos instead of an Apple Homepod because I thought they were more "open". But if the manufacturer can just make my device useless, I'm not interested.
Audio and Hifi gear is extremely versatile and virtually everything is compatible. High end devices easily last for decades. This feature makes it clear that Sonos has no intention of following that tradition.
>I was going to buy a Sonos speaker, but this changed my mind. I'm not buying a device that was built to be bricked.
I had a complete sonos setup that I rage donated after moving and accidentally connecting it to the internet at which point sonos wouldn't let me play my music until I "upgraded" the software with alexa enabled. Forget about recycle mode, sonos is one of the most intrusive privacy invading companies that I know off and I'm so happy they're getting all this bad press, because when I went to their forums with my complaints the whole response there was "meh" and "how can you run with old software?".
All voice assistant service options are entirely disabled until you go into the settings and set one of them up. The update may well have made it possible to set up Alexa, but it would not have done so.
> I would have bought a Sonos instead of an Apple Homepod because I thought they were more "open". But if the manufacturer can just make my device useless, I'm not interested.
Yes. Just to be clear, I'm going to buy neither a Homepod nor a Sonos. I think I'm going to get dumb speakers and a Raspberry/Hifiberry. Shairplay does 90% of what I want a smart speaker to do, and I think a Raspberry is a pretty future proof device.
So, Sonos optionally lets you brick your own device, as part of their Trade Up program that gives a discount on your next device. It's named Recycle mode as, presumably, all the bricked devices are good for is recycling.
There doesn't seem to be anything stopping users from selling their speakers on - they just forgo the Trade Up discount.
The poster's point that this cuts down on re-use of perfectly good products is true, but it doesn't seem that much different to other trade in programs, e.g. Apple's. The difference seems to be that Sonos leave the burden of actually recycling the product (or not) to the user, while Apple does it for you.
They tout "sustainability is non-negotiable" on their page, while encouraging recycling over more sustainable reuse. I mean, they're allowed to do that, but be honest about it.
> I assume Apple and other companies sell the used products to liquidators who refurbish and resell them. Is that not true?
For high brand value goods, generally no. Goods are crushed to become unserviceable. It's important to do that to maintain brand image, otherwise floods of not-very-old iPhones end up on ebay for $10, and the image of an iPhone as something that lasts and has resale value is shattered.
High end clothing manufacturers will even destroy brand new, never worn clothes to maintain brand image, because they don't want them sitting in the bargain bin looking 'cheap'.
It isn't as bad for the environment as it sounds - the vast majority of the costs in a $1000 iPhone are engineering, IP, licensing, manufacturing, capital and marketing costs. The actual metal and plastic is worth hardly anything, so destroying it isn't a big loss. Even the manufacturing cost is near zero because after launch day of a specific model, the marginal cost to produce one more phone is pretty much zero because production lines are rarely still at capacity.
If there's a demand, someone industrious will likely figure out a hack --- I hope. Server-side blacklisting (unlike whitelisting) doesn't stop someone from simply changing whatever unique ID they have to a different one. I can even see repair shops doing this service for those who accidentally bricked their devices.
This reminds me of a related situation I've seen with electric toothbrushes --- they have instructions on how to remove the battery "for recycling", which is deliberately designed to make the unit self-destruct in the process (by e.g. making the plastic thin and fragile, and the wires brittle and easily broken), but others have figured out how to use those same instructions to open it up and replace the cells at a fraction of the cost of a new unit. The fact that nothing needs to be broken to replace them, and that it could be trivially designed to make that job much easier, clearly demonstrates planned obolescence.
"Disposable electronics" is a big trend too. I myself saw not so few times devices that used rechargeable batteries, and a charging circuitry, but nevertheless were single use only.
A lot of Bluetooth "beacons" are of such construction, and not so cheap at all medical devices will be coming second.
Reminds me of a certain very well known startup in beacon space. I visited them some 6 years ago, back when they were finishing their fist product - a nice-looking battery-powered Bluetooth beacon, completely encased in some kind of silicone. I asked them, well, what's the expected time until battery is completely discharged, and how do I charge it back or replace it? And the answers were, a year or three (depending on use), and you don't, because by the time the beacon dies, you'll want to get a newer, better one anyway.
One of the many reasons I never bought anything from them.
> Server-side blacklisting (unlike whitelisting) doesn't stop someone from simply changing whatever unique ID they have to a different one.
Dunno, if the ID works like an activation key it might not recognize ids that don’t pass some sort of cryptographic signature check. Then you would need the private key to generate new valid ids.
I disagree. Electric toothbrushes need to be 100 % waterproof to be usable safely. If I were a toothbrush manufacturer, I’d at least look into making the brush self-destruct when opened, for safety reasons (and safety reasons alone).
Is this true? My electric toothbrush runs on one double-A battery. That isn't enough power to electrocute me.
Of course, high-end electric toothbrushes have rechargeable batteries inside of them, and maybe they have more capacity. But on that note, I think I've needed to replace my battery exactly once in the past year. These things don't take much power, that's one of the reasons it didn't feel worthwhile for me to upgrade to a higher-end more expensive model. And rechargeable electric toothbrushes get plugged into cradles -- they don't need enough capacity to run for days and days.
I am mildly skeptical that a non-waterproof electric toothbrush would be dangerous to anyone.
Edit: I just checked my toothbrush to make sure, the only waterproofing is a tiny, easily removable rubber ring where the battery case screws on. This doesn't seem to be something my manufacturer is worried about, which might make sense, because I don't put my toothbrush handle under the water when I brush my teeth; I hold it.
Sonos had a fair shot at having me as a customer. I was ready to put down money on an installation for a house and then I found out it needed 'activation over the internet'. That being the sign of a company to avoid I walked out again, to the consternation of the sales person who had (his words, not mine): "Never had a customer decide against Sonos because of that". Looks like I made the right call.
The sad thing is, as hacker news readers, we're a tiny minority of people that even know about or care about these issues. The masses (and that salesperson) are completely oblivious to, maybe 99% of content on HN. :)
Am I misunderstanding something? Once in recycle mode you're supposed to send them back so that Sonos can actually recycle (or even reuse, nothing stops them from refurbishing) the old device. Recycle mode seems to simply be a convenience so that people can get the 30% rebate immediately once they've shown they're serious about sending back the device. What sucks is that you have to trade up to recycle, if they offered some buy back program it'd be near perfect, right?
Sonos doesn't take back the used devices: they expect users to give them to a local electronics recycler for recycling, where they essentially have to be scrapped, because devices in "recycle mode" are blacklisted in Sonos's servers and can't be resold (even if they're in perfect working order).
Except Sonos doesn't actually want the old device back, they say that you should take it to a recycling center so they can take it apart or whatever they do with them [1]
I wish someone would start making little add-on boards you could put into your Sonos products to bypass the onboard hardware and use your own. Just re-use the amp, speakers.
I built my own spotify receiver using an rpi with a hifiberry add on which worked perfectly. If someone built even simpler custom made Sonos play:5 boards I’d be less reluctant to buy more of them as I fear they may be expensive bricks if Sonos fails.
This should be illegal. Increasing profits by artificially increasing scarcity — by polluting the environment with usable products and parts — is not an acceptable business strategy.
I don't really understand why Enron traders got convicted for energy market manipulation, while tech company executives intentionally scrapping usable parts and products get to live in luxury in silicon valley.
They encourage you to stick your used goods in the mail and take a store credit for them. They either clean and resell them, cut them up and repurpose them, or they out and out recycle them.
"A lot of luxury goods brands destroy their unsold merchandise"
This also happens since probably forever with fruit and vegetables if they're unsold or in overproduction. The reason is to keep prices fixed by artificially reducing the offer.
Fruit and vegetables and other perishable goods will effectively self-destruct if unsold anyway, so I don't see that as being quite as bad as deliberate destruction of product that would otherwise last indefinitely.
And if one's looking for the reason why so many people complain about the market economy, that's one reason. This is all economically sound, but beyond that, utterly fucked up.
I myself worked in refurbishment in the very beginning of my career. Even back in 2012 they were already quite militant with the refurbishing industry.
They blackmailed Alibaba into removing refurbished Apple goods from their store under a threat of pulling their goods from Tmall, and suing them in the US.
Iphone 4 started manufacturing using a non-sticky optical bonding gel for the glass, but later they switched to a hard epoxy out of a sudden in the middle of manufacturing run.
People noted that this was a very expensive solvent resistant epoxy that was very hard. They intentionally made it impossible to unbond the display without ruining it.
Hey everyone. I get that Sonos does have some value add here allowing mesh networking and encrypted audio. Buuuuuuuuuut, there are tons of alternative options. I like building speakers and I have built my sound bar using components from parts express and some reclaimed hard woods. Parts express has tons of Bluetooth options and the quality is mostly pretty good. I am using morel and peerless drivers and the 2x50 watt Bluetooth amp. The sound is as good or better than any sound bar I’ve heard and I don’t have to update software or deal with obnoxious TOS agreements. My tv connects to it without issues and while it’s not as elegant as the Sonos experience but I will take that over planned obsolescence.
The post was lacking some context at first but from how I understand this, you can render your sonos device unusable voluntarily and in turn get a new sonos device for a little cheaper. This happens by marking the serial number of your device on the sonos servers as "recycled" making reactivation impossible.
And they're somehow marketing this "feature" as environmentally friendly because it somehow in some twisted sense means you recycle your old device for a new one.
Do you think it’s really permanent though? I would assume Sonos maintains a list of the blacklisted devices and they could restore a device if they really needed or wanted to.
Your comment also made me wonder whether there’s such a thing as green hat? It doesn’t seem like there’s much of an economic incentive for a hacking attempt but I’d imagine Sonos would take a very different approach to recycling if every active device was suddenly put into “recycle” mode and this program was in the headlines.
According to the twitter thread their ``recycle mode'' works by blacklisting the device's serial number in the mfg's database to prevent it from working, so depending on what you want to do with them they might be perfectly functional.
This is shocking. Why do I need to have a recycle mode on a speaker? Oh because it’s a WiFi connected, smart speaker that collects and stores data on me.
We recently read about Apple devices being bricked in the recycling process because of Find My, but that makes sense, because it’s a personal computer or phone where I intentionally store personal data. And I’d much rather err on the side of that data not getting out.
But seriously Sonos, this is dumb. To intentionally brick devices that could be perfectly functional for someone else is honestly bad for the planet and business.
Glad I’ve never bought a Sonos and now I never will.
Sounds like an opportunity to score some decent physical hardware for a song. It could become a brand new hacker brand. "Noson". Fix the device via jag to talk to an open source server like an own cloud plugin.
The dumbest thing is that if I can sell my old Sonos rather than trash them in recycle mode then I am more likely to upgrade sooner since the sale of my used hardware can also help subsidize the upgrade regardless of whether Sonos offers me credit or not. And now Sonos has an additional user of their product (which in turn markets the product and is likely to build loyalty assuming the product isn’t shit) and a new hardware sale. I am willing to bet Sonos needs both growth of their user base and needs to demonstrate that some core percentage of their customers regularly upgrade on a ~5yr purchase cycle. And it doesn’t actually cost Sonos anything (relative to the BOM for a device) to handle the compute for the extra user so it’s not like the person upgrading is making off with anything of additional value to Sonos. So take the environmental concerns out of the picture: this is just short sighted nooby business.
This smells like some program cooked up by a hot shot MBA type that the executive team trusts to tweak the business because they don’t shut up about needing to focus on type of numbers investors care about. Never mind they don’t know the first thing about building a decent product. And to make it worse they’re probably actually convinced they’re helping the environment.
Light bulb manufacturers goes to great extents to artifically shorten lifestyle of bulbs.
I adjusted to that by keeping bulb receipts. Then buying new ones to replace failing ones. Then coming 3 weeks later to get refund or credit for failed ones.
Putting pressure on retailers to stop carrying crappy products.
I know it's not exactly audio stuff but manufacturers engaging in misleading to the point of fraudulent practices need to be dealt with.
Probably the same thing that happened, and mostly in the same frequency as happened, 6 months ago. This article highlights the shittiness of Sonos's "implementation" of a recycle program, not the customer's experience or results (discounted purchases of new products) of initiating the program.
Because that's not going to be argued like that in court.
It may not be that hard to say that's its for:
- Preventing "counterfeiting" as in people salvaging their PCBs to put on "rogue" devices.
- Protecting their brand name as a "rogue" device may misrepresent what a proper sonos product actually is.
- Preventing misuse of the account that was registered on the device, hence protecting their customers personal data.
- Customers only use this mode when a product is not repairable.
That's the power of having a strong legal departement, pretty much anything can be argued even when everyone knows the real intent.
When such things are done properly, it's really hard to prove the intent hence, the risk is pretty low of being fined anything.
Customers can’t use this mode when the product is not repairable in most cases as the SOC which is the only irreparable component needs to be fully functional.
If your device cannot boot you can’t put it into recycle mode.
This mode is designed for one thing only and that is to disable perfectly working devices.
IIRC the device also needs to be within its warranty period for you to use recycle mode.
It's more-or-less equivalent to what the government did a decade ago in the "cash for clunkers" program, just wrecked via software instead of by replacing the engine oil with sodium silicate.
There's "illegal but we'll do it anyway since any penalty is less than what we made because of it" and there's "it's illegal so let's not do it as it puts our CEO in jail".
There was never any appeal to me in a speaker which is so tightly coupled with software. I don’t see those still working in 10+ years. Whereas there’s plenty of old hifi setups still being used.
The fact that the software has an intentional bricking mechanism in it just makes this more apparent.
Not super familiar with Sonos, but why do they 'need' to connect to a server in order to work at all? Do they bundle in some kind of subscription streaming service or something?
I always thought they were just wireless speakers that I used locally on my own network...
I experienced a similar thing when I helped a friend install LineageOS on their bootlooped Android phone.
Apparently, this process would have been 10x easier if they had switched on "OEM unlocking" in the Developer Options setting (which you can't do from the boot menu, recovery menu or via adb), which is off by default for a very stupid reason. We were successful in the end, but it was a LOT of hassle.
So, when you switch on "OEM unlocking", you get a warning that it's "for protection against thieves". Like, a thief would steal your phone and it's encrypted and locked, but because "OEM unlocking" is off they can't simply wipe it and reinstall to re-sell, or something. So to them it's a brick and therefore they wouldn't have stolen your phone I guess. Except if they spend some effort they can totally cleanly reinstall the thing, it just takes more steps.
Maybe I'm missing some part here about how this "OEM unlocking" option supposedly protects against theft, but for me it was a simple sum. Number of times my phone got stuck in a boot loop: 3, number of times my phone got stolen: 0. So I set that to unlocked, now I'll have an easier time if I ever mess up my phone again.
The only real reason I can think of is that they WANT your phone to stay bricked/bootlooped when it's bricked, and be unable to fix and repair it. It has nothing to do with theft, it's just a way to make sure the device stays disabled when it's disabled, and to make you buy another new phone.
Additionally, I got nothing but happy comments about LineageOS from my friend. You can really tell in the feel of the entire system the difference between what it means to be a user (normal software) or to be the product (like in Android or any of the Google/Facebook/Apple systems). Just by what options you're given and the fact that applications actually behave at your service instead of nagging you while you're trying to accomplish a task. I'm not really happy about how Android 9 is running on my moto-g6, so I think I'm gonna make that switch soon as well. You don't even need to root the phone to do this, but it's a choice (I think I'm going to root it though).
I got hit by this same issue. We had a few spare phones at work in a draw and I wanted to give them to friends in need of a phone. Had permission from the company but no one knew who owned them or what the password was. I did the manual factory reset from the recovery but was hit by this "security" feature.
I eventually managed to track down the original owner and had them unlock the devices. If I hadn't, these phones would be ewaste.
What bothers me is the solution is simple, when a manual factory reset is done, have the phone ping google and start a 1 week countdown. Google can then email the original owner and ask if they have had their phone stolen. If they reply yes then the phone is locked. If they reply no or have no response then the phone unlocks.
Apparently you can still wipe and reset and reinstall the phones even with "OEM unlock" switched off. At least, we managed to pull it off. But it took about half a day of trying and retrying random things from threads on forum.xda-developers.com. Sorry I can't be more specific, it becomes a bit of a blur after the 5th time :-p
They did this, but the blacklist only prevents the remote from getting updates from the cloud.. it does not brick the device, and it can continue to use its current config. Or at least that's how it used to be.
I have a harmony that I bought in 2009-ish, and the provided "batteries included" exploded in the first few days of ownership and made a huge mess. I wrote them a complaint, and they sent me a new remote. When I activated the new one, the old one stopped taking updates.
Amusingly, there is an open source tool that can pull a config from one harmony and flash it to another. The replacement was actually slightly inferior (mushy keys), and so I'd program the replacement, back up the config, and restore it to the original.
If the devices become useless, how is this any different from Sonos just offering customers "trade-in" value for their old devices (like for used cars) and then throwing them out? Just that the device doesn't get physically mailed to Sonos?
Like if you think it's just spiritually bad to throw working things out, fine. But how is Sonos doing wrong by the customer?
Yes, as a marketing person you could probably argue that the environmentally positive effect is that you don't have to mail the device in, and I'm not claiming other vendors aren't trying to prevent people from reselling used products, but this specific instance just seems so overly ironic because it makes the result of such offers so crystal clear:
"get a discount by making sure nobody could possibly get any use out of your old device even if it's still working fine"
Plus I don't think other vendors are trying to sell such discount programs as some form of recycling.
Presumably that customer lives on the same planet as everybody else does and we all share the same environment. Sending good gear to the landfill is disgusting and damaging on many levels.
Used cars don't get thrown out when they're traded in. And it's not "spiritually bad," it's actively destructive to the environment. Manufacturing things requires a great deal of energy.
It sounds like the proceeding comment might be thinking of something akin to the "Cash For Clunkers" program where the cars' engines were destroyed with sodium silicate in the crankcase.
I found this idea an egregious waste as someone who maintains vehicles, often with serviceable used parts.
I have a sonos speaker at my cabin and while the audio isn’t bad the spotty wifi coverage and the choppy audio that keeps dropping out when I listen to Audible at 1.25 to 1.5 speed is annoying.
It just isn’t a very good product in my eyes. I have cheap Bluetooth speakers that work much better.
So I would be interested in “upcycling” the Sonos with new innards.
Time to watch some teardown videos to see what can be done.
Is there no way to fake the Sonos server and reauthenticate the bricked device offline or tear it down and bypass any logic chips and get at the speaker hardware directly, create an analog 3.5mm jack input and play music from it manually?
Would love to see the folks at hackaday or somewhere else exploit the recycle mode hardware.
Dear lazy web, is there something like the sonos that is open source that makes the same synchronized sound field (I dont own a sonos, I assume that is what they do)? I believe I could hack something up using an ESP32, a microphone and/or a GNSS receiver, but does this already exist?
Logitech media server. Run LMS on one pi or a docker container, and then onother pi zeros run Squeezelite. The entirety of the installation on the receiving devices is ` sudo apt install squeezelite`.
To piggyback off this week's hate of MBAs, it seems likely some idiot MBA determined that the company was losing exorbitant amounts of money from secondhand sales of their devices such that they had to implement this ridiculous initiative.
>From what our eBay guy can tell, the bricking isn't even in hardware; you can't recover it if you're good with JTAG, because it's blacklisted as "recycled" on their servers.
Yet another reason to never own anything "smart".
I wonder how difficult would it be to strip out the Sonos smart crap from these speakers and connect a Raspberry W to the preamp?
I wish they would sell them at a reduced price just as powered speakers, to people that would just like to use them as powered speakers. No support provided, just a website where you could click and order.
There are a number of people that would be more than happy and able to repurpose an old Sonus speaker that no longer operated as a Sonus speaker.
I found out about the perils of depending on specific apps, cloud or something like that when gave a toy to girlfriend and now we can't play anymore because the app wasn't updated to the latest Android.
Literally we would tell the manufacturer to introduce it in specific places to tell us if it is usefull without remote control
This seems like it's for a trade-up/upgrade program, which would traditionally be:
1) Customer boxes up device.
2) Customer mails device to manufacturer.
3) Manufacturer hits it with a hammer, ensuring that they don't have to compete with their own used device after the customer has been given a credit for it.
So, instead, we have:
A) Customer starts bricking process.
B) Customer recycles device locally.
C) Local electronics recycler hits device with a hammer because it has self bricked, ensuring that the manufacturer doesn't have to compete with their own used device after the customer has been given a credit for it.
So we've removed disposable packaging and fuel for shipping. It seems like a net win for the environment.
They're going to do their trade in program. They can either do it the traditional way or do it this way, having a slightly lower adverse environmental impact. Leaving the device functional is not on the menu, and acting like it is is intentionally obtuse.
If there’s one company I’d bet on being acquired next year it’s probably Sonos. Even with a 30-50% premium it’s a small buy for any of the big cos who want to increase market share in home device market.
IKR. I have a nice Anker waterproof rechargeable speaker w/ subwoofer that doubles as a battery bank that was $75. It seems darn durable and works for me. Screw Sonos.
I'm very much DIY guy and hate it when companies block users from doing whatever they want with their equipment, but this is a special case. User gets the discount from Sonos for recycling the old equipment, and thus user doesn't own it anymore. It belongs to Sonos now as they bought it back, and of course they don't want it resold half-price by 3rd party, it's a competition to their new products. To me it seems perfectly legit, as long as you get a discount for that. And the equipment can still be recycled and resold for parts, they don't block that.
Ooooo what a sustainable behaviour...
Next step is to schedule Recycle mode.
Then we will have to hack the gadget not to do that.
My friend she is using Sony android phone from 2013, she disabled google apps long ago, I did some things, and for average user like she is, it is perfect, fast and responsive, Whapp, Viber, calls, camera...spending money on travelling, not on manufacturer's jerking-gadgets.
I presume Sony and other manufacturers don't like us to much.
Frankly, I don't give a damn...
> Someone recycled five of these Sonos Play:5 speakers. They're worth $250 each, used, and these are in good condition. They could easily be reused.
Then the owner should have sold (given?) them as-is, rather than trying to double dip by telling Sonos they were going to recycle them for parts (for which they pay you $120) then not doing so.
We are an e-waste collector, we have to pay to recycle most electronics we receive, and the only reason we still exist as a business is because we do the environmentally friendly thing of ensuring as many devices as possible is refurbished and resold.
Consumer electronics are not generally recycled for parts at an industrial scale in the US. (maybe not anywhere?)
Most parts in devices you have are not serious candidates for part wise recycling: The cost to remove the part (much less test it) is greater than the cost to buy a new one... and it's often difficult to figure out what a part actually is.
About the only common part-reusable thing I encounter is 18650 cells from 'dead' laptop batteries. I have a whole drawer of them, scavenged from our old thinkpad batteries. Usually there is only one or two bad ones in the pack. All my flashlights are 18650 powered for this reason.
How is it screwing over Sonos? The credit can only be spent on new Sonos equipment. Or are you talking about the OP's company, who is cashing on people's desire to recycle?
There is a difference between reuse and recycle. A recycling centre won't generally reuse parts of a products it's just separated and new raw material is created from it if possible.
sonos is the worst. They sell speakers without an audio input (last time i checked)... and can only be controlled/used by sonos software... homey dont play that. but i am disillusioned with itunes as well... wah
I am an audio engineer and this is going to be a long thread. TLDR; I hate companies like Sonos. They add no value to people who know about audio.
You see, everything about speakers is really simple. From the way they work to the way they're made. There's really just 4 pieces to make a speaker system. The speaker, power supply, amplifier and a pre-amplifier to modify the sound (eg. DSP, Equalizer, etc.)
That's why if you search on the used market today, you'll still see equipment from companies like Aiwa/Sony from the 80s and 90s simply because these speakers can be re-used even now as you can connect anything to them before the pre-amplifier and they'll still reproduce your source (iPod/TV/Computer/whatever). I posses a 40 year old Aiwa system that still functions flawlessly today like brand new. This is also possible today because speakers themselves can last so much longer. More than 40 years as you can tell.
All companies like Sonos do is add just another layer before the pre-amplifier stage - which is to make the speaker "smart". This is usually all those wifi chips and bluetooth and Google assistant and what not. This is the proprietary part of their system. Normally, you are able to throw away this proprietary part and still use the speaker system. But, in pursuit of more sales, to reduce the lifespan of a perfectly fine speaker system to simply increase revenues is the most hardcore, cruel thing one can do.
Sonos' speakers are so bad that many models aren't even serviceable. Meaning, you can't open them like you could on those Aiwa's and Sony's and put them back together. Once taken apart, they're useless. They use tons of glue, proprietary shaped screws sometimes even wire the speakers in such a way that they'll damage the units if you try to take them off. They purposely do this so their speakers can't be used anymore without damaging the appearance.
That's why I will any day buy a mediocre music system from Sony or LG than buy trash like Sonos. First of all, I know the quality of components they use is not that great. They use ordinary stamped steel, sometimes plastic baskets for their driver units as opposed to high quality aluminium construction. Paper diaphragms too. Their units don't even have proper crossover circuitry in some models. And besides, the drivers they use are actually based off rebranded generic Chinese, just tweaked a bit. They're very good at fooling people pretending to be an audiophile company. In reality, they're not even half as close to the stuff from the 80's and 90's.
So, having ranted this, there's literally no reason to support such terrible ethics backed company simply for the sake of their profits. Fuck Sonos and get a Sony (or whatever else you like that doesn't do this). This is not just for the environment, but to set a full stop to such terrible practices. The audio land is already so full of snake oil already that the last thing we need is another snake oil sales man like Sonos.
Gone Missing: mindless rage, scandal, foreboding, nausea and disgust at what the future may bring if a trend is not stopped in its tracks.
Emerging, Rising: apologist arguments that equate compromise and degeneration of tools made out of a sense of personal cleverness, finding that one-use case where the trend might 'save the planet' or at least present it as such, winning the debate among like minds.
What a total waste.
Apparel companies are starting to participate in the secondary market for their used gear, why can't Sonos do something similar?
Examples: - Patagonia Worn Wear (https://wornwear.patagonia.com) - REI Used Gear (https://www.rei.com/used/shop/gear) - Arc'teryx Rock Solid (https://rocksolid.arcteryx.com)
As it stands, Sonos is effectively buying their old speakers and then throwing them away. Could they not recoup their costs and avoid e-waste by simply selling the used Sonos devices into a market that can't afford the brand new ones? I thought this is how most phone trade-in programs worked, which seems like a mature process now.
Then they would have to continue supporting those devices, which isn’t part of the planned obsolescence business model. It would also dilute the luxury brand halo that Sonos has tried to cultivate.
It’s more like Louis Vuitton getting into the secondhand market. They too would (and do) destroy merchandise rather than let it get sold at a discount and dilute the brand value.
They’ve actually done a pretty good job of being backwards-compatible and even enabling features on older speakers if they’re grouped with newer ones. For example, having an AirPlay 2 speaker in a group means that all speakers in the group will receive sound through AirPlay 2, even if they didn’t support AirPlay in the first place.
That makes this even more puzzling.
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You can already buy louis vuitton at the nordstrom rack.
The model for highly disposable luxury technology is Apple. Apple is also the model for refurbished goods. These things aren't mutually exclusive. You can tuck away a refurbished part of the site just out of the eyes of the majority just like Apple does.
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It's worth noting that other than the physical controller devices (which were discontinued in favor of mobile apps but still given a generous lifetime), Sonos still supports all of their hardware from the very first speakers / amps that they released.
Not that this makes their current actions ok, but at least they had been trying until now. I think they are now realizing that having a product that doesn't have built-in planned obsolescence may be hurting their profits
For a physical device (ie featured-locked upon shipping), “support” amounts to paying the server bill, which is likely negligible.
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But still, why not say so directly? Why lie about sustainability? It seems extremely dishonest.
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Wonder how long these apparel companies will keep it up. I remember reading not so long ago that some well-known clothes companies realized that people are interested in buying used high-quality clothes, and so they started manufacturing new clothes using worse materials and process but to the same design as quality ones, and then sell these fake-used clothes as "worn".
Stone-washed jeans have been a thing since at least 1980's, from around the same time that "worn in" look became fashionable.
Isn't that basically the "Outlet Store" model? New clothes made to lower standards but ostensibly sold under the illusion of being "last season's overstock" of the high quality normal version?
Sonos could immediately cure the worst of these image problems by setting up something so you could re-license a recycled device for the $120 value (or whatever the amount is) someone got for hitting recycle.
It's not clear to me from the information here that Sonos themselves can't refurbish a device that's been put into recycle mode. This seems to be a technique to block third party refurbishers only.
It appears they can, but choose not to. This way they can ensure that less used units are available on the market, forcing people to buy a new unit instead.
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Patagonia are famously environmental and not really run on a capitalist basis...
Patagonia was started by a rock climber who sold his hand-made climbing gear into the free market. He was well rewarded for doing so and from that was able to grow into the Patagonia many of us know and love today (indeed my favorite clothing company).
The company is not only run on a capitalist basis, it's the reason it exists in the first place.
But yeah, it's true they're more conscious and environmentally friendly than most. And I think they play an important role in pushing back against fast fashion, which is incredibly polluting and wasteful.
I believe that Patagonia cares about the environment and wishes there was more they could do, but I think they are absolutely driven by the forces of capitalism, whether they like it or not, and it’s visible in their current practices. They run holiday ads and promotions, they open new stores, they release a new line each year. Yes they sprinkle in campaigns and messaging to not buy new unless you really need it and they facilitate recycling/reuse of their past products, but capitalism still forces them to seek growth, relevance, and sales to survive, which they do. Not faulting them for it, just wishing it wasn’t that way.
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What definition of "capitalism" are you using?
Patagonia certainly seems to exist in a world of private ownership, private investment decisions, and voluntary exchanges in a free market.
They are literally doing exactly that. You can take your old speaker into a Sonos store or ship it (on Sonos dime) back to them. They then refurbish and resell, and you get a discount.
This story is at best lazy reporting with many facts left out or unresearched.
https://www.sonos.com/en-us/shop/certified-refurbished
https://www.sonos.com/en-us/tradeup
I already replied to your other comment but in the interest of correcting this misinformation, you can neither ship your bricked device to Sonos nor bring it into a Sonos store.
https://twitter.com/sonossupport/status/1179459927624036357?...
https://twitter.com/sonossupport/status/1198204183335309313?...
https://twitter.com/sonossupport/status/1196142002406133761?...
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From the FAQ on https://www.sonos.com/en-us/tradeup -
> Do you resell recycled devices?
> No.These devices are permanently deactivated and cannot be resold.
What’s intensely frustrating about this is that audio equipment is one of the few areas where old high end kit is still absolutely fantastic for current users. I have an NAD 3020 from the 1980s which works perfectly with the same pair of speakers that it was bought with. I can’t say the same about other tech, but audio just doesn’t age at the same speed.
I can’t say the same about other tech, but audio just doesn’t age at the same speed.
People's ears have not changed, and the ability to reproduce sound has been nearly perfected. If you're not too picky/audiophillic, like most people, the requirements are even lower.
Literally the only "improvements" that are ever going to happen to audio in your lifetime will be a) internetifying it and b) adding more restrictions to how you use it.
We've hit peak audio (best reproduction, no restrictions on usage) and it's only downhill from here.
I look forward to my 2025 speakers that only work for an hour a day unless I pay for extra time credits.
"Do you wish to play a) music b) music and local radio c) music, local radio and podcasts [BEST VALUE]?"
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People's taste has changed though. Your speakers from the 80's generally can't be driven as loud with current music, as modern music tends to be a lot more bass heavy (obviously a lot more pronounced with techno and other electronic music, but also with pop music).
The response curve from speakers has also reflected that, a lot of them are bass boosted in the amplifier or are designed with a bass boost in them.
I have some fairly nice speakers from the 70's (a couple of different sets, one homebuilt), and Pink Floyd and Jefferson Airplane sound a lot better from them than Katy Perry or Tiesto.
Sure, but new Sonos speakers are not that. They are a moderately okay speaker with wireless networking and control software that consumes an app-mediated digital byte stream, and then in the speaker decodes it to audio to perform playback.
If you want good speakers, you don't buy a device that's 50% streaming audio circuitry, you buy a same-priced speaker that's actually a good speaker.
I wrote the Twitter thread and I use a Marantz 2230, for what it's worth. All my own audio equipment was recycled at some point.
I think one of the interesting aspects is that performance plateaued in a lot of ways.
If you look at the S/N and distortion specs on a new affordably priced receiver, they won't be meaningfully better than a mid-range unit from the late 70s/early 80s. All the new HDMI and 20.7 Dolby Surround does nothing for two-channel MP3s or CDs.
Because the performance is equal, it's allowed build quality to shine. 15kg of heatsinks, capacitors the size of Coke cans, and big old TO-3 transistors are probably going to outlast propriatery digital doodads and amp-on-a-module designs built to minimize costs.
I'm more of a JVC fanboy myself, but I've been working on a Kenwood KR-6200 recently. 45 years old and one dead bulb. Unacceptable!
Ehh, S/N has improved so much since the 80's that the noise floor of today's low-end receivers are significantly better than basically all high-end equipment from back then, especially if you include the DAC.
My Carver amp and Dahlquist speakers I run all day every day. Bought them in 1980.
I retired many computers in the 80's and 90's in perfect working order. None of them will power up today.
Concur that the 80s era Carver amps are outstanding.
Absolutely! I have a 1999 Sony amp and some older (1980s) Wharfedale speakers.
Nothing I've bought in the last 25 years sounds remotely as good as them.
And plugging in a Chromecast audio has given it immortality.
What's the current best alternative to a Chromecast Audio, now that they're discontinued and no longer as readily available?
My current living room setup is a Chromecast Audio connected to an AVR via the optical out connection, which powers my speakers, but I'm curious if there's any alternatives. The eBay sellers are really starting to price-gouge, and I'm not naive enough to believe that my Chromecast Audio will last forever.
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...until Google kills Chromecast
I'm kind of glad I went with Squeezebox (formerly slim devices) 10 or so years ago. The entire server and client system is OSS, written in Perl on Linux (OK, that bit's annoying now, but was nice when I still used perl). The audio hardware is (still) great, and the software is hackable and I can SSH in to my speaker and change things if I need/want to. Most annoying thing is the constant cat-and-mouse game with hacked-on suppport for streaming services.
If you are into this, I can suggest you take a look at this gear: https://mobile.twitter.com/amiteque
A boutique outfit from Shenzhen makes that.
My speakers are twenty years old, but I got them last year. I am probably their fifth owner, as there is an entire community passing these things down the chain. In a similar vein, I've gone back to my TAG watch as my Apple Watch 1 just popped its screen off.
> audio equipment is one of the few areas where old high end kit is still absolutely fantastic
Yep. I picked up a massive old high-end Denon receiver with pre-amp inputs and use a cheap newer receiver to decode surround digital audio and pump it through that 40 pound beast. Sounds incredible.
I inherited a pair of speakers my dad bought in the early 80s. They still work well, though the amp died last year and I wasn't able to repair it.
You can get a number of small amps these days that will plug into the speakers and sound great.
Many will also support Bluetooth so you can stream to your stereo.
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Indeed, and it won't lose any value as you use it either. In fact, a lot of vintage equipment only gains value. My speakers are older than me by more than a decade (1972) and cost me £10 plus about £15 to repair the foams that perished a few years ago.
Millennial audiophools need their 192kHz 32-bit playback. Grandpa's sound system just won't cut it for reproducing those refined ultrasonics.
I don't think it's the reason.
A pair of good speakers is the most useful equipment in audio. If I'm a millennial audiophool and want 192 kHz / 32-bit PCM, I'll simply put a new DAC in front of the original Hi-Fi amplifier. I won't throw the perfectly usable system away.
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Grandpa's sound system was analog, not digital (as are all sound systems at some point before the speakers because sound is analog)
In fact I actually have a 192khz, 32 bit dac connecting my PC to a Technics stereo amp from the 80s.
Pithy snark only really works when you actually understand what you're talking about.
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You really do need a high quality DAC for a modern system. Older systems won't have a DAC at all, much less a good one.
That is a big deal unless it's a system 100% dedicated to vinyl.
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The same millenials who are buying Bluetooth speakers at unprecedented rates?
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As if the average Millenial can afford expensive audio equipment.
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Even 256kHz 48-bit can't even get close to what I need when it comes to pitch-shifting an audio sample up even one single octave. It produces audible 'warbling' like a poorly-encoded MP3, or a badly-fatigued guitar string.
We aren't close to peak audio, yet.
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It seems like a lot of commenters here (as well as the tweets) are totally missing the purpose of the recycle mode.
If you want to sell, give away, or otherwise let someone else reuse your Sonos, then DON'T PUT IT IN RECYCLE MODE. Easy peasy.
Recycle mode exists for when you intentionally want to get a Sonos trade-in credit for recycling your speakers for materials. But because you don't send the speakers directly to Sonos (instead to a local recycler), they have to trust you're actually recycling it instead of keeping it or selling it. So the recycle lock is a clever mechanism to ensure that. Otherwise you could "cheat" by getting the credit AND still using/selling your speakers.
So if you want your speakers to be reused... don't take the credit!! Donate or sell them instead! It's your choice.
It seems to me like overall it's a good set of incentives. The credit helps encourage people to recycle them at all instead of just throwing them in the trash, right? But doesn't prevent people from otherwise selling or donating them. Since it gives the consumer all the choice, this seems like a win for all sides, no?
People understand the purpose of it quite well. They just completely disagree with your analysis.
First, the most environmental form of recycling is for an object to be reused as is. So, if any item is given to a recycling center, if the recycling center can just sell it directly to someone else, then it's much more environmentally friendly.
Second, the credit doesn't encourage people to recycle them at all instead of throwing it in the trash, there's no verification that they've given it to a recycling center. The only thing is that after the recycling mode is enable, the device becomes a useless paperweight.
So it's an extremely environmentally unfriendly policy from a company who pretends they care about the environment.
> So, if any item is given to a recycling center, if the recycling center can just sell it directly to someone else, then it's much more environmentally friendly.
I think OP's analysis did cover that. You don't have to put it in the recycle mode. You can sell it yourself or choose not to get the credit so someone else can "Recycle" it by reusing it.
I do agree with you that people could still put in the trash, but I also think that's where good recycling programs matter. It shouldn't be hard to recycle an electronic. It should be as simple as recycling paper or glass, especially in an age where almost everything is electronic.
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> the most environmental form of recycling is for an object to be reused as is
Just a nit: it’s useful to think of reusing as distinct from recycling. Recycling breaks the object into its raw material.
No, you are totally missing the point of the recycle mode: the recycle mode is there to gain control of the devices after they have been initially sold to ensure that they will not be resold or given away when someone upgrades resulting in countless instances of good gear ending in the landfill or having to be recycled at substantial cost to society by dangling a small advantage in front of the original buyer.
Recycling effectively is the same as throwing them in the trash in this case. There is no need for this. Sonos could just as easily offer an upgrade discount to people who bought their gear originally but they are scared that this would affect their ability to sell to other people so they create what is called artificial scarcity.
And that should not happen with things that are still serviceable, especially not for a company that claims to have sustainability as their motto.
From the thread in that tweet:
"To add insult to injury, there are complaints on Sonos' support forums from people who've managed to accidentally put their devices into recycling mode, and been told by Sonos support that there's no way to stop the countdown, forcing them to buy new devices after 21 days."
and
"From what our eBay guy can tell, the bricking isn't even in hardware; you can't recover it if you're good with JTAG, because it's blacklisted as "recycled" on their servers. There's nothing stopping these things from working except Sonos says they can't."
Madness.
> been told by Sonos support that there's no way to stop the countdown, forcing them to buy new devices after 21 days
> you can't recover it if you're good with JTAG, because it's blacklisted as "recycled" on their servers. There's nothing stopping these things from working except Sonos says they can't.
These two points are not compatible with each other. If the only effect of recycle mode is that the device gets blacklisted on a Sonos server, then Sonos is trivially able to undo the effects.
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How can it be that this is the top voted comment, with such a glaring logic flaw?
There is literally no way for them to verify that you didn't just throw your device in the landfill after enabling recycling mode and pocketing the cash. So this "functionality" does no good at all, other than to recruit the customer into their planned obsolescence program while praising the company for their "green" policy.
And it worked like a charm. Just look at how many people upvoted this comment, signifying their praise of the company for this terrible program!
Welcome to marketing in capitalism, in particular greenwashing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwashing
It's a common marketing stunt and techniques with similar harmful effects were applied to other things as well, e.g., nicotine or prescription drug marketing. Public good is only a secondary objective in the american-style capitalism.
> But because you don't send the speakers directly to Sonos (instead to a local recycler), they have to trust you're actually recycling it instead of keeping it or selling it.
And to be clear, either keeping it or reselling it would be better for the environment than recycling the device. It's completely backwards to design an environmental program around making sure that people don't secretly do the right thing behind your back.
The fact that there are multiple highly-rated comments on HN looking at resellers and saying, "well, obviously they shouldn't get Sonos credits" shows how poor of a job our society is doing educating people about how reduce-reuse-recycle actually works. You don't have to check for people abusing the system. The people abusing the system are the environmental success stories. If a bunch of people participate in the trade-up program and then secretly resell their devices, that is a good thing that should be celebrated.
If anything, Sonos should be offering more credit to those people, not less.
Please stop using word "recycling" in the wrong way. Sonos used this word purposefully to promote the deactivation of their devices, which has nothing to do with real recycling: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/recycle
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In other words "recycle" mode isn't recycling (you can just chuck them in the trash) and it isn't reusing.
A complete deception to sound green, with zero cost to Sonos with zero attempt to be green, and just causing a waste stream. Nice one Sonos.
Sonos will pay for you to ship your recycled speaker back to them to be recycled. Not only do they pay for this shipping and recycle the speaker, but they give you a 30% credit. Hardly zero cost to Sonos, and considering the thriving market for refurbished speakers from Sonos it seems pretty clear the old speakers are being reused. Overall, sounds like they're doing exactly what they say they are.
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> The credit helps encourage people to recycle them at all instead of just throwing them in the trash, right?
As others have commented, the most environmentally friendly way to ‘recycle’ is to reuse.
The purpose of this recycle mode is not to encourage recycling, but to kill the second hand market.
The recycle credit is 30% off a new Sonos product, which, as far as I can tell, is worth around $100.
The linked tweet says the recycled Sonos would have been worth $250 on the secondhand market if not recycled.
It's extremely doubtful that the recycle credit is intended to prevent a second-hand market, and far more likely accidental. It does seem like a trade-in credit would work better, but nothing prevents third parties from offering a trade-in credit above $100.
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There's no part of me that follows anything you said.
We absolutely understand what the intention of the button is.
I do not understand the actual sane incentive for anybody in this transaction.
How would Sonos be worse off if those machines weren't wasted? You get a sale either way; you reward a loyal customer for an upgrade either way. If it weren't a large company, I'd say they do it out of spite - but in reality, it's just the bizarre, surreal method large corporations end up with ridiculous policies through a set of seemingly logical steps.
>>they have to trust you're actually recycling it instead of keeping it or selling it
Why? What is the benefit to them (Sonos)? What is the harm if you DID keep it?
>>The credit helps encourage people to recycle them at all instead of just throwing them in the trash, right?
There's absolutely positively nothing about this mode / button that prevents people from throwing it in the trash. In fact, by any logic I can see, it does the opposite and encourages them to chuck it in the garbage - since it's now a worthless non-functioning brick.
>>the recycle lock is a clever mechanism to ensure that.
Let us please NOT call this travesty "Clever". At least not outside of SV tech-bro blinders culture :O. It does NOTHING to ensure recycling.
>>Otherwise you could "cheat" by getting the credit AND still using/selling your speakers.
Oh noes! Wait.. HOW would Sonos be at all worse off? How would ANYbody be impacted for the worse?
>>this seems like a win for all sides
Sonos didn't get anything out of it. Recycling company got less out of it. Earth got less out of it. And there's no reason I can understand why consumer has to go through that hoop to get an upgrade credit. Seems like a lose-lose for all sides.
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I'm not going to downvote, because you made a lucid argument and downvotes are for those who do not contribute to conversation, not for disagreements. I'd say your post contributed a lot to conversation, seeing the number of comments:). But I fail to understand the argument you're trying to make and the framework / world outlook where it makes sense. I'm willing to be persuaded otherwise but need a lot more to even begin changing my mind :-/. Just because consumer "have choice", doesn't make one of the options automatically sane.
Of course Sonos wants to remove speakers from the second hand market. That doesn't make it remotely good for anyone else or for the environment.
You are not forced to take the incentive. You can always sell the device on a second hand market and get more money than that incentive.
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This is the dumbest thing ever. Sonos never receives the materials so you don't get credit "for recycling your speakers for materials", they somehow give you credits for destroying a piece of hardware so that it cannot be reused.
They literally get nothing, except to make their devices more rare by having old ones bricked. Which is WRONG, in this world of increasing waste.
Your idea that this somehow overall is a good set of incentives seems to be based on two things: One, that people would otherwise just throw them in the trash, which isn't true. Two, that it's somehow a good thing to give customers the choice to brick it for no other reason than Sonos credit.
Disabling perfectly functional equipment for some business reason still seems to contradict the concept of sustainably.
There should not be any opt-out for recycling because everyone foots the cost of a shitty planet to save your $50 credit.
Haven't you noticed that the word "recycle" is used here in the exactly opposite way than it should be? https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/recycle
This is purposeful marketing misinformation. The goal here is to incentivize a naive customer, apparently including you, to make their devices non-reusable and to buy new devices. This has nothing to do with recycling, yet Sonos purposefully uses this word, because in this way they achieve their goal.
This isn't even a new technique. Unfortunately, it's widespread. Yet another example of greenwashing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwashing
The problem is Sonos is making it easier for people to perform acts that are bad for the environment.
The second hand market is very good for the environment. By going after it, Sonos is actively hurting the environment.
That people have a choice doesn't exonerate Sonos. They are making it a lot easier for people to make the wrong choice.
Many things in this world is a win for both parties involved but still an awful thing to do (due to externalities).
> they have to trust you're actually recycling it instead of keeping it or selling it
Why?
Well, this is where the industry is going. The latest buzzword we hear in the industry is called "product as a service" — you buy a product, but still don't own it. You have to keep paying them for using your own property or else they remotely brick the device.
First gen Ipods were a prime example, but now everybody seem to want to do the same.
We recently had a prospective client who had an idea of very cheap internet connected Ipod clone, who of course had a "genius business model" of jacking the price n-fold after sale under a threat of remote bricking.
I'm very glad we refused.
> Well, this is where the industry is going. The latest buzzword we hear in the industry is called "product as a service" — you buy a product, but still don't own it, and have to keep your subscription going so the seller don't remotely brick your device.
This is exactly what Cisco has done in the small/medium sized business market with their acquisition of Meraki. Pay forever or your router and wifi stops working. It's abhorrent.
It's also the direction Microsoft has been slowly moving Windows. You think it'd be bad if your router stopped working when you stopped paying, imagine the same scenario for your operating system.
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It's certainly unappealing to me as an individual, but I am sure plenty of businesses wouldn't even blink at paying an ongoing charge like that (as long as the router in question was getting timely patches etc.)
Unfortunately, as of 6 years ago, no one else had a competing product that saved me as much time as Meraki did. It was well worth the extra thousands.
> This is exactly what Cisco has done in the small/medium sized business market with their acquisition of Meraki. Pay forever or your router and wifi stops working. It's abhorrent.
That crazy ass low price you paid on the hardware? Yeah it was a loss-leader with the expectation that you must be a SaaS customer for life if you desire to use it.
It isn't difficult to understand, you just are religiously against it.
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The traditional rental model — you borrow a physical device (a VHS recorder, say) and have to give it back if you stop paying — was, I think, one that was environmentally friendly, because the vendors make the most profit if the devices last a long time and never need replacing.
Unfortunately, you can also make a profit by following the environmentally destructive route of making the user buy themselves a brand new device and bricking it when they don't keep paying the separate subscription.
:(
> You buy a product, but still don't own it, and have to keep your subscription going so the seller don't remotely brick your device.
That’s absolutely not what’s happening here. I paid £169 for my Play:1 five years ago, and it’s still working as well as the day I bought it. I haven’t paid them a penny since.
This eco trade in may be a bit sketchy but absolutely no one’s device is being bricked without their consent.
Sure, today. But what happens when Sonos decides they "don't want to support your Play:1"? Maybe because it's a "security issue" and they place your Play:1 in "recycle" mode for you and give you so many months to replace it? Think about this from a longer term point of view - this is just an A/B test by Sonos. They can brick your device from remote, so there's no guarantee that at some point they won't.
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Did you read the twitter thread? Recycle mode bricks the device without communicating clearly to customer it's a kill switch for perfectly functioning hardware.
> First gen Ipods were a prime example
Eh what?
On early Ipods music was effectively "glued" to the individual player with a primitive DRM/scambling system.
So, you were dead in the water without Itunes that kept the fairplay key for that particular player
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I had (still have in a drawer) a 1st gen ipod, but used some gnu audio software (I forget what) to encode (encrypt?) and transfer music I had ripped from CD's I own. I never used itunes.
I think it wasn't until later generations they made this more difficult.
because they were tied to itunes?
Maybe how they used FireWire when it was on its way out?
Yes. It is painful to realize that Apple has turned into that. My reference example is a Mac Mini and MacBook Pro which I bought around 2012. Both still work, and are upgraded with dual SSD and 16GB RAM. It is, however, not possible to upgrade or even reinstall the OS. Linux is now the only option, which without they would be useless.
With my latest MacBook Pro, I already know that there are no upgrades, the keyboard is almost broken, and that its lifetime is determined through policy. Question is; will it be the hardware or software which determines end of life?
What do you mean not possible to reinstall the OS?
They don't make it easy, but you can download older OSX images from apple's servers (Sierra, Yosemite, etc..) and install them with some effort.
Not impossible.
> It is, however, not possible to upgrade or even reinstall the OS.
I don’t feel it’s fair to expect a vendor to actively develop major feature upgrades for a seven-year-old computer.
What keeps you from downloading and installing macOS High Sierra or Mojave on your 2012 hardware? Both versions still receive security updates, don’t they?
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> The latest buzzword we hear in the industry is called "product as a service" — you buy a product, but still don't own it.
That's so 2019 :-P
Today it's "consumer as a product" -- you buy a product, they own YOU.
This is where the investor backed audio companies are going. There will always be independent companies that don't have huge financial pressures that will be willing to sell complete devices at a one time fee
This could go very bad for Sonos.
Imagine a virus that looks for Sonos devices on a network and bricks them all via "recycle mode"!
The API probably isn't even locked down. I think it's unauthenticated SOAP/UPnP.
An even dumber attack: guests with your wifi credentials can download the Sonos app and break your gear. It's entirely unauthenticated.
Im in the market for sound equipment. I just crossed these guys off my list.
Separate from this issue here, Sonos should be off your list. The UX becomes progressively worse and opaque, your time will be wasted owing to mandatory software updates, needless churn, etc.
I have been a user since 2014, and I emphatically will not continue to be their customer once my existing devices bite the dust.
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They will brick your older speakers or remove functionality. I have 7 Sonos speakers, spending $3-4k on them because quite frankly I love them and the technology was great. I bought a soundbar for my TV with sub and surround speakers and they sound fantastic, and being able to use them to play music was amazing.
But then they started removing functionality from their app, and the Play 1s don’t even work with the iPhone anymore unless you have a streaming service or you set up a music service. The ability to just play music and then play it on your speakers is gone. And they don’t give a fuck. They are completely unapologetic and they just forget about their older speakers like a bad habit and that’s why I will never buy another one again.
And their app is getting worse, they are forcing logging in to monitor your usage, etc. It’s infuriating. Their technology was amazing 5 years ago but now it’s annoying.
I bought two speakers they stopped supporting new features a few months later with no plans to support them. I would highly recommend against them. On their own the devices work “most of the time” but i have more trouble with them than I ever expected to have. I’ll never buy another Sonos product.
Same here. The only way to get these kinds of asinine behavior to stop is to hurt them in their pocket book; since it's apparently the only thing they care about.
I'm curious what you would recommend instead. Everyone is listing speakers they bought decades ago but what are the latest non-sonos speakers that people like?
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> This could go very bad for Sonos.
How could it? It's all server side. If such a virus existed, they'd just undo all the 'recycling' after the day it started circulating.
There's both a hardware and software bricking component.
Edit: I reread the thread and now I'm not so sure. It might be entirely software blacklisting.
But if that's the case, can't you ip blackhole Sonos' servers and still have it all work?
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You probably don't need a virus or anything running in the end user's network.
If your Sonos can access the API to mark a device as recycled, so can you. So if you can predict serial numbers or just bruteforce them (depending on how complex they are) you might be able to brick every single Sonos out there...
I highly doubt they assign unique keypairs etc. to every single device...
> Imagine a virus that looks for Sonos devices on a network and bricks them all via "recycle mode"!
This would be an incredible public service. Unfortunately I don't have the skills to do it so I won't.
I mean it really wouldn't, because the virus would be dooming the devices to go into "recycle or trash" option, instead of the "reuse" option.
And otherwise it would just piss off Sonos owners?
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So Sonos devices need "activation" via some server on the internet? Why? If I just want to stream audio within my own home, why is internet even necessary? And what happens when Sonos goes out of business and the servers are shut down?
I just don't understand why people keep buying such things...
I recently bought a couple of Netgear Managed Switches (for Business)⁰ and in their datasheet they list "Local-only management" as a feature. Only after they arrived we discovered that you only get limited functionality in the Local-only management mode, you have to register the switches to your Netgear Cloud account to get access to the full functionality.
Reading up on it, this was achieved only after a community outcry because in the prior firmware versions the switch would have to connect to the Netgear Cloud on every bootup.
Needless to say I would not have bought the swiches if I had knew I needed to register them to Netgear Cloud to have access to the full functionality specified in the data sheet. If I had bought them as a consumer, not as a business, I would have returned them immediately.
Netgear are now on our purchasing blacklist.
⓪ - the switches are Netgear GS-108Tv3
You should return them to the middleman, accompanied with a small note about the false advertising and claim a full refund. Make sure to order something from the same vendor that does work.
They seem to be one of the few brands that give good audio quality and modern convenience at the same time.
For example, I was looking for a device that would (1) be placeable on my living room furniture[1], and let me use a couple of trusty Monitor Audio speakers both (2) for playing music (e.g. from my phone, computer or streaming sources like Spotify) and (3) for TV audio, as those speakers sound much better than a modern soundbar. And that (4) could be expandable to surround sound in the future.
I painstakingly examined alternatives in the market. There were many devices that covered the three latter points but the overwhelming majority were AV receivers, which looked great from the audio and flexibility standpoint but were at least 30 cm deep. Not useful for me, as the furniture in my living room is 28 cm deep (wasn't the point of flat screen TVs to no longer need deep furniture taking lots of space in the living room?). I found like 5 or 6 devices that would physically fit. But most of them had no flexibility for surround expansion AND no WiFi, only Bluetooth playback.
Finally, only two devices ticked my boxes and physically fit: HEOS AVR (around €1000, 27.4 cm deep) and Sonos Amp (around €600, 21.69 cm deep) which wasn't even out yet.
Since 27.4 cm deep was still quite dubious for my 28-cm-deep furniture, I finally waited for the Sonos to come out and bought it. Sonos wasn't especially on my radar, as a relatively traditional audio amateur it's not a brand I trusted, but there they were, the only ones offering the product I wanted. And indeed, it works well, it powers my speakers nicely enough and it's very convenient. I'm watching the TV, want to stream something from Spotify: TV audio is automatically muted. I stop listening to Spotify: TV audio comes back.
Why no one else has made a device that can provide good TV audio and good music playback in a shallow form factor still escapes me. I don't think my requirements were so weird, in freaking 2018.
[1] Sorry, I'm missing the specific English word for the specific piece of furniture in the living room where one has a bunch of books, CDs, mixed souvenirs and the TV, so I'll just call it "the living room furniture".
The word you're looking for is "entertainment center", but yeah, weird there aren't more products available for that niche! There are lots of home AV receivers that might fit the bill but they tend to be pretty large units.
I feel like 30cm max depth is going to be a problem for most audio gear. So-called compact ones seem to optimize for height, with depth around 40cm [1], and the shallower ones [2, 3] seem to be around 31-33cm. Get a deeper console?
[1] https://www.crutchfield.com/S-JPQM9erNVfS/p_642NR1609/Marant...
[2] https://www.bestbuy.com/site/sony-7-2-ch-with-dolby-atmos-4k...
[3] https://www.crutchfield.com/S-5ZKPlNFrS4r/p_022RXV585/Yamaha...
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> Why no one else has made a device that can provide good TV audio and good music playback in a shallow form factor still escapes me. I don't think my requirements were so weird, in freaking 2018.
Am I right in thinking that Sonos fits your requirements? I've found their speakers to be excellent in a small package. I was after the 5s but someone lent me a One as a test. A pair of them are excellent imho.
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I cut a hole in the back of my living room furniture so that the AV receiver sticks out the back and seeing as rooms often have skirting boards it gives me the few extra centimeters needed.
Obviously not the route for everyone!
The convenience seems to be worth the risk, IMO. The Sonos sound quality is great for the form factor/space, I don't have to run wires anymore, and I'm not lugging around a bunch of bookshelves and making room for them + a receiver... I'll go back to that world if I have to, but for now, the Sonos stuff was more appealing after a couple moves and starting from scratch.
This recycle mode stuff is terrible, though.
Because they want to stream audio from streaming services, which have APIs that change regularly, and require some level of DRM and subscription management. If you just want to stream audio from a local server, buy a squeezebox device. (They went under a few years back, the demand wasn't there, but they did have exactly the setup you want)
> stream audio from streaming services, which have APIs that change regularly, and require some level of DRM and subscription management
That's a good point and it makes it even more important to push back - abusive, customer-hostile business models don't just affect the direct customers, they spread and infect everything downstream.
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Because it is super convenient to set up, works well, and it is non obvious how it is harmful.
> I just don't understand why people keep buying such things...
You can't really tell if the device can be remotely bricked (that easily) or unless someone's already been burned. I miss when companies would advertise their products as "cloud-enabled" so you knew exactly what to avoid.
Sonos don't need to go out of business to shut down the servers.
When expensive devices have to "phone home" to first be enabled, that kills the aftermarket for stolen expensive devices?
People still steal smartphones, despite them being locked down with thumb and face scanners along with being traceable. It seems to be a hard market to kill.
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I feel bad about it but I rather wish it worked this way for expensive power tools. I don't want permanent drm for tools I just want a one time lock that is forever disabled upon purchase. Perhaps electronically while being purchased.
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That isn't accurate. Sonos works perfectly well on an isolated network, reading your music from a local SMB share or getting it from the line-level input of any Sonos on the network.
Unfortunately Sonos just seems to work well out of the box.
Since we’re here, does someone have a good opensource alternative? Plug and play multi room audio streaming from Spotify et al?
Have you seen volumio.org ?
You can do everything from running it on a Raspberry Pi to buying a fully put-together high-end system. Open source software.
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About 8(?) years ago my wife tasked me to get a whole-house audio system that was simple to use. After reading a lot, sonos was the clear choice, though pricey. We started with two play:3's, then added a play:5 and two more play:3's. And things were good.
But for the past year the system has been a mess. Music stutters, some units can't be found, some units fail to upgrade through multiple retries/reboots. I've wasted so many hours relocating them and connecting the misbehaving units to an ethernet cable trying to get them to update.
Eventually things get working again after hours of blind tinkering, but then a month or two later it happens again.
My wife looks to me as the tech guy to solve it, but it is far more opaque to debug then when PCs misbehave. Yes, I know about the secret diag menus and login, but they don't really help me.
The point is: my wife resents that the system doesn't work, and I resent that I've wasted so much time and my wife thinks I'm shirking because every time it comes up I groan and put off the pain of getting it working again.
I won't brick these -- I'll find some use case where they do work, but I'll get some other system to make my wife happy, even if it means spending another $1200+.
Honestly, it sounds like you have some kind of local 2.4 GHz interference problem. Try unplugging unnecessary wireless devices or moving them well out of range while troubleshooting, don't run microwave ovens until you've ruled them out, and keep your phones and other gadgets well away from the affected hardware. See if you can make friends with someone who owns a spectrum analyzer.
Before when I said I had spent hours trying to debug this, I did exactly that. Turned off every single wifi device in the house, turning off every printer, phone, and the ring doorbell. I tried bringing up one sonos device at a time to figure to figure out if one of them was causing problems.
Also, I used wifiman on my android phone to sniff out other networks. Finally, I am lucky enough to live on 3.5 acres so there aren't any nearby wifi access points.
Anyway, another comment has pointed me to the apparent solution: the sonos bridge device apparently is not essential -- just connecting one of the speakers via a wired connection makes it the bridge for the sonos network.
Okay, I’ll throw my hat into the unsolicited troubleshooting advice ring— I had similar problems and it ended up being that the Sonos Bridge is no longer supported. Once I removed the Bridge from my system and plugged a Play:5 directly into the network, all the weird issues you described that I too was having resolved themselves. YMMV.
Thank you! It has been only a few minutes, but it seems to be working better (but I've said that before too!).
I had no idea that the bridge was not necessary. I seem to recall that when I bought the first sonos unit I had to buy the bridge too.
Honestly, sounds like you need a better wireless router or need to add a (few) repeater(s).
Sonos speakers form an ad-hoc mesh network. Although I know that I get > 50 Mbps to every spot in my house where there is a speaker, it shouldn't matter. If the router to sonos #1 gets a signal, as long as sonos #2 is in range of sonos #1, sonos #2 should be served even if it can't see the router.
And if you do this, be aware of the Unifi V Sonos thing. I just ran Ethernet to avoid such problems.
Alexa or Google Home speakers make amazing (synced) whole-house audio systems that are surprisingly affordable.
Besides that fact, yeah it sounds like you have some wifi issues instead and is blaming Sonos.
I was going to buy a Sonos speaker, but this changed my mind. I'm not buying a device that was built to be bricked.
I would have bought a Sonos instead of an Apple Homepod because I thought they were more "open". But if the manufacturer can just make my device useless, I'm not interested.
Audio and Hifi gear is extremely versatile and virtually everything is compatible. High end devices easily last for decades. This feature makes it clear that Sonos has no intention of following that tradition.
>I was going to buy a Sonos speaker, but this changed my mind. I'm not buying a device that was built to be bricked.
I had a complete sonos setup that I rage donated after moving and accidentally connecting it to the internet at which point sonos wouldn't let me play my music until I "upgraded" the software with alexa enabled. Forget about recycle mode, sonos is one of the most intrusive privacy invading companies that I know off and I'm so happy they're getting all this bad press, because when I went to their forums with my complaints the whole response there was "meh" and "how can you run with old software?".
All voice assistant service options are entirely disabled until you go into the settings and set one of them up. The update may well have made it possible to set up Alexa, but it would not have done so.
> I would have bought a Sonos instead of an Apple Homepod because I thought they were more "open". But if the manufacturer can just make my device useless, I'm not interested.
Nope, it’s just iOS updates that brick HomePods.
Yes. Just to be clear, I'm going to buy neither a Homepod nor a Sonos. I think I'm going to get dumb speakers and a Raspberry/Hifiberry. Shairplay does 90% of what I want a smart speaker to do, and I think a Raspberry is a pretty future proof device.
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That was a bug, not a 'feature' like Recycle Mode.
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So, Sonos optionally lets you brick your own device, as part of their Trade Up program that gives a discount on your next device. It's named Recycle mode as, presumably, all the bricked devices are good for is recycling.
There doesn't seem to be anything stopping users from selling their speakers on - they just forgo the Trade Up discount.
The poster's point that this cuts down on re-use of perfectly good products is true, but it doesn't seem that much different to other trade in programs, e.g. Apple's. The difference seems to be that Sonos leave the burden of actually recycling the product (or not) to the user, while Apple does it for you.
They tout "sustainability is non-negotiable" on their page, while encouraging recycling over more sustainable reuse. I mean, they're allowed to do that, but be honest about it.
The key piece you're missing is that there is no trade up part. You get the discount for putting it in recycle mode, but you do not send it to them.
They basically give you discount to brick your old device as a way to kill off the secondary market.
I assume Apple and other companies sell the used products to liquidators who refurbish and resell them. Is that not true?
> I assume Apple and other companies sell the used products to liquidators who refurbish and resell them. Is that not true?
For high brand value goods, generally no. Goods are crushed to become unserviceable. It's important to do that to maintain brand image, otherwise floods of not-very-old iPhones end up on ebay for $10, and the image of an iPhone as something that lasts and has resale value is shattered.
High end clothing manufacturers will even destroy brand new, never worn clothes to maintain brand image, because they don't want them sitting in the bargain bin looking 'cheap'.
It isn't as bad for the environment as it sounds - the vast majority of the costs in a $1000 iPhone are engineering, IP, licensing, manufacturing, capital and marketing costs. The actual metal and plastic is worth hardly anything, so destroying it isn't a big loss. Even the manufacturing cost is near zero because after launch day of a specific model, the marginal cost to produce one more phone is pretty much zero because production lines are rarely still at capacity.
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See my comment below. Apple actually pays recyclers for not refurbishing their goods, and shredding them instead.
Of course, the recyclability of the resulting shredded mixed mess is near zero.
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it is worth noting that there is enough profit in a new iPhone to eat the discount they are giving you, even if your old phone ends up in a crusher.
If there's a demand, someone industrious will likely figure out a hack --- I hope. Server-side blacklisting (unlike whitelisting) doesn't stop someone from simply changing whatever unique ID they have to a different one. I can even see repair shops doing this service for those who accidentally bricked their devices.
This reminds me of a related situation I've seen with electric toothbrushes --- they have instructions on how to remove the battery "for recycling", which is deliberately designed to make the unit self-destruct in the process (by e.g. making the plastic thin and fragile, and the wires brittle and easily broken), but others have figured out how to use those same instructions to open it up and replace the cells at a fraction of the cost of a new unit. The fact that nothing needs to be broken to replace them, and that it could be trivially designed to make that job much easier, clearly demonstrates planned obolescence.
"Disposable electronics" is a big trend too. I myself saw not so few times devices that used rechargeable batteries, and a charging circuitry, but nevertheless were single use only.
A lot of Bluetooth "beacons" are of such construction, and not so cheap at all medical devices will be coming second.
Reminds me of a certain very well known startup in beacon space. I visited them some 6 years ago, back when they were finishing their fist product - a nice-looking battery-powered Bluetooth beacon, completely encased in some kind of silicone. I asked them, well, what's the expected time until battery is completely discharged, and how do I charge it back or replace it? And the answers were, a year or three (depending on use), and you don't, because by the time the beacon dies, you'll want to get a newer, better one anyway.
One of the many reasons I never bought anything from them.
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> Server-side blacklisting (unlike whitelisting) doesn't stop someone from simply changing whatever unique ID they have to a different one.
Dunno, if the ID works like an activation key it might not recognize ids that don’t pass some sort of cryptographic signature check. Then you would need the private key to generate new valid ids.
How about copying them from valid machines then?
May be they generate new tokens for every request and one set of the key is in hardware itself protected.
Such a waste of tech and resources to not let use the very things which they purchased.
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I disagree. Electric toothbrushes need to be 100 % waterproof to be usable safely. If I were a toothbrush manufacturer, I’d at least look into making the brush self-destruct when opened, for safety reasons (and safety reasons alone).
Is this true? My electric toothbrush runs on one double-A battery. That isn't enough power to electrocute me.
Of course, high-end electric toothbrushes have rechargeable batteries inside of them, and maybe they have more capacity. But on that note, I think I've needed to replace my battery exactly once in the past year. These things don't take much power, that's one of the reasons it didn't feel worthwhile for me to upgrade to a higher-end more expensive model. And rechargeable electric toothbrushes get plugged into cradles -- they don't need enough capacity to run for days and days.
I am mildly skeptical that a non-waterproof electric toothbrush would be dangerous to anyone.
Edit: I just checked my toothbrush to make sure, the only waterproofing is a tiny, easily removable rubber ring where the battery case screws on. This doesn't seem to be something my manufacturer is worried about, which might make sense, because I don't put my toothbrush handle under the water when I brush my teeth; I hold it.
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What about an electric toothbrush is unsafe if it is not 100% waterproof?
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Which brands?
Sonos had a fair shot at having me as a customer. I was ready to put down money on an installation for a house and then I found out it needed 'activation over the internet'. That being the sign of a company to avoid I walked out again, to the consternation of the sales person who had (his words, not mine): "Never had a customer decide against Sonos because of that". Looks like I made the right call.
The sad thing is, as hacker news readers, we're a tiny minority of people that even know about or care about these issues. The masses (and that salesperson) are completely oblivious to, maybe 99% of content on HN. :)
What setup did you end up with?
>"Never had a customer decide against Sonos because of that"
as long as customers don’t care neither will Sonos
Homebrew.
Am I misunderstanding something? Once in recycle mode you're supposed to send them back so that Sonos can actually recycle (or even reuse, nothing stops them from refurbishing) the old device. Recycle mode seems to simply be a convenience so that people can get the 30% rebate immediately once they've shown they're serious about sending back the device. What sucks is that you have to trade up to recycle, if they offered some buy back program it'd be near perfect, right?
Sonos doesn't take back the used devices: they expect users to give them to a local electronics recycler for recycling, where they essentially have to be scrapped, because devices in "recycle mode" are blacklisted in Sonos's servers and can't be resold (even if they're in perfect working order).
Except Sonos doesn't actually want the old device back, they say that you should take it to a recycling center so they can take it apart or whatever they do with them [1]
[1] https://twitter.com/secresDoge/status/1210684264880189441
> whatever they do with them
Which, given the constraints applied by Sonos, realistically just means "thrown into a crusher". Calling this recycling is a sham.
The point of the tweetstorm is that Reuse > Recycling, and by rendering them functionally useless is a waste of resources.
Except that customers who accidentally trigger recycle mode are shit out of luck.
OP is essentially returning an empty bottle for the deposit and then complaining they can't also refill and sell the same bottle themselves.
I wish someone would start making little add-on boards you could put into your Sonos products to bypass the onboard hardware and use your own. Just re-use the amp, speakers.
I built my own spotify receiver using an rpi with a hifiberry add on which worked perfectly. If someone built even simpler custom made Sonos play:5 boards I’d be less reluctant to buy more of them as I fear they may be expensive bricks if Sonos fails.
Apple pays Chinese "recyclers" for not to refurbishing their I-stuff, and sending it to a crusher. That's not a big secret in the industry.
A lot of luxury goods brands destroy their unsold merchandise, and some even go Apple style after their second hand market too.
This should be illegal. Increasing profits by artificially increasing scarcity — by polluting the environment with usable products and parts — is not an acceptable business strategy.
I don't really understand why Enron traders got convicted for energy market manipulation, while tech company executives intentionally scrapping usable parts and products get to live in luxury in silicon valley.
The German government is trying to make this practice illegal for vendors. Sadly, not for manufacturers IIRC.
Patagonia gets this right: https://wornwear.patagonia.com/
They encourage you to stick your used goods in the mail and take a store credit for them. They either clean and resell them, cut them up and repurpose them, or they out and out recycle them.
"A lot of luxury goods brands destroy their unsold merchandise"
This also happens since probably forever with fruit and vegetables if they're unsold or in overproduction. The reason is to keep prices fixed by artificially reducing the offer.
Fruit and vegetables and other perishable goods will effectively self-destruct if unsold anyway, so I don't see that as being quite as bad as deliberate destruction of product that would otherwise last indefinitely.
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And if one's looking for the reason why so many people complain about the market economy, that's one reason. This is all economically sound, but beyond that, utterly fucked up.
Source?
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/yp73jw/apple-recycling-ip...
I myself worked in refurbishment in the very beginning of my career. Even back in 2012 they were already quite militant with the refurbishing industry.
They blackmailed Alibaba into removing refurbished Apple goods from their store under a threat of pulling their goods from Tmall, and suing them in the US.
Iphone 4 started manufacturing using a non-sticky optical bonding gel for the glass, but later they switched to a hard epoxy out of a sudden in the middle of manufacturing run.
People noted that this was a very expensive solvent resistant epoxy that was very hard. They intentionally made it impossible to unbond the display without ruining it.
Hey everyone. I get that Sonos does have some value add here allowing mesh networking and encrypted audio. Buuuuuuuuuut, there are tons of alternative options. I like building speakers and I have built my sound bar using components from parts express and some reclaimed hard woods. Parts express has tons of Bluetooth options and the quality is mostly pretty good. I am using morel and peerless drivers and the 2x50 watt Bluetooth amp. The sound is as good or better than any sound bar I’ve heard and I don’t have to update software or deal with obnoxious TOS agreements. My tv connects to it without issues and while it’s not as elegant as the Sonos experience but I will take that over planned obsolescence.
Ok, this seems really disgusting.
The post was lacking some context at first but from how I understand this, you can render your sonos device unusable voluntarily and in turn get a new sonos device for a little cheaper. This happens by marking the serial number of your device on the sonos servers as "recycled" making reactivation impossible.
And they're somehow marketing this "feature" as environmentally friendly because it somehow in some twisted sense means you recycle your old device for a new one.
I'm speechless.
Seems ripe for a hacking attempt. Being able to kill hardware with software always seems dangerous.
Do you think it’s really permanent though? I would assume Sonos maintains a list of the blacklisted devices and they could restore a device if they really needed or wanted to.
Your comment also made me wonder whether there’s such a thing as green hat? It doesn’t seem like there’s much of an economic incentive for a hacking attempt but I’d imagine Sonos would take a very different approach to recycling if every active device was suddenly put into “recycle” mode and this program was in the headlines.
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According to the twitter thread their ``recycle mode'' works by blacklisting the device's serial number in the mfg's database to prevent it from working, so depending on what you want to do with them they might be perfectly functional.
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I will never buy a Sonos product, and no one else should either.
Truly disgusting.
This is shocking. Why do I need to have a recycle mode on a speaker? Oh because it’s a WiFi connected, smart speaker that collects and stores data on me.
We recently read about Apple devices being bricked in the recycling process because of Find My, but that makes sense, because it’s a personal computer or phone where I intentionally store personal data. And I’d much rather err on the side of that data not getting out.
But seriously Sonos, this is dumb. To intentionally brick devices that could be perfectly functional for someone else is honestly bad for the planet and business.
Glad I’ve never bought a Sonos and now I never will.
You forgot that Sonos is mostly a CIA spying device, so it needs to be destroyed remotely if the operation is in danger to be detected.
Sounds like an opportunity to score some decent physical hardware for a song. It could become a brand new hacker brand. "Noson". Fix the device via jag to talk to an open source server like an own cloud plugin.
The dumbest thing is that if I can sell my old Sonos rather than trash them in recycle mode then I am more likely to upgrade sooner since the sale of my used hardware can also help subsidize the upgrade regardless of whether Sonos offers me credit or not. And now Sonos has an additional user of their product (which in turn markets the product and is likely to build loyalty assuming the product isn’t shit) and a new hardware sale. I am willing to bet Sonos needs both growth of their user base and needs to demonstrate that some core percentage of their customers regularly upgrade on a ~5yr purchase cycle. And it doesn’t actually cost Sonos anything (relative to the BOM for a device) to handle the compute for the extra user so it’s not like the person upgrading is making off with anything of additional value to Sonos. So take the environmental concerns out of the picture: this is just short sighted nooby business.
This smells like some program cooked up by a hot shot MBA type that the executive team trusts to tweak the business because they don’t shut up about needing to focus on type of numbers investors care about. Never mind they don’t know the first thing about building a decent product. And to make it worse they’re probably actually convinced they’re helping the environment.
Light bulb manufacturers goes to great extents to artifically shorten lifestyle of bulbs.
I adjusted to that by keeping bulb receipts. Then buying new ones to replace failing ones. Then coming 3 weeks later to get refund or credit for failed ones.
Putting pressure on retailers to stop carrying crappy products.
I know it's not exactly audio stuff but manufacturers engaging in misleading to the point of fraudulent practices need to be dealt with.
I wonder what’s going to happen after they get a bunch of, “my kid turned on recycle mode now I have a brick plz halp” support calls...
Probably the same thing that happened, and mostly in the same frequency as happened, 6 months ago. This article highlights the shittiness of Sonos's "implementation" of a recycle program, not the customer's experience or results (discounted purchases of new products) of initiating the program.
Sounds like they already have, with their response being "Nothing we can do, so sad. You'll need to buy a new set of gear".
Why is that not incredibly illegal?
Because that's not going to be argued like that in court.
It may not be that hard to say that's its for:
- Preventing "counterfeiting" as in people salvaging their PCBs to put on "rogue" devices.
- Protecting their brand name as a "rogue" device may misrepresent what a proper sonos product actually is.
- Preventing misuse of the account that was registered on the device, hence protecting their customers personal data.
- Customers only use this mode when a product is not repairable.
That's the power of having a strong legal departement, pretty much anything can be argued even when everyone knows the real intent. When such things are done properly, it's really hard to prove the intent hence, the risk is pretty low of being fined anything.
Customers can’t use this mode when the product is not repairable in most cases as the SOC which is the only irreparable component needs to be fully functional.
If your device cannot boot you can’t put it into recycle mode.
This mode is designed for one thing only and that is to disable perfectly working devices.
IIRC the device also needs to be within its warranty period for you to use recycle mode.
It's more-or-less equivalent to what the government did a decade ago in the "cash for clunkers" program, just wrecked via software instead of by replacing the engine oil with sodium silicate.
Why would it be illegal? And what’s the difference between illegal and incredibly illegal anyway?
There's "illegal but we'll do it anyway since any penalty is less than what we made because of it" and there's "it's illegal so let's not do it as it puts our CEO in jail".
I thought this was obvious.
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There was never any appeal to me in a speaker which is so tightly coupled with software. I don’t see those still working in 10+ years. Whereas there’s plenty of old hifi setups still being used. The fact that the software has an intentional bricking mechanism in it just makes this more apparent.
Not super familiar with Sonos, but why do they 'need' to connect to a server in order to work at all? Do they bundle in some kind of subscription streaming service or something?
I always thought they were just wireless speakers that I used locally on my own network...
I experienced a similar thing when I helped a friend install LineageOS on their bootlooped Android phone.
Apparently, this process would have been 10x easier if they had switched on "OEM unlocking" in the Developer Options setting (which you can't do from the boot menu, recovery menu or via adb), which is off by default for a very stupid reason. We were successful in the end, but it was a LOT of hassle.
So, when you switch on "OEM unlocking", you get a warning that it's "for protection against thieves". Like, a thief would steal your phone and it's encrypted and locked, but because "OEM unlocking" is off they can't simply wipe it and reinstall to re-sell, or something. So to them it's a brick and therefore they wouldn't have stolen your phone I guess. Except if they spend some effort they can totally cleanly reinstall the thing, it just takes more steps.
Maybe I'm missing some part here about how this "OEM unlocking" option supposedly protects against theft, but for me it was a simple sum. Number of times my phone got stuck in a boot loop: 3, number of times my phone got stolen: 0. So I set that to unlocked, now I'll have an easier time if I ever mess up my phone again.
The only real reason I can think of is that they WANT your phone to stay bricked/bootlooped when it's bricked, and be unable to fix and repair it. It has nothing to do with theft, it's just a way to make sure the device stays disabled when it's disabled, and to make you buy another new phone.
Additionally, I got nothing but happy comments about LineageOS from my friend. You can really tell in the feel of the entire system the difference between what it means to be a user (normal software) or to be the product (like in Android or any of the Google/Facebook/Apple systems). Just by what options you're given and the fact that applications actually behave at your service instead of nagging you while you're trying to accomplish a task. I'm not really happy about how Android 9 is running on my moto-g6, so I think I'm gonna make that switch soon as well. You don't even need to root the phone to do this, but it's a choice (I think I'm going to root it though).
I got hit by this same issue. We had a few spare phones at work in a draw and I wanted to give them to friends in need of a phone. Had permission from the company but no one knew who owned them or what the password was. I did the manual factory reset from the recovery but was hit by this "security" feature.
I eventually managed to track down the original owner and had them unlock the devices. If I hadn't, these phones would be ewaste.
What bothers me is the solution is simple, when a manual factory reset is done, have the phone ping google and start a 1 week countdown. Google can then email the original owner and ask if they have had their phone stolen. If they reply yes then the phone is locked. If they reply no or have no response then the phone unlocks.
Apparently you can still wipe and reset and reinstall the phones even with "OEM unlock" switched off. At least, we managed to pull it off. But it took about half a day of trying and retrying random things from threads on forum.xda-developers.com. Sorry I can't be more specific, it becomes a bit of a blur after the 5th time :-p
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IIRC Logitech used to do this with warranty replacements on Harmony remotes—don’t know if they still do. It made purchasing one used risky.
They did this, but the blacklist only prevents the remote from getting updates from the cloud.. it does not brick the device, and it can continue to use its current config. Or at least that's how it used to be.
I have a harmony that I bought in 2009-ish, and the provided "batteries included" exploded in the first few days of ownership and made a huge mess. I wrote them a complaint, and they sent me a new remote. When I activated the new one, the old one stopped taking updates.
Amusingly, there is an open source tool that can pull a config from one harmony and flash it to another. The replacement was actually slightly inferior (mushy keys), and so I'd program the replacement, back up the config, and restore it to the original.
It makes purchasing one new risky.
If the devices become useless, how is this any different from Sonos just offering customers "trade-in" value for their old devices (like for used cars) and then throwing them out? Just that the device doesn't get physically mailed to Sonos?
Like if you think it's just spiritually bad to throw working things out, fine. But how is Sonos doing wrong by the customer?
Yes, as a marketing person you could probably argue that the environmentally positive effect is that you don't have to mail the device in, and I'm not claiming other vendors aren't trying to prevent people from reselling used products, but this specific instance just seems so overly ironic because it makes the result of such offers so crystal clear:
"get a discount by making sure nobody could possibly get any use out of your old device even if it's still working fine"
Plus I don't think other vendors are trying to sell such discount programs as some form of recycling.
Presumably that customer lives on the same planet as everybody else does and we all share the same environment. Sending good gear to the landfill is disgusting and damaging on many levels.
Used cars don't get thrown out when they're traded in. And it's not "spiritually bad," it's actively destructive to the environment. Manufacturing things requires a great deal of energy.
Well, there was this, fortunately short-lived... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_Allowance_Rebate_System
It sounds like the proceeding comment might be thinking of something akin to the "Cash For Clunkers" program where the cars' engines were destroyed with sodium silicate in the crankcase.
I found this idea an egregious waste as someone who maintains vehicles, often with serviceable used parts.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_Allowance_Rebate_System
I have a sonos speaker at my cabin and while the audio isn’t bad the spotty wifi coverage and the choppy audio that keeps dropping out when I listen to Audible at 1.25 to 1.5 speed is annoying.
It just isn’t a very good product in my eyes. I have cheap Bluetooth speakers that work much better.
So I would be interested in “upcycling” the Sonos with new innards.
Time to watch some teardown videos to see what can be done.
Is there no way to fake the Sonos server and reauthenticate the bricked device offline or tear it down and bypass any logic chips and get at the speaker hardware directly, create an analog 3.5mm jack input and play music from it manually?
Would love to see the folks at hackaday or somewhere else exploit the recycle mode hardware.
Dear lazy web, is there something like the sonos that is open source that makes the same synchronized sound field (I dont own a sonos, I assume that is what they do)? I believe I could hack something up using an ESP32, a microphone and/or a GNSS receiver, but does this already exist?
Logitech media server. Run LMS on one pi or a docker container, and then onother pi zeros run Squeezelite. The entirety of the installation on the receiving devices is ` sudo apt install squeezelite`.
It has been game changing for me.
To piggyback off this week's hate of MBAs, it seems likely some idiot MBA determined that the company was losing exorbitant amounts of money from secondhand sales of their devices such that they had to implement this ridiculous initiative.
Im just reminded that the fashion industry does somewhat the same.. they litterally set fire to unsold clothes, to protect the brand and margins.
>From what our eBay guy can tell, the bricking isn't even in hardware; you can't recover it if you're good with JTAG, because it's blacklisted as "recycled" on their servers.
Yet another reason to never own anything "smart".
I wonder how difficult would it be to strip out the Sonos smart crap from these speakers and connect a Raspberry W to the preamp?
I wish they would sell them at a reduced price just as powered speakers, to people that would just like to use them as powered speakers. No support provided, just a website where you could click and order.
There are a number of people that would be more than happy and able to repurpose an old Sonus speaker that no longer operated as a Sonus speaker.
I found out about the perils of depending on specific apps, cloud or something like that when gave a toy to girlfriend and now we can't play anymore because the app wasn't updated to the latest Android.
Literally we would tell the manufacturer to introduce it in specific places to tell us if it is usefull without remote control
Best reason not to buy a Sonos product.
Or mod it
This seems like it's for a trade-up/upgrade program, which would traditionally be:
1) Customer boxes up device.
2) Customer mails device to manufacturer.
3) Manufacturer hits it with a hammer, ensuring that they don't have to compete with their own used device after the customer has been given a credit for it.
So, instead, we have:
A) Customer starts bricking process.
B) Customer recycles device locally.
C) Local electronics recycler hits device with a hammer because it has self bricked, ensuring that the manufacturer doesn't have to compete with their own used device after the customer has been given a credit for it.
So we've removed disposable packaging and fuel for shipping. It seems like a net win for the environment.
They're going to do their trade in program. They can either do it the traditional way or do it this way, having a slightly lower adverse environmental impact. Leaving the device functional is not on the menu, and acting like it is is intentionally obtuse.
Yes it's a waste. I also find it genuinely funny. Not sure why. Just tickles me.
If there’s one company I’d bet on being acquired next year it’s probably Sonos. Even with a 30-50% premium it’s a small buy for any of the big cos who want to increase market share in home device market.
What an absolute and utter waste.
On the other hand: I'd rather like to get hold of a bricked Sonos.
I'd stick a Raspberry Pi, DAC and speaker amp inside it. Be free of the shackles of the cloud, my child!
This is a common tactic in America's industrial products.
Oh believe you me, after decades of this kind of crap us non-Americans have become quite cautious about buying American products!
IKR. I have a nice Anker waterproof rechargeable speaker w/ subwoofer that doubles as a battery bank that was $75. It seems darn durable and works for me. Screw Sonos.
I'm very much DIY guy and hate it when companies block users from doing whatever they want with their equipment, but this is a special case. User gets the discount from Sonos for recycling the old equipment, and thus user doesn't own it anymore. It belongs to Sonos now as they bought it back, and of course they don't want it resold half-price by 3rd party, it's a competition to their new products. To me it seems perfectly legit, as long as you get a discount for that. And the equipment can still be recycled and resold for parts, they don't block that.
It makes sense for Sonos. It’s also environmentally terrible.
Step 1: convince your customers to brick their own devices. Step 2: buy back now worthless, and thus cheap, devices. Step 3: unbrick, resell, profit
If they did step two it wouldn't be nearly as bad.
Well, you'd have to do it secretly, buy them back from the recyclers
Ooooo what a sustainable behaviour... Next step is to schedule Recycle mode. Then we will have to hack the gadget not to do that. My friend she is using Sony android phone from 2013, she disabled google apps long ago, I did some things, and for average user like she is, it is perfect, fast and responsive, Whapp, Viber, calls, camera...spending money on travelling, not on manufacturer's jerking-gadgets. I presume Sony and other manufacturers don't like us to much. Frankly, I don't give a damn...
Sonos speaker owner here. Has there been any efforts in reverse engineering how the devices work and having an open source firmware?
Oh man, I would absolutely take one of these off anyone's hands if they have one to hack on. Would pay for shipping.
I'll be happy to flash a build of Snapcast on my Sonos speakers and do away with their software for good.
Is this a violation of US resale rights?
Why would it be? It was done in exchange for a 30% discount. Scummy or not, it has clear elements of a contract.
> Someone recycled five of these Sonos Play:5 speakers. They're worth $250 each, used, and these are in good condition. They could easily be reused.
Then the owner should have sold (given?) them as-is, rather than trying to double dip by telling Sonos they were going to recycle them for parts (for which they pay you $120) then not doing so.
We are an e-waste collector, we have to pay to recycle most electronics we receive, and the only reason we still exist as a business is because we do the environmentally friendly thing of ensuring as many devices as possible is refurbished and resold.
> recycle them for parts
"Recycling" does not inherently imply "for parts".
> recycle them for parts
Consumer electronics are not generally recycled for parts at an industrial scale in the US. (maybe not anywhere?)
Most parts in devices you have are not serious candidates for part wise recycling: The cost to remove the part (much less test it) is greater than the cost to buy a new one... and it's often difficult to figure out what a part actually is.
About the only common part-reusable thing I encounter is 18650 cells from 'dead' laptop batteries. I have a whole drawer of them, scavenged from our old thinkpad batteries. Usually there is only one or two bad ones in the pack. All my flashlights are 18650 powered for this reason.
Screwing over companies that screw over the environment is morally sound.
How is it screwing over Sonos? The credit can only be spent on new Sonos equipment. Or are you talking about the OP's company, who is cashing on people's desire to recycle?
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The owner did try to recycle them for parts, by giving them to the recycling centre.
There is a difference between reuse and recycle. A recycling centre won't generally reuse parts of a products it's just separated and new raw material is created from it if possible.
I now see what's going on...the OP claims to be running an e-recycling center but actually takes "donations" and sells them for a profit instead.
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sonos is the worst. They sell speakers without an audio input (last time i checked)... and can only be controlled/used by sonos software... homey dont play that. but i am disillusioned with itunes as well... wah
That's why I prefer buying hardware and service (if any) unbundled.
As a programmer, if someone asked me to do this, I would walk out.
I am an audio engineer and this is going to be a long thread. TLDR; I hate companies like Sonos. They add no value to people who know about audio. You see, everything about speakers is really simple. From the way they work to the way they're made. There's really just 4 pieces to make a speaker system. The speaker, power supply, amplifier and a pre-amplifier to modify the sound (eg. DSP, Equalizer, etc.)
That's why if you search on the used market today, you'll still see equipment from companies like Aiwa/Sony from the 80s and 90s simply because these speakers can be re-used even now as you can connect anything to them before the pre-amplifier and they'll still reproduce your source (iPod/TV/Computer/whatever). I posses a 40 year old Aiwa system that still functions flawlessly today like brand new. This is also possible today because speakers themselves can last so much longer. More than 40 years as you can tell.
All companies like Sonos do is add just another layer before the pre-amplifier stage - which is to make the speaker "smart". This is usually all those wifi chips and bluetooth and Google assistant and what not. This is the proprietary part of their system. Normally, you are able to throw away this proprietary part and still use the speaker system. But, in pursuit of more sales, to reduce the lifespan of a perfectly fine speaker system to simply increase revenues is the most hardcore, cruel thing one can do.
Sonos' speakers are so bad that many models aren't even serviceable. Meaning, you can't open them like you could on those Aiwa's and Sony's and put them back together. Once taken apart, they're useless. They use tons of glue, proprietary shaped screws sometimes even wire the speakers in such a way that they'll damage the units if you try to take them off. They purposely do this so their speakers can't be used anymore without damaging the appearance.
That's why I will any day buy a mediocre music system from Sony or LG than buy trash like Sonos. First of all, I know the quality of components they use is not that great. They use ordinary stamped steel, sometimes plastic baskets for their driver units as opposed to high quality aluminium construction. Paper diaphragms too. Their units don't even have proper crossover circuitry in some models. And besides, the drivers they use are actually based off rebranded generic Chinese, just tweaked a bit. They're very good at fooling people pretending to be an audiophile company. In reality, they're not even half as close to the stuff from the 80's and 90's.
So, having ranted this, there's literally no reason to support such terrible ethics backed company simply for the sake of their profits. Fuck Sonos and get a Sony (or whatever else you like that doesn't do this). This is not just for the environment, but to set a full stop to such terrible practices. The audio land is already so full of snake oil already that the last thing we need is another snake oil sales man like Sonos.
If you buy a LAN or WAN connected speaker you're a dumb guy. No exceptions.
Smdh. Consumerism at it's finest wastefulness.
Gone Missing: mindless rage, scandal, foreboding, nausea and disgust at what the future may bring if a trend is not stopped in its tracks.
Emerging, Rising: apologist arguments that equate compromise and degeneration of tools made out of a sense of personal cleverness, finding that one-use case where the trend might 'save the planet' or at least present it as such, winning the debate among like minds.
It's getting to where if I fail to get downvoted here, I wonder if I've stated my point clearly.