What a total waste.<p>Apparel companies are starting to participate in the secondary market for their used gear, why can't Sonos do something similar?<p>Examples:
- Patagonia Worn Wear (<a href="https://wornwear.patagonia.com" rel="nofollow">https://wornwear.patagonia.com</a>)
- REI Used Gear (<a href="https://www.rei.com/used/shop/gear" rel="nofollow">https://www.rei.com/used/shop/gear</a>)
- Arc'teryx Rock Solid (<a href="https://rocksolid.arcteryx.com" rel="nofollow">https://rocksolid.arcteryx.com</a>)<p>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.
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.
It seems like a lot of commenters here (as well as the tweets) are totally missing the purpose of the recycle mode.<p>If you want to sell, give away, or otherwise let someone else reuse your Sonos, then <i>DON'T PUT IT IN RECYCLE MODE</i>. Easy peasy.<p>Recycle mode exists for when you <i>intentionally want to get a Sonos trade-in credit for recycling your speakers for materials</i>. 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.<p>So if you want your speakers to be reused... <i>don't take the credit!!</i> Donate or sell them instead! It's <i>your choice</i>.<p>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 <i>gives the consumer all the choice</i>, this seems like a win for all sides, no?
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.<p>First gen Ipods were a prime example, but now everybody seem to want to do the same.<p>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.<p>I'm very glad we refused.
This could go very bad for Sonos.<p>Imagine a virus that looks for Sonos devices on a network and bricks them all via "recycle mode"!<p>The API probably isn't even locked down. I think it's unauthenticated SOAP/UPnP.<p>An even dumber attack: guests with your wifi credentials can download the Sonos app and break your gear. It's entirely unauthenticated.
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?<p>I just don't understand why people keep buying such things...
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.<p>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.<p>Eventually things get working again after hours of blind tinkering, but then a month or two later it happens again.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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+.
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.<p>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.<p>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.
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.<p>There doesn't seem to be anything stopping users from selling their speakers on - they just forgo the Trade Up discount.<p>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.
If there's a demand, someone industrious will likely figure out a hack --- I hope. Server-side <i>blacklisting</i> (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.<p>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.
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 <i>the</i> 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.
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?
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.<p>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.<p>A lot of luxury goods brands destroy their unsold merchandise, and some even go Apple style after their second hand market too.
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 <i>really</i> disgusting.<p>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.<p>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.<p>I'm speechless.
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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 <i>more</i> 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) <i>and</i> 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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>Putting pressure on retailers to stop carrying crappy products.<p>I know it's not exactly audio stuff but manufacturers engaging in misleading to the point of fraudulent practices need to be dealt with.
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?<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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 <i>at your service</i> 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).
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?<p>Like if you think it's just spiritually bad to throw working things out, fine. But how is Sonos doing wrong by the customer?
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.<p>It just isn’t a very good product in my eyes. I have cheap Bluetooth speakers that work much better.<p>So I would be interested in “upcycling” the Sonos with new innards.<p>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?<p>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?
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.<p>Yet another reason to never own anything "smart".<p>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.<p>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.<p>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:<p>1) Customer boxes up device.<p>2) Customer mails device to manufacturer.<p>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.<p>So, instead, we have:<p>A) Customer starts bricking process.<p>B) Customer recycles device locally.<p>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.<p>So we've removed disposable packaging and fuel for shipping. It seems like a net win for the environment.<p>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.
What an absolute and utter waste.<p>On the other hand: I'd rather like to get hold of a bricked Sonos.<p>I'd stick a Raspberry Pi, DAC and speaker amp inside it. Be free of the shackles of the cloud, my child!
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.<p>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.
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.)<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.