Sonos Rumored to Be Planning Voice-Controlled Smart Speaker Similar to HomePod and Echo [Updated]

What makes it feel half baked to you?

Isn't that obvious? It doesn't have an Apple logo on it.;)

He putting down a well regarded, well reviewed, long-term established line of products as a group while proclaiming his readiness to buy a product that has not even been objectively reviewed yet from a company that is reaching outside of it's core strengths and leveraging a voice control system consistently frustrating even to the Apple faithful.

But it is going to (automatically) be best (and anything with which it competes is automatically inferior)... because it's coming from Apple. We don't even need to read an objective review. It will be BEST and we will swear to that no matter what.:rolleyes:

Makes me recall another recent thread where some guy was arguing that HomePods only real competition was a $40,000 speaker.:rolleyes:

I thought Sonos was actively trying to migrate all their customers to Apple so they can shut down their operations.

https://www.extremetech.com/electronics/254561-sonos-accept-new-privacy-policy-well-brick-device

I can't imagine Sonos will be selling very many speakers anymore.
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To me, Sonos always seemed half-baked because they have a simple mode to mirror the audio to separate speakers (their whole home audio feature), there is no way to coordinate multiple speakers into a wiresless 5.1 or 7.1 sound system.

Just mirroring the music is trivial. I have done the same on my mac with multiple different brands of bluetooth speaker. Actually coordinating the speakers into multi-channel sound would be a more baked feature, but that would actually take work and R&D effort (like syncing the channels a lot more accurately than Sonos is capable of).

Adding a voice assistant to Sonos now is just an act of desperate panic on their part, they've failed miserably to develop a decent product, and their prices are absurd. Their only saving grace has been a lack of anyone else competing in the space. If Homepod is 1/10th as good as it's supposed to be at the $350, it will obliterate Sonos, and no voice assistant is going to save them.

You truly have no idea what you are talking about. Sonos does not "mirror" the music, it plays it. Be it from local files or from online sources. The most impressive thing they invented was the ability to play the same source in multiple rooms at the same time in perfect sync. That may sound easy, It's not. Especially 10 years ago when they first did it. You are also totally wrong about not being able to do 5.1 sound. See the Playbar. The reason that Sonos has the price it does is that it works and does what customers want. It's been selling for over 10 years now as almost a cult like product. I don't see that changing. Adding Alexa control to it will only improve it. Not to mention, what will happen in the unannounced products that this article is about. By the way I do know what I'm talking about - I'm a Sonos owner.

Sonos has always felt half baked to me. I waited 5 years for Sonos to get their act together and to release something truly compelling. I'm glad I never bought into the Sonos ecosystem and I'll be buying the HomePod on day 1.

What makes it feel half baked to you?

Isn't that beta about controlling Sonos playback via a Dot or Echo?

This latest rumor seems more about actually integrating Alexa into a Sonos device.

Yes, it's controlling Sonos via Alexa.

Can someone make me a voice controlled cat? Because mine ignores me.

Just going based off the article, it says that Sonos is "Planning" to enter the smart speaker era. So it's safe to assume, at least based off the article content, that Sonos will not be releasing a product before the HomePod. Which again, I still think the HomePod has an advantage here in the least in the sense of giving the consumer to focus solely on the HomePod's capabilities and features in December. At least being in the spotlight first.

Depending on how the beta with Alexa has been going, Sonos could release an updated Speaker as soon as next month. They could also update their current speakers to work more closely with current Amazon products. As for the rumored speaker with multiple voice assistant capabilities, the API's for each system is pretty mature. The one hold up could be Siri integration, but that could be added later with an update.

Sonos is going to have the upper hand in my opinion because of ubiquity. It works with all ecosystems and the HomePod, Apple being Apple, will only work inside the garden.
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Sonos has always felt half baked to me. I waited 5 years for Sonos to get their act together and to release something truly compelling. I'm glad I never bought into the Sonos ecosystem and I'll be buying the HomePod on day 1.

In what way? I'm more than happy with it as a zonal wireless speaker system, which is what it's marketed as.

Eventually customers are going to realize that the money to be made here by companies is selling your conversation statistics to advertisers.

To me, Sonos always seemed half-baked because they have a simple mode to mirror the audio to separate speakers (their whole home audio feature), there is no way to coordinate multiple speakers into a wiresless 5.1 or 7.1 sound system.

And there's nothing at all that says HomePod will do this, beyond some of "us" making up features that even Apple hasn't promoted to imply that these can do anything. Personally, I suspect if HomePod could be a replacement for Home Theater speakers, Apple would have talked that up. It would have clearly distinguished this from Echo and Google's product and more obviously make it competitors to not just Sonos but also many other home theater speaker providers at MUCH higher prices than HomePod and Sonos offerings. That message- even formally hinted- would have significantly fueled price acceptance AND had the early adopters imagining buying 5-6 HomePods at launch instead of 1 or 2. I suspect Apple would LOVE the idea of consumers already gearing up to pay 6X $349 instead of 1X or 2X $349... and all that would have taken was as little as a single slide, maybe a spoken sentence or two at the "big reveal, or even a single bullet on the slide."

Instead, Apple said NOTHING about this being a direct competitor for 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound speakers. We have just made that up as part of trying to imagine $349 as a bargain instead of trying to rationalize $349 vs. Echo, etc pricing.

Adding a voice assistant to Sonos now is just an act of desperate panic on their part, they've failed miserably to develop a decent product, and their prices are absurd.

Says who (that is objective)? Except for the more-to-most fanatic, many will argue that Alexa is superior-to-much superior to Siri. And it is already available in a "smart speaker" that costs a fraction of HomePod. And it has already been objectively reviewed outside of a controlled environment at HQ for entities that know that bad pre-reviews probably doesn't get them invited back again.

Their only saving grace has been a lack of anyone else competing in the space.

They've had many direct competitors but have generally been deemed best in their space. They do generally charge more than their direct competitors, but often the best charges (more) for the best (see Apple product pricing vs. direct competitors).

Their saving grace has been a system that works well... and works well with Apple products. Note that Apple HQ has opted to sell Sonos in Apple stores, so even Apple thinks the product is good enough to allocate precious retail space to Sonos products. Or are you saying Apple is wrong for opting to push a "failed miserably to develop a decent" product at "absurd" pricing in Apple's own stores?

Note also that "WE" and invited press have decided to imagine HomePod as a Sonos competitor, presumably because it's harder to mentally rationalize it as an Alexa Echo competitor at 2X (or more) the price. Nothing in Apple's presentation made it appear to be a direct competitor to Sonos. In fact, it looked more like Apple was positioning it as Echo Pro at "pro" pricing.

Apple's main justification argument at the event seemed to revolve around "better quality speaker" which, even if that proves to be objectively true, is about the easiest part to (quickly) replace in competitor offerings. Apple did NOT tout a significantly enhanced version of Siri or the 5.1 or 7.1 usage. So Apple's "saving grace" apparently revolves around brand loyalty and the tenuous spin of "better quality speaker." Hopefully, it brings more than that.

If Homepod is 1/10th as good as it's supposed to be at the $350, it will obliterate Sonos, and no voice assistant is going to save them.

Says who (that is objective)? We haven't even had ONE objective review yet. If sound is 1/10th as good as being superior to existing players (as claimed by Apple Marketing), I can't see how anyone could argue it sounds better than established players. I can't imagine there is a 90% quality fluff layer in the quality of sound for a 10% "as good" to actually be better. But we'll see, no HEAR that for ourselves soon enough.

All that said, we're generally Apple people here. So I get how much we want to believe that whatever Apple rolls out is the best by far. However, with this thing, we almost have NOTHING on which to base such adulation. Just as we won't take Amazon rolling out a new Echo and claiming it's speaker has been upgraded to 2X better than Apple's, we should not be so quick to blindly accept marketing claims as absolute fact. Nor should we be making up rationalizations that may or may not apply (like this ongoing spin about 5.1 or 7.1 speakers).

All we actually know right now is Apple is rolling out a speaker that THEY claim sounds better than the competition and that it appears to be something akin to an Echo pro. We can hope that it brings much more than that but hope doesn't automatically mean Siri will be smarter... or these can sync up and work as 5.1 or 7.1, etc. I'll hope it does all these added things some of us have been postulating, further hoping Apple chose to keep the distinguishing "magic" secret for some reason until closer to public launch.

And there's nothing at all that says HomePod will do this, beyond some of "us" making up features that even Apple hasn't promoted to imply that these can do anything.

I'm not making up features at all. You asked why Sonos seemed half-baked, there's my answer. Sonos markets itself as a high end home audio system, and for that reason, imo it fails utterly. It has nothing to do with Apple.

Apple has already said 2 Homepods will work together to give you stereo.

Personally, I suspect if HomePod could be a replacement for Home Theater speakers,

And this is my point. Apple doesn't claim they're giving you home theatre. Sonos does. Therefore Sonos is half-baked at what they claim to do.

Instead, Apple said NOTHING about this being a direct competitor for 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound speakers. We have just made that up as part of trying to imagine $349 as a bargain instead of trying to rationalize $349 vs. Echo, etc pricing.

I haven't made that up and I actually haven't seen others make it up either. Why do you think what Apple does or doesn't do in 2017 has anything to do with what Sonos has been doing for 10+ years?

Sonos was half-baked in 2010, and it's half-baked in 2017. I told you why I feel that way. Apple entering the space (or not really competing with Sonos as you suggest) has no impact on that.