Honest question time:
Are you viewing no failures as:

Hardware blowing up / failing to turn off?

What about when products don't connect to the network?

Or are you also saying that you've never had any failures or service calls whatsoever? So none ever returned to base / none ever sent to your distro?

That would be impressive.

I call BS on this fairy tale.

I think its WAY more likely that when the units failed, They purchased replacements directly through sonos rather than gong back to you.

to claim 0 failures in 15 years is not sane.

Its just 0 that you know about....

I've been installing Sonos for about 10 years.  2 failures, both of them were connects that were part of a bad run, and Sonos RMA'd them no questions despite being 4-5 years old.

The product works, and supports more streaming services than anything else.  Their software updates have yet to brick a piece of hardware that I have been responsible for, and I don't need to be present for them to occur.  That's a huge win.

I don't care that the margin is lower if I'm not eating a bunch of time trying to keep the stuff running.

Sonos is the Bose of the 21st century.  Its a household name and everybody wants it.  The difference this time around is that it is a pretty great product that can be integrate with other stuff if you know what you are doing.

Well... You got that part right....

Bluesound also doesn't support Pandora. Major oversite IMO.

Yes, I am saying that with Sonos. Never had a hardware failure. Never a call about falling off the network. Never a return, although we don't have a retail store so everything is installed by us. In fairness, I NEVER set up Sonos using customer's Wifi. They are either wired or use Sonosnet for the wireless connection. But, that is why I am impressed with Sonos.

Also, in fairness I never had a failure of Denon Heos but don't have many out there. I did have one call about not connecting after update. No Musiccast pieces have died although have had 2 receivers die but they weren't using Musiccast. I have had a call from an elderly couple to remind them how to use it. Tehey couldn't get the Living room TV sound on the patio. I have had one SNP-1 from URC no longer be functional but that was a problem with one of the services, the music library still worked. Just outdated basically. No Bluesound pieces but very low numbers of them out there.

There are very few brands I can say that about! There are some that have very low failure rates. Anthem (1), Yamaha(2, excluding disc players) and Sony TVs (1, not their other products), JVC projectors (1) come to mind.

Pandora is terrible. There are plenty of other options for free genre music.

I would echo Bob's response. We are close to 50k (cost) in product a year. I believe we have had 2 or 3 fail due to lightning, 1 fail due to moisture (installed outside in MN year round), 1 at my home due to a bad solder joint, and for argument sake a couple more. Other than that, we have had a few with connecting issues but most were caused because of network changes or someone relocating a device without calling us. So I would say that we have had less than 6 total failures at the most that weren't environmental issues. That is 10 years of selling and installing a fair amount of product.

Then I think about the days of Denon with the NIC cards and HDMI boards, Bluebolt issues, Savant/RTI remotes, and so many other issues that I'm trying to suppress. It's why I defend Sonos as a CI product. To me, CI means "Pro" and pro to me means something that will last longer than consumer gear.

This is just such a hot take....Services are what our customers say they are....I have
had a Pandora account since 2005 and I have never seen anything that is as accurate or even close on music discovery.

Spot on with regard to discovery. I currently have a subscription to Pandora and Google Music, will probably change Google Music to Tidal soon. Pandora is *fantastic* because it helps me discover so much new music that I enjoy.

I've used or trialed Tidal, Spotify, Google Music, Deezer and more, and at least for me they are all worthless for music discovery. I don't even attempt to discover music on those services because their "suggestions" seem to be to randomly choose somethign in the same genre as a suggestion.

It's why I defend Sonos as a CI product. To me, CI means "Pro" and pro to me means something that will last longer than consumer gear.




A CI product that anyone can get at Best Buy, install on their own and even call tech support if they have a problem...?

Man, the bar for being a 'pro' just got a *lot* lower!

Having used Spotify, Tidal, Apple Music, and Amazon Unlimited...I agree with you all that the functionality of "I picked this artist, find me something that I'll probably like and play it next" is totally crap on those services compared to Pandora.

We use a few different streaming services around the house.  Pandora is by far the best to just set and leave alone during a party or something.  If we need a specific song it's obviously a different service.

If Pandora would just step up to a quality audio stream, they'd be perfect

We provide most Clients with one streaming service such as Spotify/Tidal, plus Pandora. When I go to Clients homes and they have music playing and I look at what's playing on the touchscreen, it's almost always Pandora.

They love it, and I think it makes people use their systems more. Not only because it manages to play things they like, but because it reduces friction. Instead of having to create libaries and playlists, which most people won't do, they can have a great collection with no effort.

And if anyone wants to lecture not to use it because of sound quality - please get real (rolls eyes). That's on par with guys who refuse to mount TV's over fireplaces because it's "not the right viewing angle". Give them Tidal and Pandora and see which one they use the most.