OK, here's the final installment on the initial Sonos review, with more to come as events unfold in the future. I would like to experiment with wires, DACs, etc, but at least the transport system is stable and working well. I am a happy convert.
When I was having troubles with the Duet I called slim to try to figure out why it was so flakey. Top tier support engineer went through the motions, reset everything, reload, but no changes, got it working, but offered no permanent fix. I said what about upgrading the latest beta? They said no that won't help but the new gold release will improve it in a month or so.... It didn't help. Reading the new gold details, there is nothing in there about networking or dropping connections. I gave my Duet to Nick to "explore" mercilessly. If it is my problem at my house with my technical curse then he will figure it out. Nope, still flakey for him too, after 2 months of trying everything and despite different dedicated servers and nearly laboratory controlled testing. Nick (ik632) is a gentle soul, but when it comes to computers misbehaving he can be quite methodical and ruthless.
So I get the Sonos, works fine for about 2 weeks. Then ohmygodimgonnakillsomeone, it starts acting flakey too!
It froze a couple times, woke slowly from deep sleep, and dropped zones a couple times. I brush aside thoughts of a curse and suicide, and called my dealer. John at Black Sands answers email seemingly within 15 minutes night or day. He offered his experience with Sonos, some logical things to try, contact info at Sonos, and most importantly to someone as emotionally immature as me, reassurance that no matter what I would be forced to remain a loyal and happy Black sands customer. He stuck with me through the whole deal, curious about the cause and cure of this very rare Sonos burp.
I was hesitant to call Sonos tech support because I assumed based on experience with other consumer electronics support experiences that it would just be a big waste of time and I would have yet another enemy to reconcile myself at the Pearly gates by the end of it. I looked online for clues to my problem "frozen remote." A couple hits of threads on forums always included a post by a SOnos tech guy, prowling the forums looking for trouble. In a couple cases the same confident invitation, like "We REALLY wanna fix this, we really wanna know what is happening with your remote, please call tech support so we can make you happy.... blablabla." So I figured I would give it a try.
I called Sonos. The tech support guy was new. Uh-oh... Over the next few hours that kid did more research, had more patience and called
me back (even after it was fixed) more times than any other service I have ever received. He initially offered to RMA me a new remote. But apparently that offer was denied internally because higher tier support suggested things he hadn't tried that would fix it. so he called me back. By that time, the thing was a brick, not even functional enough to fix. While he had me on hold to ask for advice, it came alive for a second, and I was able to apply the patch that he had activated for my Sonos on his support server. By the time he came back, it had rebooted, started like lightning, worked fast and perfect. A month later it is now still running perfect in every way. He would not tell me what the patch does, but it is for the frozen remote problem, so they know what is wrong, apparently it is very rare, but they are prepared anyway. He called again a couple hours later to give me more advice about my 2.4GHz cordless phone. He citrixed into my PC to check network settings (all OK) and moved the wireless channel away from Sonos.
John also recommended upgrading my 16 year old phone to Dect 6 which I just got yesterday. With the old phone, music would pause whenever anyone talked on the cordless. Crutchfield hooked me up with scratch and dent Panny for $80, 2 handsets, message recorder, talking caller ID, etc. shweet
So, overall I have been thrilled with my Sonos experience, and once again my Black Sands experience. I highly recommend both. 2 weeks after the tech support instance with Sonos, John emails me this morning, "How's it working??" You just can't beat that.