Google Found To Have Violated Sonos Patents, Blocking Import of Google Devices (xda-developers.com) 100
An anonymous reader quotes a report from XDA Developers: In January of 2020, Sonos filed two lawsuits against Google, claiming that the latter stole its multiroom speaker technology and infringed on 100 patents. In September, Sonos then sued Google alleging that the company's entire line of Chromecast and Nest products violated five of Sonos' wireless audio patents. A judge (preliminarily) ruled in favor of Sonos. Now it's gone from bad to worse for Google, as the preliminary findings have been finalized by the U.S. International Trade Commission. As a result, Google is not allowed to import any products that violate patents owned by Sonos, which Sonos argues includes Google Pixel phones and computers, Chromecasts, and Google Home/Nest speakers.
These products produced by Google are often made outside of the United States and imported, hence why this is a big deal for Google. In the ruling (PDF) (via The New York Times), Google was also served a cease & desist in order to stop violating Sonos' patents. It has been theorized that as a result of the lawsuit, Google had removed Cast volume controls in Android 12, though it was recently added back with the January 2022 security patch. Sonos has previously said that it had proposed a licensing deal to Google for patents the company was making use of, but that neither company was able to reach an agreement. [...] There are still two more lawsuits pending against Google filed by Sonos, meaning that it's unlikely this is the last we've heard of this spat.
These products produced by Google are often made outside of the United States and imported, hence why this is a big deal for Google. In the ruling (PDF) (via The New York Times), Google was also served a cease & desist in order to stop violating Sonos' patents. It has been theorized that as a result of the lawsuit, Google had removed Cast volume controls in Android 12, though it was recently added back with the January 2022 security patch. Sonos has previously said that it had proposed a licensing deal to Google for patents the company was making use of, but that neither company was able to reach an agreement. [...] There are still two more lawsuits pending against Google filed by Sonos, meaning that it's unlikely this is the last we've heard of this spat.
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Sonos is historic as the company that started the "home invisible jukebox" industry... charging thousands of dollars a month for on-demand music service over dedicated lines.
George Soros nicely started lowering the prices and switching over to cheaper internet and digital technology, allowing today's Apple Music, iHeartRadio, and Amazon Music to charge a reasonable price to the masses without a usury problem.
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Troll+Informative? I would've expected this comment to get Funny+Overrated.
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ironic.
i find myself happily thinking of the quote.
if a product is in a harbor waiting to be unloaded.
it is not made in america
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The only redeeming thing about Sonos is that they're too small to do any real damage. Otherwise, they'd be one of the worst tech companies, with their unreliable products, their love for planned obsolescence, their infernal urge to patent every random thing, and their litigious nature. The sooner they die or are bought out, the better off we all are.
Planned obsolescence? Sonos is by far the best company around for long time software support... they're making even Apple look bad. They launched their first product in 2005, and until 2020 (15 years!) this was supported by their main software version. Then they split the products into older and newer, with only the newer supporting their S2 software. S1 still works, and gets fixes. Looking at the total change of the music landscape in those years, that's incredible.
Could the S1 + S2 split have been done be
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Pure uninformed groupthink. More litigious than Apple? More planned obsolescence than Apple? More unreliable than Apple? Please, fool, you've never had the slightest experience with Sonos.
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Nobody will be sad when these parasites go out of business.
I'm boycotting Sonos forever, and the rest of the country is too, albeit because they simply haven't considered overpaying for shitty sonos audio quality.
Sonos is hardly a patent troll or parasite, but an early developer of wireless multiroom audio as we know it today: They released their first product for doing this in 2005. They've pivoted from streaming your local music library (although it still can) to streaming since then.
I'm sure they feel a large pressure from companies like Google and Amazon, who sell products that are now capable of doing some of the same things - but who don't care about earning money on the devices, as it's just a gateway for the
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Re:Sonos patented controlling volume from phone? (Score:4, Informative)
I don't doubt that Sonos has made significant contributions to multiroom audio technology, but if they are anything like any other company, they probably have a lot of bullshit patents in their portfolio as well. A volume control was mentioned; might they have a patent on controlling volume in multiple rooms at once, or similar things "obvious to a person skilled in the art"? Being a patent troll is not about your contribution or lack of it to the field, but about the kind of patents you are trying to enforce.
The patent [google.com] is a bit more complicated than just a volume control - it's a volume control that works for groups and/or individual units within the group, as well as modifying the group. If Google wants to avoid infringing this, I think they could just replace that volume control with individual ones. The patent expires in two years, so after that Google can copy that approach again.
While I'm in general opposed to software patents, I don't think this one is as obvious as a lot of others or just "on the network". It was something I hadnt seen before I used Sonos in 2015. Feeling obvious after having used it isn't the best way to determine obviousness.
Re: Sonos patented controlling volume from phone? (Score:1)
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Well, Slim Devices had a server and dedicated audio steaming devices devices well before 2005 that had multi-room play and volume control. It was acquired by Logitech and then ruined.
Did it? I had a couple of Squeezeboxes, but it's a long time ago - and also not in a scenario where group playing was much of a thing. Also, how did it work? I'm having a hard time seeing that the patent is the what ("control multiple devices") but rather in the how.
Squeezebox isn't the only thing Logitech has ruined - Harmony too. Wonderful products, that are no longer available.
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"Being a patent troll is not about your contribution or lack of it to the field, but about the kind of patents you are trying to enforce."
Absolutely wrong, being a patent troll is about ONLY enforcing patents and having no other business. It is entirely about lack of contribution "to the field".
The most important patent in all the PC world was the "gate A20" patent, yet the company that enforced it did so heavily but was never called a "patent troll". Why? They were Compaq, they made enormous "contributi
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I'm sure they feel a large pressure from companies like Google and Amazon, who sell products that are now capable of doing some of the same things - but who don't care about earning money on the devices, as it's just a gateway for their main business products.
Boo fucking hoo.
I used wifi in the very early 2000's to stream music to different rooms using headless Linux clients clients + remote control ( remote X / remote desktop on a central controller ), and SMB. Should I be pissed that IOT things can do the job easier now too? Controlling fucking volume and streaming content over wifi / ethernet isn't novel. At all. Even controlling groups isn't novel, I had scripts that could adjust volume of Xine / XMSS on different machines way back in the day.
Trying to say "
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I'm sure they feel a large pressure from companies like Google and Amazon, who sell products that are now capable of doing some of the same things - but who don't care about earning money on the devices, as it's just a gateway for their main business products.
Boo fucking hoo.
I used wifi in the very early 2000's to stream music to different rooms using headless Linux clients clients + remote control ( remote X / remote desktop on a central controller ), and SMB. Should I be pissed that IOT things can do the job easier now too? Controlling fucking volume and streaming content over wifi / ethernet isn't novel. At all. Even controlling groups isn't novel, I had scripts that could adjust volume of Xine / XMSS on different machines way back in the day.
Trying to say "we thought of this" to something so stupidly simple is the fucking definition of a damn patent troll. And no, putting the headless computer IN the speaker isn't novel either...
I think it's the "how", not the "what" that is patented. Google seems to be in the process of releasing software updates that will make the software slightly less userfriendly [arstechnica.com], and avoid the patents.
As for patent troll - that definition doesn't cover innovators in a field trying to protect what they have built, but rather companies that obtains the rights to one or more patents in order to profit by means of licensing or litigation, rather than by producing its own goods or services (defintion from Oxford
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I always love it when google employees troll here at Slashdot.
But you can bet that they'll be the first ones screaming whenever someone tries to steal from them!
Re: Sonos patented controlling volume from phone? (Score:2)
Yeah. They whine and moan that VP9 has nearly zero industry traction compared to h.264 -- and the traction that exists is a Google Property (YouTube).
Then when the industry decided to move towards AV1, they complain that anybody planning on supporting AV1 should suddenly use VP9 and VP8 too...
Or Claiming that Google AMP is an industry standard (that happens to be almost entirely controlled by Google), and they extorted publishers into adopting it by burying non-amp content ... and only stopped extorting pu
Fuck Sonos (Score:2, Troll)
Whereas Google has its fair share of dead products and forced migrations, none of them were devices customers purchased.
Neither have they ever flashed devices rendering them useless to require users to purchase new hardware.
https://gizmodo.com/sonos-is-o... [gizmodo.com]
Re:Fuck Sonos (Score:5, Informative)
Whereas Google has its fair share of dead products and forced migrations, none of them were devices customers purchased.
Neither have they ever flashed devices rendering them useless to require users to purchase new hardware.
https://gizmodo.com/sonos-is-o... [gizmodo.com]
The Google OnHub Router begs to differ.
Re:Fuck Sonos (Score:5, Informative)
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My sonos system I purchased in 2004 still works just fine, it just doesn't receive updates which doesn't bother me.
They launched their first product in 2005. They're still impressive for their software support, though - I don't know of any company that's comparable. Which is one of the reasons I like them and buy their products.
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You can thank the heavy customer backlash at Sonos' fucked up policy for that, not the kindness of the company. We actively covered on Slashdot their process which bricked old devices destining them for landfill, and their subsequent backtracking.
And while not receiving updates doesn't bother you, it may if the services your smart product depends on changes. E.g. API changes in Spotify or other such services. And while I haven't experienced in streaming audio yet there are plenty of other modern digital ser
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"We actively covered on Slashdot their process which bricked old devices destining them for landfill, and their subsequent backtracking."
What a grossly dishonest comment. First, who is this "we"? And what is this "actively covering"? Are you suggesting that the posters on /. are journalists? LOL
Also, Sonos was "bricking" devices ALREADY destined for "landfill", so your entire representation of this issue is disingenuous. The "subsequent backtracking" was merely that Sonos would not actively disable the
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What a grossly dishonest comment. First, who is this "we"? And what is this "actively covering"? Are you suggesting that the posters on /. are journalists? LOL
We: The posters and readers on Slashdot ... honestly with that first line I'm not going to read the rest of your comment. I'm not sure if you're out for a fight or just haven't taken your autism meds but do it by yourself.
Actively covering: Someone posted the story along with some edits, commenters provided more background, and an ensuing discussion covering multiple stories over several months was quite active.
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Whereas Google has its fair share of dead products and forced migrations, none of them were devices customers purchased.
Neither have they ever flashed devices rendering them useless to require users to purchase new hardware.
https://gizmodo.com/sonos-is-o... [gizmodo.com]
You've got your description of Sonos backwards here - what they did was basically a hardware trade-in: Trade in an old Sonos device, get 30% off a new Sonos device
However, since Sonos doesn't have a lot of physical presence this was implemented as "you get a 30% discount on a new device, if you deliver it to recycling" - and it would then brick after a 30 day (or whatever it was) grace period. This was initiated and requested by the person buying a new replacement device.
Given how people talk about this, So
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Says the AC anonymously sucking Google dick.
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you are all over this article repeatedly sucking sonos dick - how much did they pay you?
I've been a happy customer for 7 years, and thus followed the various controversies first hand. That's more than most here, so I thought I'd contribute. Obviously not paid at all.
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Neither have they ever flashed devices rendering them useless to require users to purchase new hardware.
Sonos only "Flashes" their devices if the Customer Agrees in order to receive a discount on an Upgrade - It is equivalent to being required to Trade in your old Product to get the new product at a lower price, But instead of having to Ship the old one.. A process is provided for ensuring the Old one is rendered Non-Functional and can't be used again or resold as a working device.
This is nuts (Score:5, Informative)
We an only hope this will motivate google to help push patent law back in a more sane direction - but more likley they will just increase their own portfolio to counter-sue.
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The patent claims encompass playing audio on two or more systems in synchronized fashion connected over a LAN, and claim priority back to 2003.
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The patent claims encompass playing audio on two or more systems in synchronized fashion connected over a LAN, and claim priority back to 2003.
In other words, "doing what has already been done for decades on the internet!" which seems about right for 2003.
2003? (Score:2)
That's good news then. Patents are good for 20 years so it should be about to expire.
Re:This is nuts (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem with patents is extremely obvious. There are so many being 'allowed' that are just descriptions of shit that's blindingly obvious, and should never be 'owned' by any one person/company/whatever.
And that's ignoring all the garbage patents that are "On the Internet" or "With a Computer".
The concept of patents is great. The implementation of the registration is horrendously bad.
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Unfortunately one of the reasons for that is a severe lack of funding, leading to a severe lack of knowledge about, well, anything..
No people with knowledge about specific areas being employed means that those areas need to be handles by people that are, mostly, clueless about them.
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Complete bullshit. There is neither a "severe lack of funding" nor a "severe lack of knowledge about...anything". More ignorant comments from the peanut gallery.
The patent office is a for-profit government function. Examiners are specialized and knowledgable. No one can know everything, though, the tech world is effectively unlimited in size. The office is a bureaucracy, though, and suffers the usual maladies.
"No people with knowledge about specific areas being employed means that those areas need to b
Re: This is nuts (Score:2)
Obviousness is inherently a subjective expert opinion with zero room for legal interpretation. Why is something obvious? Cause. Everything else is just construction after the fact at best or misleading at worst.
Patent lawyers and patent circuit judges are repulsed by this fact, thus they are forever trying to rape the English language and trying to redefine Obviousness as prior art with as an increasing multitude of arcane rules to disguise that fact. The US Supreme Court has as of yet not cooperated, but i
Re: This is nuts (Score:1)
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Yes, absolutely. Sonos was pioneering, this would not realistically be in question. The criticism here is nothing more than knee-jerk ignoramuses of which /. is famous.
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Sure seems to me that anyone who "taught patent law" would not make a comment like this. This post tells me you are a fraud.
Everyone associated with the patent system fully understands how "non-obviousness" is interpreted, this has been true for decades.
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The parent said "I WAS taught the basics of patent law" - not that he taught it. Passive voice.
Re:This is nuts (Score:5, Informative)
Welcome to the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries.
This has always been the case. The Singer sewing machine company was formed to buy up patents, because it was literally impossible to make a sewing machine - anything you did was covered by 2 or more patents because multiple people patented the same or similar things. It was impossible to build a sewing machine that wouldn't violate some patent held by someone.
Singer was formed and they cornered the sewing machine market because they literally bought up every sewing machine patent out there, thus being the only company able to make and sell the highly valued and highly desired machines.
Then we have automobiles where the same thing happened again. Patents on engines and other things.
It's been broken for centuries. There's nothing new really.
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Simply put, anyone who dares to make modern AI or semantic search software available as a local download (or
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Welcome to the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries.
This has always been the case. The Singer sewing machine company was formed to buy up patents, because it was literally impossible to make a sewing machine - anything you did was covered by 2 or more patents because multiple people patented the same or similar things. It was impossible to build a sewing machine that wouldn't violate some patent held by someone.
Singer was formed and they cornered the sewing machine market because they literally bought up every sewing machine patent out there, thus being the only company able to make and sell the highly valued and highly desired machines.
Then we have automobiles where the same thing happened again. Patents on engines and other things.
It's been broken for centuries. There's nothing new really.
I wonder if some form of mandatory licensing scheme could un-break the patent system? I don't know how you'd get fair valuation, maybe give 6 months to negotiate a deal followed by binding arbitration?
It's not a great answer, but it's hard to be more broken than it is now and mandatory licensing would at least fix the problem where products are virtually unbuildable because of the patents.
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At least this tactic only works for 20 years, i.e. the lifetime of a patent. That's way better than copyright law that keeps getting extended.
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The concept of patents is great.
No it's not.
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Right, the one who posted that has no idea what the "concept of patents" even is.
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"We an only hope this will motivate google to help push patent law back in a more sane direction..."
Google is one of the largest beneficiaries of the patent system. If anything, it would motivate them in the opposite direction (as if they needed more motivation).
So... can the rest of us have the chips? (Score:2)
Not to be callous to Google... but, well, if Google won't be needing those chips for a while, can that free up supplies for other things?
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I was going to write a trolly post about my GTX 980ti AC OC whatever letters after it's name, which I got for 80 pounds 2 years ago, and gloat a bit.
I felt bad so I wrote this instead, I'm sorry about the damn GPU shortage, all the games don't run on anything less than this and it's faster than the 1650 2650 etc. It's awful, and it's partially because of this stupid Bitcoin fad which will come to nothing except a digital prison and track and trace system after making a few people very rich. Oh well.
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good luck with doing anything successfully and some fuck not crawling out from under the bridge waving a piece of paper claiming they invented electricity
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I love that people call Google a monopoly when they make no hardware, have the most competitive manufacturing market of any phone, you can install apps straight from a website if you wish, you can use any web browser you want, you can even use most of their OS to make your own.
Yet Apple continues to get a free pass on all of these things by saying they "compete" with Google. That's like how cable companies compete, sure they both have offerings in your state but only one or the other serves your county.
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"I love that people call Google a monopoly when they make no hardware..."
It's cute that you think that's the measure.
"have the most competitive manufacturing market of any phone"
A phone is not hardware?
"...you can install apps straight from a website if you wish, you can use any web browser you want, you can even use most of their OS to make your own."
You should educate yourself on what a monopoly is.
"Yet Apple continues to get a free pass on all of these things by saying they "compete" with Google."
Apple d
Make me want to throw my sonos in the trash (Score:2)
I can see it being fair if sonos was blocking speakers, but going after TV devices? C'mon. Seems like an overreach of the patent system to extend it across all devices.
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If you even have a Sonos system you won't be throwing it in the trash, much less because of your superficial understanding of patents. LOL whiner
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Good job on the ad hominem
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I love how, in one breath, you have to carefully buy a specific phone in the Android ecosystem to avoid getting unremovable crapware on your phone, and at the same time call Apple garbage. Seems like you have accurately identified the actual garbage platform all by yourself. I switched in 2014, after being fed up with Android's endless bugs and glitches, and it's the best decision I've ever made technology-wise, aside from switching my desktop from Windows to Linunx.
So now instead of 'on a computer' / 'on a network' (Score:4, Funny)
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Prior Art (Score:3, Informative)
The easiest way to invalidate patents is by exposing prior art. These patents claim priority back to 2003-07-28 when Sonos filed Provisional Patent 60/490768. You can read the patent specification from USPTO public PAIR: https://portal.uspto.gov/pair/... [uspto.gov] (enter 60/490768)
Show prior to 2003-07-28, the ALSA audio system (release 0.9.6 or earlier) or some other open source software plays audio files on two systems synchronized with NTP, and Sonos's patent lawsuit vanishes in a cloud of greasy black smoke.
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That's the theory. In practice, judges tend to give tremendous deference to the patent office, assuming that they would not have granted the patent if it was not a novel innovation. Meanwhile, the patent office seems to act like it's not a problem if they grant a dubious patent since the courts will sort it out. Obviousness and prior art may win out in the end but that can be after a decade or more of court battles
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It's not so much that, but rather that it seems the patent office primarily looks at existing patents in their search for prior art.
True, but the courts often act like the patent office used all due diligence.
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Show prior to 2003-07-28, the ALSA audio system (release 0.9.6 or earlier) or some other open source software plays audio files on two systems synchronized with NTP, and Sonos's patent lawsuit vanishes in a cloud of greasy black smoke.
No it doesn't. Patents live and die on specifics. Your claim has already failed on your first example because you're using centralised NTP for time synchronisation whereas Sonos generates time synchronisation signals from any device dynamically designated as the master.
The patent isn't on the outcome, it's on the method.
On the up side I'm sure Google can sidestep this somehow.
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More specifically, every claim being asserted against you needs to be invalidated (unless you can argue that you don't infringe). Claiming that some old open source project exists is meaningless, you must form a credible argument that the invention, i.e. each claim, is not new or is obvious given a combination of known technologies PLUS you have to convince and judge/jury of this. No company wants to make technical arguments in front of a jury of unqualified laymen.
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Yes, details matter. If that's the case, then Google can simply use NTP. Problem solved.
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If that's the case, then Google can simply use NTP. Problem solved.
Except they can't. There's more to playing music in sync than just NTP. You need real time synchronisation. If you tell two computers with different processors and storage to start playing the same file at exactly 12:00:00.000 they will not start in sync. They may start in sync though if you have an RTOS.
This may not sound like a problem, but if you've ever had sound slightly out of sync from two sources you'd know it produces weird phasing effects that can really mess with your mind.
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No it doesn't. Patents live and die on specifics. Your claim has already failed on your first example because you're using centralised NTP for time synchronisation whereas Sonos generates time synchronisation signals from any device dynamically designated as the master.
You mean I can't set up NTPD on a designated device to act as the pool for the rest of my network? Changing NTP clients / daemons through BASH / SSH is stupid easy after all.
Damn it, guess it's more of that computer magic stuff keeping even my airgapped network times synced together ( not caring about real world times as long as the network is in sync) then.
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Of course you can. You can do what you want. Patents don't affect hobbyists.
The question the OP posed was did someone do something like that for the specific purposes of *audio* synchronisation before the patent was filed by Sonos which can count as prior art. The answer there is likely no, Google have well paid lawyers, they undoubtedly looked. Key word there is "prior", though I guess when we find a patent for a time machine we can retroactively generate as much prior art as we want.
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If only Google had thought of that!
UNO reverse card? (Score:4, Insightful)
How does Google not have lots of patents that Sonos are "violating", to counter with? I thought that reversing patent claims with patents of your own was one of the major purposes of patent portfolios.
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There is no such thing as "reversing patent claims".
The value of patent portfolios is that you can assert to your opponent that you also have patents that they infringe. This may generate a motivation to cross-license.
In this case, Google is huge relative to Sonos, so one Sonos patent is potentially worth vastly more than many Google ones. Google may well have patents that Sonos infringes, but when you play the game of adding up monetary damages of all violations across all products, Google loses "bigly".
Patents only feed lawyers (Score:3)
We don't need patents. At all.
Where they exist to encourage innovation they instead encourage rent seeking and other shitty behavior. These things are great for lawyers but are all a net drain on innovation, diverting capital and energy and resources away from that.
We all suffer as a result.
* http://www.dklevine.com/genera... [dklevine.com]
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We don't need patents. At all.
I'd like to disagree. And, actually, I do disagree in principle. The theory behind patents makes sense. But in practice, I think the best test of whether the patent system is encouraging innovation is whether inventors use the patent database as a resource when trying to find solutions to problems. If patents are working to promote the spread of useful ideas, people should be using them as a resource, happy to find a patent that addresses their need and pay the licensing fees, rather than slog through the p
SONOS .vs. GOOG (Score:2)
Do no evil crossed Sonos’ patent zone. AAPL killed Sonos first product by patent. SONOS are built on patents accordingly. At least Sonos has a defensible business where AAPL had no recourse when GOOG copied the iPhone, phone OS and business plan after sitting on Apple’s board learning the business.
Patents... (Score:2)
And no, most people don't download OS images from the internet and "pave over" the OS that their computer came with. Also, mainstream relevance for OSes matters because otherwise you'll get things like ActiveX on webpages and proprietary formats for documents, audio and video (the FOSS community i
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"In plain English, Software patents suck..."
It is plain that you are claiming that, but you are providing nothing to support that claim.
"...but ignoring the problem like Richard Stallman proposes won't make the problem go away..."
You are misunderstanding what this advice is. There is no suggestion that "ignoring the problem" will "make the problem go away".
Either patents suck or they don't, there is nothing about implementing an invention using "software" that makes it suck more. "Software" patents don't
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In the absence of that, the FOSS community should identify remedies and methods to apply them systematically in countries like the US. If they can come up with concepts such as copyleft and the GPL, they can come up with... something. Pretending to not acknowledge software patents like Richard Stallman proposes is a bad strategy for the reasons I outlined above.
You'd need both, yes? (Score:2)
"...neither company was able to reach an agreement."
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"Do you know where most research starts? At a patent search."
Citation needed.
You are obviously knowledgable in this area and I agree with most everything you are posting, but "most research" does not start with a patent search. I wonder if any does. The original purpose of patents is what you say, but that doesn't mean that patents effectively serve that function today.
Take quantum computing for example. Do you think that quantum computing researchers are starting with patent searches? That's hysterical
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Do you know where most research starts? At a patent search.
Bullshit.
At least in the software and consumer electronics spaces, not only does approximately no research or development start with a patent search, but corporate attorneys actively instruct researchers and engineers never to read patents or search the patent database, to avoid triggering treble damages in the case that some patent has been inadvertently infringed.
What you describe is the theory of how patents should work, and I agree that the theory makes a lot of sense. But the practice is entirely d
Check Slimdevices/Logitech (Score:3)
A company called Slimdevices marketed the SliMP3/Squeezebox devices, basically multiroom networked audio devices. The company was later bought by Logitech which ran the product to the ground.
Anyway, if I remember correctly they predated the Sonos products and they must have prior art on most of these patents.
I always considered Sonos a bunch of copycats, but there's nothing worse than a copy cat patent troll. I hope Google wins this.
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Slim Devices was founded in 2000 if I recall correctly. They put out their first network-based multi-room audio player product, the SliMP3, in 2001. https://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/SLIMP3 [slimdevices.com]
Their products were multi-room audio playback devices from the start. The first ones were designed to attach to amplifiers and stereo receivers much like many other audio source devices at the time (tuners, cassette tape players, turntables, and CD players). Later products included built-in amplifiers and speak
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I'm a O.G. squeezebox user myself. I got my first SliMP3 in 2002 just when they added the back cover. I still have a bunch of these devices in my house, but unfortunately they seem to be dying of old age one by one. I really must look into one of the Pi-based alternatives.
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You have the same one that I do, then (I think).
The Slim Devices forums (owned/operated by Logitech) https://forums.slimdevices.com/ [slimdevices.com] have active discussions about keeping the old stuff going, and the new stuff such as Raspberry Pi-based players. The simplest Raspberry Pi-based install that I'm aware of is the PiCore Player: https://www.picoreplayer.org/ [picoreplayer.org]. It uses TinyCore Linux and is packaged with the SqueezeLite software player and the JiveLite software (so that you can have Squeezebox Touch display/con
Re: (Score:2)
Wonderful info for me to catch up. Thanks a lot! Sounds like that DAC32 product would be a good drop in replacement for my aplication. I think I'm going to start by ordering one and see how it goes.
I'm not too fond of Raspberry based solutions, due to stability problems so I'm really happy that there's an esp32 based solution that should be fix that. The Bluetooth support is great too.
It's good to see that the forum is still very much alive.
Google learns closed source sucks (Score:1)
Switch to open source streaming Google.
Sonos are arseholes (Score:2)