Sonos Empowered

“ALL GOOD THINGS,” goes the proverb, “must come to an end.” As if to prove the veracity of that old saying, Sonos announced in early 2018 that the company was pulling the plug on a piece of gear that’s been in its lineup for so long that most Sonos employees probably thought it was (metaphorically speaking) part of the building. The doleful demise of the Sonos Connect:Amp is even more lamentable considering that it—after a few small tweaks (mostly involving amplification) and a couple of name changes—is essentially a cloned design of the first product Sonos shipped to customers back in 2005: the ZP100. Although the Connect:Amp wasn’t the first wireless streaming audio amp, it was on the cutting edge of the paradigm shift in the way we “consume” (I hate that term) music.

WHAT DEFUNCT?

Why the sudden decision to dump the Connect:Amp? For one, it wasn’t sudden. For two, it’s because consumer preferences and the industry itself are evolving. Generally speaking, many Sonos customers, especially the ones who are install-it-themselvers, have gravitated to the company’s self-contained wireless speaker systems, such as the Play:1, Play:5, and Beam. On the other hand, custom integrators were starting to use the Connect:Amp in a variety of interesting and creative ways—some of which even took the folks