I don't mind devices that have "smarts" added (e.g. wireless audio can be convenience even if I have to have a wire for power) but I despise devices which don't check the "dumb" boxes before trying to be "smart". Sonos speakers are like you say, there are even plenty of Sonos models with line in but you still need to set them up in app. Getting smart devices without that kind of functionality is like getting a TV without an HDMI input - even if you don't think you'd need it day 1 you'll likely one day regret it.

Imagine living in a big house and having the music follow you from room to room, from one floor to another, playing from high def wireless speakers that you can place anywhere you want. I think that is a pretty neat idea.

I don't have a house or Sonos speakers, but I can see how some people would want that experience.

I have that experience. Like every other experience the novelty wears off and I find myself keeping the vibe to a room because it’s distracting; lizard brain stays connected to music and I forget why I went across the house.

In the end I use it so sparingly (social gatherings) owners of detached homes without shared walls, could save the money and time and just turn up the volume.

That said, as always, YMMV

Is there a way to set up Sonos so the music follows you from room to room?

100%.

I have the same experience - my home runs seven Logitech (formerly Slim Devices) “squeezebox” players from a home server with a ripped collection and options for Spotify. The networked players either have their own speaker, or are connected to amp/speakers. In practice almost all of our music plays through these devices. It’s great.

The only time we connect multiple players to sync up is at larger parties, like once a year. It’s just one button press to do it, so not using this capability isn’t that it’s too complex, it just turns out not to be that useful to us.

The main use case for multi zone audio is handled by the A/B/A+B speaker setting on one particular amp.

As you say, YMMV.

When I bought my house 13 years ago I asked the electrician to run speaker cable from the living room into the adjoining kitchen. I wired up two pairs of extremely competent car speakers in series (because 4ohms) in the kitchen ceiling, one over each corner of the dining table. I have two amps in the living room, one is an ancient 5.1ch Yamaha that runs a very decent set of speakers and sub, and a nice little Denon stereo amp that's hooked into the kitchen speakers. A single 7.1ch usb sound card runs both, and that's connected to a MeLe Quieter (tiny little N100 device attached to my TV). The entire setup is dirty cheap and let's me fill the downstairs of my home with glorious music, and it never fails. I can swap out any of the bits easily (in fact I replaced my main floorstanders with a lovely pair of DALI a year ago). I've never wanted to extend that upstairs. In the bedrooms, some really nice Edifier Bluetooth speakers are more than adequate, and in our offices we mainly use headphones (in my case I still use my old wired Senheisser HD700 because they're the most comfortable things ever)

I love my tech stuff, and I've got home assistant doing the lights, but it never once crossed my mind to mess with the sound system, except for occasional hifi upgrades. Eg next up: run a subwoofer cable from the stereo amp to the kitchen, but I'm in no rush.

This is a great setup. I’m approaching the age where I just want things that work and for no one to move my cheese

To be honest, that sounds great in a hotel. But a home, really.

Or, as you said, perhaps I don’t have a big enough house nor do I need to listen to music 24x7 or have it follow me.

Its called headphones

Also the killer feature is that you don't annoy everyone else in your household

Also apologies if my response was too blunt...

It could be a cool feature, it is just a lot if work to get setup and it would only work if you are the only one in the house

Or neighbourhood. I have neighbours with horror vacui: they just need noise 24x7 and their garden is no exception.

I really do not understand this feature. If I want to listen to music without headphone, I'm going to sit down in front of my stereo where sound is best.

"horror vacui" on wikipedia doesn't really seem to be turning up anything appropriate to explain what you're meaning?

“horror vacui” (Latin) - “dread of the void”

I suppose the neighbours are of the sort, like many seemingly, who cannot tolerate silence.

You might know it as "Nature abhors a vacuum". Originally it was a statement of Cartesian physics: the idea was that "action at a distance" was impossible, and since distant objects did clearly interact (through gravity and light), all of space has to be completely filled with particulate matter (assumed to be in vortex motion). From this and "cogito ergo sum" it was possible to build a model of physics which extended to the ethics of how you should treat your dog.

However here it is used as a simple figure of speech rather than literally: the neighbours don't like to lrave anything unfilled with sound.

Neat, but useless waste.

I wrote a home automation script that would use a camera as a motion detector and when we weren’t home would play a text to voice message on every Sonos speaker in the house if someone entered our apartment. Mostly for announced maintenance visits so they know that I know they’re there.

Being able to listen to the show on the tv while in the bathroom or shower is nice. Means we don’t have to pause shows if we don’t want to for breaks.

Having music playing across the whole home during dinner parties is a nice vibe.

A whole house alarm would probably be nice for families on the same schedule.

The concept of Sonos is really nice and it mostly works, but yeah the new app was rough. Not sure if I’ll buy anymore sonos gear. For a long time they were the only ones that had the tech required to stream to multiple devices in sync. I’m not sure what the other options are now

Any form of hacking products to be more useful is a win in my books! I can see the multi room play being a nice thing on the odd occasion. Perhaps if I had kids and had to move around the house a bunch more or maybe if it operated as a home system that could also do those additional things I may have had a more positive experience with it. But I maintain my original point that hardware tethered to some software service is basically a random financial-enshitification-quarter away from being bricked and that’s a shame for otherwise excellent hardware