One of my sons when he and his family visite Christmas Day, brings with him a miserable SONOS sound bar, belonging to his wife's twin sister and brother in law.
A fairly common mishap has occurred. In the Christmas hubbub someone has broken off the the end of the Optical cable between the Sonos soundbar and the TV. The end is jammed in the TOSLINK socket and can not be removed. When this happens the TOSLINK socket has to be replaced. The problem is these sockets are active, and the conversion of photons to electrons takes place in the female end of TOSLINK connectors. So there are thousands of different ones.
Of course there is no service manual or even a parts list available. This is a basic issue among many, that is currently wrong with the consumer electronics industry.
So, I turn to the Internet. There is one YouTube video, where a UK tech finally gets this problem on one of these units sorted out. But not after finding a wrong part. I'm not sure how he got the right part, but if anyone is interested it is DLR 1160.
So, back to the Internet. The only supplier I can find is Alibaba, the giant Chinese parts supplier. There is one Chinese vender I find who has a packet of five for sale. However, I don't want him to empty my bank account when he gets my credentials.
So, today I go to the Mouser site which I do in these situations. I have tried Digikey with no luck.
Mouser have 2,300 different types listed,but no DLR 1160.
So, I phoned Mouser, as their staff are just wonderful professionals, polite knowledgeable and helpful in the extreme. So the guy confirms that this is not an item that Mouser stock or list. So he gets on his computer and checks his list of parts suppliers, and tells me that two have the part listed. So he told me that in 24 to 48 hours he will let me know if he can obtain a couple for me. If not that unit goes to the recycling center. Ours by the way caught fire four or five days ago.
The next issue is that this unit is going to be a total misery to effect this repair on, due to the cosmetic designers and not the engineers having the upper hand. At Sonos they really subscribe to the mantra that no screw head be visible.
Now this vile piece of excrement has to be totally dismantled to change this optical input port. The speaker panel, side control buttons, power supply, logic board, power supply , power amp board all have to be removed, before you can remove that input board. The only parts that don't have to be totally removed are the speakers off the baffle.
This is going to require prying off the Bessel around each side facing speaker to get to the screws hiding underneath. The screws holding on the input panet are hidden under decal label, which has to be carefully peeled off. The only screws easily accessible are two screws on the bottom, which they did not attempt to hide.
Anyone who thinks this useless piece of subterfuge will actually give you five channel sound as it purports to, is nuts. There is no sub out by the way.
So, any tech is going to have to charge $400 to $500 for this job. Then the customer will go and tell all their friends a relatives what a money grubbing bastard he is!
All this is going to be a few hours of patient work. The easiest part will be replacing the connector on the board.
It is situations and design like this, that drives the "waste makers", causing millions of tons of electronic parts pollution yearly. I think there does need to be legislation on this issue. For a starters, an item should not be allowed to me put on the market, before a full parts and service manual is available. Parts should be available for 10 years minimum and kept readily available and large fines levied for infractions. Then I think we could see the return of the skilled service techs who could earn a good honest living while providing a valuable service.
