I feel like it's just in an unfortunate valley of being slightly too techy, not quite old fashioned enough (e.g. if its that bad I'd add a backup radio), and to

I feel like it's just in an unfortunate valley of being slightly too techy, not quite old fashioned enough (e.g. if its that bad I'd add a backup radio), and too expensive (the most prolific user of Sonos products I've met bought probably 15 of them and would've had no qualms spending hundreds on the one that just outputs a signal with no speaker) for there to be much pressure to get it right architecturally.