Everyone has different tastes and/or expectations. I should be happy with the sound from the Echo considering I grew up in the 1960s listening to an old bakelite, vacuum tube, one speaker, mono AM radio. None of our local Austin stations even broadcast in stereo in those days. But the times they did change... From the first time I heard what was possible with a real stereo system onwards, I've gotten kind of picky on the sound quality. I don't expect my Echo to outperform my home stereo system, or even come close to sounding like it, but I do expect it to out perform the sound quality of my iPad Pro 9.7. The iPad Pro wins by a long shot, even though its sound quality is what I would call mediocre. Since the Echo was released, we have seen a lot of competition being released. If Amazon wants to compete, then they need to drastically improve the sound quality on the Echo Gen 2. But they might not give a poop. After all, look at the lackluster Fire tablets they are churning out and quite a few people are happy with them--probably because they have never had a top of the line tablet. I suspect Amazon could simply paint a large number "2" on the side of original Echos and sell them as Gen 2, and a lot of people would by them, but then the Echo would literally be a number 2 compared to the competition.