The company says you’ll be able to calibrate other Sonos speakers, like the Playbar, in the future.
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The Santa Barbara, California, company also said Tuesday that it is releasing a new Play:5 speaker that is bigger than the previous model, has touch controls that respond to swipes, and responds to being placed horizontally by widening the sweet spot where listeners can hear in stereo.
Sonos is starting to roll out an additional feature called TruePlay for new and existing speakers this fall that will help consumers to make the best out of the sound of their speakers, no matter the placement. There’s definitely some inspiration taken from the Play:3 and Play:1 but on the whole it’s a new look for Sonos – one I certainly approve of.
Created to fit the home now and for years to come, the aesthetic of the new SONOS PLAY:5 carves away complexity to focus on the simple essence of a speaker.
When it comes to good sound in your home, buying a high quality speaker is only half the battle.
There are some nice touches like smooth, unmarked gesture-controls for volume up/down on the top of the speaker.
Speaking of those controls, gone are the physical buttons that have been in the last few Sonos products.
It’s a statement that’s further reinforced when you consider the PLAY:5’s networking credentials.
The first thing you’ll notice about the new Sonos is the way it looks. I heard the results in Sonos’ controlled conditions, and even tried it for myself. The $499 speaker, Sonos says, is twice as powerful as its predecessor and took over two years of research and development. My rooms aren’t either. When paired with another Play:5, the dancing stereo effect upgraded that single word to an all-caps AWESOME.
In fact, more than a product, the Play:5 is a statement of intent. The Sonos logo quite cleverly looks correct in both orientations too thanks to the magic of palindromes.
Apart from sounding incredible, the Sonos speakers have a new party trick which will appeal to audiophiles.
You can also pair them up horizontally which will create a far wider stereo soundstage to really fill the room up. Perhaps I was looking for a miracle. Personally, I’ve found that I like to add one notch of Bass slider to my rooms after Trueplay and, to their credit, Sonos allows for that.
Sonos Trueplay requires an Apple device that runs on iOS 7 and above.
In the Sonos app, which is only compatible with iOS devices, users can go through the setup for Trueplay to map out the acoustic environment of a location using the microphone of the iPhone, iPod, or iPad.
Over the course of the test, the app figures out how the sound reflects off the furniture, windows, walls, and other objects, and adjusts the EQ accordingly for the best music playback.
New SONOS PLAY:5 – the flagship smart speaker with more of everything you love about Sonos The new SONOS PLAY:5 delivers a listening experience that is closer than ever to how every track was mastered in the studio. Calibrating the speaker with Trueplay, an optional process that takes around a minute or so, and replaying the track reined in the bass and the resulting audio was tighter and more precise. I was able to pick out the sort of subtle details that get lost when I’m listening on the two Play:3s I use in my home office. Simply place the speaker-any speaker from the company’s line-wherever you think it’s going to live in a room, and fire up the fine-tuning from the software’s settings. There wasn’t any real depth and a lot of the mid and trebles were getting lost. Zero plans since Sonos is a platform with a library of content sources from all over the world. The app senses where in the room that sound is obscured and compensates using a smart equalizer. Sitting atop all of them, however, is a company that’s been doing multi-room wireless audio for more than a decade – Sonos. So the solution for customers wanting this remains third-party add-ons. The soggy lightsabres of Trueplay could mean you never to listen to bad audio again. The short answer is that there has been talk in this space in the past, but there hasn’t been a compelling reason for both Apple and Sonos yet.
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Martin says there is something pretentious in saying people should not listen to music through basic headphones as they’re walking along but the better the quality of the sound, the more chance of an emotional experience. I was happy with the sound from my Sonos units before, now I’m ecstatic about it. Guitars sound warmer now, low end is full without being muddy; it’s just fantastic.
