Note the side-firing tweeters on the new Sonos Play:5. There wasn’t an old-school Play:5 in the room for me to compare it to, but it certainly looked a whole lot beefier than the original as I remember it. The speaker will be available in two finishes: matte black; and matte white. The front face of the PLAY:5 may look solid, but is actually a grill punched with over 60,000 holes to ensure it’s acoustically neutral.
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“Your music experience should fit your life, not get in the way of it. It should grow with you and stay fresh and current”. Kaul said everything about the new Play:5 is different. Smart to its core, its dipole array delivers an incredibly wide soundstage. I was skeptical going into this: I fully expected it to be some sort of minor EQ tweak that would brighten up a speaker or partially clean up a muddied low-end.
And at $749 this product delivers excellent value for money. When paired with another Play:5, the dancing stereo effect upgraded that single word to an all-caps AWESOME. If you have two PLAY speakers hooked up as a stereo pair they’ll be analyzed collectively; otherwise, each speaker – even if typically grouped – is assessed on its own.
Kaul also told me that Sonos is replacing the buttons on all of its speakers with a touch-sensitive badge.
The speaker itself has new touch controls that enable you to play, pause, adjust volume and change the track.
The first thing you’ll notice about the new Sonos is the way it looks.
It’s a statement that’s further reinforced when you consider the PLAY:5’s networking credentials. But Fink explained that even high-resolution audio only needs an 802.11n connection.
That’s apparently because metal was interfering with Wi-Fi performance.
This “desire for audio perfection”, as Sonos puts it, may sound like a lofty goal, but the reality is much more down to earth. Trueplay, at present, will unfortunately only work with iPhones, iPads and iPods. “But it should also be simple to achieve”.
There’s also a software enhancement rolling out onto all the Play speakers. Trueplay is its name.
Johansen says the reason it took Sonos so long to launch an app like Trueplay is that the company spent eons “getting the experience right”, so that people like me could do it without crying. It’s always connected to your home’s wifi network, and as you move in and out of wanting to listen to music, you can easily turn it on and off using your phone, tablet, computer, and yes, even simple hardware controls. The resulting sound? Well, let’s say it’s sub-optimal. It uses the microphone and other sensors on your iPhone or iPad (no Android support yet) to identify the acoustics of a room.
The speaker(s) in a room play a laser-like test tone as you sweep the room with your device in areas where you’re likely to be listening to music. Sonos’ least-expensive speaker, the Play:1, was used for the demo, and it was placed on a countertop and shoved all the way into a corner-a worst-case scenario for speaker placement. While a living room would typical contain surfaces like rugs and curtains that absorb certain frequencies, the tiles in a bathroom reflects them, changing how the music sounds.
As part of the updated app setup process the user has to do what Sonos’s internal technicians have dubbed “the room dance”. You don’t need fancy mics or acoustical gear, you just need a couple of hands and a little bit of mobility to wave your iPhone or iPad up and down, around the room, wherever a guest might be listening (watch the CE Pro video below). MacFarlane was quite candid here, admitting that while Sonos will be well positioned on streaming music services once Apple Music is ready, it has a huge opportunity to improve the experience for podcast fans… but not without pointing out that you technically can access podcast episodes from services on Sonos. Or maybe its ears. Sitting atop all of them, however, is a company that’s been doing multi-room wireless audio for more than a decade – Sonos.
Furthermore, not all mobile devices will support Trueplay at launch.
Android devices vary too much from device to device that Sonos just didn’t want to take the chance. This is because of the standard hardware inside, so Sonos knows how each microphone performs.
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The other big announcement, and one that will benefit all Sonos owners and not just those looking to pick up new speakers, is the unveiling of Trueplay. Fink confirmed that an Android version of the feature is in development, and “will be released when its ready”. Trueplay is also coming later this year with the new Sonos Play:5 as well as the now discontinued Play:5 which benefits from the new tuning feature. We’ll have a full review available soon.
