Sonos
Sonos is the most iconic wireless multiroom system, and while it’s never topped our list for hi-fi sound, new S2 software and products may give it a new edge.
Sonos Port Sonos Move Sonos IKEA Symfonisk Sonos Amp Sonos Beam
Sonos has enjoyed amazing success since it launched its streaming multiroom-capable products back in 2004 — and well-deserved success, since its approach and innovations proved visionary in defining the wireless multiroom category years before any other company managed to react — and even when they did, their solutions tended to follow the blueprint set down by Sonos.
At first there were just the original versions of what are now the Port and the Amp, then called the ZonePlayer 80 and 100, streaming either into an existing hi-fi or with internal amps as a just-addspeakers solution. Looking back at our past review notes it’s remarkable to find that its first standalone speaker unit, the S5 (now the Play:5, shortly to be replaced by the new Five), got its first Sound+Image review in 2009, after which came the Play:3 and Play:1 (now One), and the Playbar, the first Sonos soundbar, with its Sub subwoofer. All these operated on their own mesh network rather than home Wi-Fi networks, mainly because when Sonos first launched, home networks were wildly unreliable for streaming, if a customer had one at all.
And there the hardware range stuck for a while. Sonos has never been one for yearly iterative updates of product, rather issuing firmware updates to keep them ticking along until one of the rare revisions arrives — and that’s an approach of which we wholeheartedly approve. But eventually, the mood turned against the ‘walled garden’ approach of Sonos, where its system was isolated within its own little world, with no Bluetooth, no high-res audio, everything working within the app that had replaced the early physical smart controller (though many users preferred that dedicated remote and when Sonos finally killed it off in 2018, it sparked a ‘Save the CR100’ campaign!).
But Sonos has changed, gradually breaking down the walls of its garden. Bluetooth has appeared, compatibility with Google Assistant, Alexa, and Roon, even Apple’s AirPlay 2. In the process the company has also got more jittery about consumer reactions (or in marketing parlance ‘responsive’): in January this year it announced that some of its earliest products would get no more firmware updates and would soon cease to be compatible with modern Sonos systems: despite offering ‘trade up’ deals, the pushback from early users, by definition the most longstanding of Sonos supporters, was deafening, and Sonos has since attempted a solution: inelegant (it will involves two separate apps) but at least welcome. And we are amused to note Sonos also seems to have internally banned the use of the words ‘legacy products’ to avoid infuriating any further those who are still using them.
Enter Sonos S2
That semi-redundancy of the oldest products came because this is another of those times when Sonos is about to undergo a significant change. As we go to press, we await
the launch of Sonos S2 (scheduled for June 8th, three days after this magazine leaves our hands). S2 is a complete update to the software side of the ecosystem, a new operating system which will (finally!) enable high-resolution audio streaming, among many other things. It will include more ‘personalisation’ features, including different family member accounts on the same system, and it will give users more options when grouping speakers into ‘zones’ around the house. Any compatible Sonos devices you have will be automatically updated to S2 when it becomes available on 8th June, and you’ll be prompted to download the new app for the phones, tablets and/or computers that you use to control your kit.
Sonos S2 is apparently necessary so that Sonos can introduce new products and features, increase bandwidth and improve useability. The new products include the Five (externally similar to the Play:5), and the Arc, a 114cm-wide eARC-carrying 11-driver Atmos-compatible 5.0.2 soundbar which will eventually replace the Playbar and Playbase, leaving a choice between the Arc and the Beam for TV audio. (Add the Sub to get 5.1.2 Atmos.)
Yet Sonos has managed to have S2 encompass a great many older models — impressively only those few models announced in January won’t be updateable to S2: that’s only all Zone Players, that CR200 controller, the Bridge, Connect (Gen 1), Connect:Amp (Gen 1) and Play:5 (Gen 1). Everything else will be calling for an update, while the new Arc, Five and Sub Gen 3 will come with S2 pre-installed. There’s also the new Sonos Radio software, along with fresh ‘sonic branding’ in the form of a three-second jingle by no lesser luminary than Philip Glass (outrageously lacking his trademark arpeggios).
So as we await the new world of S2, let’s round up some of the most recent Sonos deliveries, remembering that while it’s easy to fall under the spell of Sonos, the years since its launch have seen the release of a thousand wireless speaker docks, plus all these competing multiroom systems that directly challenge the Sonos incumbancy. It may now be a household word, but we long ago shifted our ecosystem preference to those that can directly encompass a full level of high fidelity which is denied to users of Sonos equipment alone. If your question in reading these articles is whether anything is better than Sonos, the answer is, of course, yes.
But can you resist its class-leading physical design and the inherent reliability of its service-spanning app? And will the new S2 software shift the balance once again? We’ll report back soon.