Sonos goes back to its hi-fi roots with the new Amp
FOR Punchy, engaging sound; broad soundstage; great for TV AGAINST No hi-res; slight lack of subtlety to the sound
Having focused on wireless speakers for the past few years, Sonos has returned to its roots with its latest product: the Amp. Like the Zoneplayer 100 and Connect:amp before it, the Amp is designed to offer all Sonos’s streaming smarts in a unit to which you can add any hi-fi speakers.
In fact, the Sonos Amp goes further, offering a number of features from the Sonos Beam, making it surprisingly well suited to movie as well as music use.
Compact powerhouse
Although it offers more muscle (125W in place of 55W), the Amp is slightly smaller than the Connect:amp. It’s a shorter, deeper, wider device, making it better suited to placement in a hi-fi rack. It’s also stackable: Amps can be placed on top of one another, with speaker cables running to various rooms in the house.
Even by Sonos’s standards, this is an understated device. Available only in black, it has just three touch-sensitive ‘buttons’ on the front: one for play/pause and two that change use with context but are mainly for altering the volume.
Around the back of the Amp you’ll find all the same connections as on the Connect:amp – two pairs of speaker terminals, a subwoofer output, two ethernet sockets and a stereo analogue input. But there’s one important addition: an HDMI socket. That gives the Amp all the Tv-partnering features of the Sonos Beam, including automatic switching to TV audio when required and volume control via your TV’S remote.
Two Sonos speakers (such as Ones) can be used as surround channels with the Amp, or you can instead add a second Amp connected to any two extra speakers you like to create a 4.0 system – or even a 4.1 if you add a wired subwoofer or the wireless Sonos Sub.
There’s no way to create a 5.1 system, though, as there’s no output for a centre channel. Sonos says that isn't an issue as it creates a phantom centre channel through careful, precise processing.
Full-flowing streams
Of course, the Amp also has all the music-streaming skills of every other Sonos device, so gives you access to music from practically every service under the sun, plus your own digitally stored tunes in on-the-go queues.
But if you hoped that this refreshed embracing of hi-fi might bring with it support for hi-res music, you’re going to be disappointed: Sonos is sticking to its
“The Amp has all the musicstreaming skills of every other Sonos device, so gives you access to music from practically every service under the sun, plus your own tunes”
guns on hi-res, which essentially boils down to it being more trouble than it’s worth. Cd-quality continues to be the upper limit for Sonos, at least for now.
The Sonos app remains vastly superior to that of any of its rivals. It’s a fine way to control products, including the Amp, but the company is also taking strides towards making things more hands-free. There's no in-built microphone, but the Amp will respond to voice commands issued to Alexa- and Siri-powered devices. Airplay 2 is on board, too. The Sonos Amp makes the most sense with quality speakers more toward the budget end of the spectrum. We switch between a selection of our favourites, from the Elac B5.2 standmounters (see p10) to the Monitor Audio Silver 200 floorstanders. B&W’S 607s (p20) or Fyne Audio F302s would also partner nicely.
A great sense of fun
Kicking off with Prefab Sprout’s The King Of Rock ’N’ Roll, we discover a soundstage with a lovely blend of width and focus. All the track’s fun is conveyed thanks to the precise placement of the sonic effects – the plane whooshes from far-left to right and the vocal has a lovely, airy, disembodied quality.
That spatial skill makes the Amp well suited to home cinema use. Play Star Trek: Discovery on Netflix and the broad, three-dimensional soundstage fills the room with atmosphere while individual sound effects have exciting focus. The ‘phantom centre channel’ works well, with dialogue proving clearer and more direct than in a typical stereo system.
Substance, texture and sparkle
Back to music and we play alt-j’s Every Other Freckle, revelling in the expertly painted tonal picture, which balances substantial bass with textured mids and glistening treble. It’s an immediate, upfront delivery that’s instantly engaging and exciting. There’s lots of punch here, but the Amp skilfully avoids ever veering into harshness, and there’s decent detail behind each note.
Compared with streaming rivals (and cheaper non-streaming amps), there is, though, a lack of the real hi-fi-like subtlety, insight and expressiveness that comes from dynamic delicacy. It’s a bold, attention-grabbing delivery, but one that struggles a little to peel back the layers of a track and get to its emotional core. Combined with a less-than-regimental sense of timing, this equates to a performance that doesn’t quite capture the ebb and flow of certain tracks.
Organisation can be a issue, too, with the complex arrangements in the choruses of SBTRKT’S Trials Of The Past proving a challenge too far, instruments getting a little lost in the melange.
If you’re already eyeing up a Playbar or Playbase, we’d consider spending the extra on the Amp and a capable pair of speakers instead. That might seem extravagant compared with one of Sonos’s £699 dedicated TV speakers, but not only will you have a far more hi-fi-like sound system, it will actually perform better with your TV.
Sonos is still way ahead of the pack when it comes to streaming features, but the serious sonic ambitions of the Amp provoke serious sonic comparisons, and while this just-add-speakers streaming system delivers room-filling fun, it’s impossible to deny its shortcomings, especially when compared with the (more expensive) Bluesound Powernode 2i.
But there are lots of reasons you might choose Sonos over Bluesound as a system, and if you’re firmly in the Sonos camp and you like the sound of what the Amp does, you will almost certainly appreciate having one in your lounge.
“There's no in-built microphone, but the Amp will respond to voice commands issued to Amazon Alexaand Siri-powered devices. Airplay 2 is on board, too”