Trueplay tuning

Trueplay is a Sonos innovation to correct sonic imbalances caused by the speaker’s position in your room. The system is iOS only at present, just because of the unpredictable variability in Android microphony.

We used the Sonos app on our iPod touch, Sonos forcing us to watch a video before tuning and sensibly so, because this is not like room tuning for an AV receiver where you put the microphones in a few key listening positions. We tried that with Trueplay, and Sonos presented a stern message that we weren’t moving around enough (below). Instead you need to walk around the room waving your iPhone slowly up and down.

This waving around would seem to indicate that Sonos is somehow mapping the room — is it clever enough to use your phone’s gyroscopes and positioning information to build a real room picture — or is it just averaging for everything it encounters? Sonos isn’t yet saying. In our music room the app decided that only very slight adjustments were required… except that the sound became radically different. Everything was punched up, the Play:5 picking up bass lines and thrusting them out far larger and more prominent, all undeniably punchy and exciting, if not necessarily what the mix actually intended.

Trueplay will work even on old Play:5s that have the latest firmware, and also on Play:3s. And it will automatically handle things if you have paired units in stereo mode.