MULTI-ROOM SYSTEMS
If you want to listen to your music in more than one room, nobody does it better than…
Sonos
It was there at the beginning of multi-room audio and, all these years later, it’s still calling the shots in this category thanks largely to a steady stream of carefully chosen new products.
Sonos as a system has two big advantages – breadth of choice and simplicity of use. In the time its rivals took to play catch-up, Sonos consistently kept its nose in front by launching a whole family of products. It also got onside with a long list of streaming services, not to mention nailing the usability aspect of multi-room.
The company continues to innovate, maintaining a presence in other sectors of the audio market with products such as the Amp and the Beam and Arc soundbars – all of which can be brought in to a multi-room system – as well as integrating Alexa Voice Control with products such as the Sonos One to make it the finest all-round multi-room system available right now.
The real star of Sonos’s range of wireless speakers is undoubtedly that One speaker. It builds on the old Play:1’s feature list with built-in Alexa Voice Assistant to become the company’s inaugural smart-speaker offering. On the top plate there’s a touch-sensitive panel decorated with a circle of tiny, white LEDS and symbols that represent play/ pause, the microphone and Sonos’s now familiar context-sensitive actions. The One also gets a dedicated Pairing button, just above the ethernet socket.
If you want to voice-control music in other rooms, specify where (eg. “Alexa, play Bowie in the lounge”) and the One will send music to the Sonos kit you’ve ascribed to that ‘zone’ – even a nonalexa-enabled Sonos speaker, such as a Playbar or Play:5. “Alexa, play Bowie everywhere” sets all your Sonos speakers to synchronised Ziggy Stardust mode.
Comprehensive control
The Sonos app is a large part of the system’s charm. It’s where control of your system takes place and also offers the widest choice of streaming-service compatibility by some margin. There’s no hi-res support, but Sonos does accommodate all the main file formats, including MP3, WMA, FLAC (up to 16-bit/44.1khz), WAV, AAC and AIFF.
When it comes to performance, each member of the Sonos family offers the same entertaining character that makes the system so listenable. The One, for example, is one of the most impressive units in its class. It produces a weighty, full-bodied and spacious sound that’s capable of going surprisingly loud for a speaker of such relatively modest proportions. Voices are clearly projected, bass is solid, and treble is crisp and clean. It’s a surprisingly sophisticated sound, and one that’s natural and authentic too.
That general sonic character also carries over to the far larger Play:5, but this speaker is able to produce a far bigger and bolder sound. It’s a weighty performance that can easily fill a room without sacrificing the clarity or openness of the midrange. It’s effortlessly smooth and very listenable.
Then there is the Sonos Amp, which paints with the same bold audio strokes as the rest of its family, revelling in forward-sounding presentations and dealing them with gusto and a morethan-respectable level of detail.
One big gap in Sonos’s offering remains that lack of support for hi-res audio. But there’s still a question mark over how important that is in the context of a multi-room system, and with its great sound quality, substantial selection of streaming services and the mostpleasant user experience, Sonos remains the best multi-room option.