The Period collection might cement Sonos’ multi-room audio management

After selectively leaking the information, Sonos gathered the press at an occasion in New York Metropolis final week to unveil its newest era of audio system: The $249 Sonos Period 100 and the bigger Sonos Period 300 ($449), each of which will probably be accessible worldwide on March 28.

Sonos is seeking to elevate the bar on multi-room audio and, with the Period 300, fulfill the promise of spatial audio, the recent new development in immersive surround-sound music. Sonos describes the Era 100 as a “re-mastering” of its Sonos One sensible speaker, first launched in 2017, and the sooner Play:1 that got here to market in 2013.

The Era 300 is Sonos’ first speaker to assist spatial audio, both all by its lonesome, in a two-box (stereo-plus) setup, or because the {surround} channels in a Dolby Atmos dwelling theater setup with a Sonos Arc or Sonos Beam (Gen 2) soundbar up entrance and, if you want, a Sonos Sub or Sonos Sub Mini to ship low-frequency results.

The brand new audio system will reply to Alexa instructions in addition to Sonos’ personal Sonos Voice Management, however it seems to be as if Google Assistant assist is being dropped. Sonos and Google have repeatedly tangled in court over patent-infringement claims on either side.

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Then again, Sonos has expanded its Trueplay room-equalization expertise to assist Android units for the primary time. Previously, this expertise relied on the microphones in an iOS machine to judge the acoustics of a listener’s room; as such, Trueplay was ineffective to Android customers. With the Period collection, Android aficionados utilizing Trueplay will depend on the far-field microphone arrays constructed into the audio system themselves. iOS customers can both do the identical or proceed to make use of their cell units for room tuning.

Sonos says its audio system have improved contact controls and new USB-C connectivity, with two elective adapters: One has a 3.5mm analog line-level enter and the opposite has each a 3.5mm jack and an ethernet port, so “folks can get no matter content material they need into their methods,” mentioned Ryan Moore, Sonos product supervisor for the plug-in class.

The Period collection is extra eco-friendly, promising to eat much less energy—simply 2 watts—whereas on standby. The brand new audio system are manufactured utilizing “post-consumer” recycled supplies and are assembled with screws as an alternative of glue, to make them extra more likely to be repaired then tossed if one thing ever goes improper.

Sonos Period 100: Sonos’ new entry degree

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At first look, the Period 100 seems to be remarkably near the Sonos One. It has an analogous footprint and weight and is simply an inch taller, however it’s a bit extra oval in form. Its $249 price ticket, nevertheless, is 15 p.c increased than the Sonos One it replaces. Moore mentioned Sonos goals to “respect the heritage” of the Sonos One, delivering “a type of magic mixture of a low-enough value level, nice sound, and a small-enough dimension that it suits wherever you need in your own home.”  

In actuality, there’s not a single half in widespread between the One and the Period 100, and far that’s been re-thought and improved on. The Period 100’s elliptically formed woofer is 25 p.c bigger in floor space, and the brand new speaker has two outward-canted silk dome tweeters with neodymium magnets, the place the Sonos One had a single tweeter. Nicely-situated listeners will be capable to relish a stereo expertise in addition to considerably extra bass.

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“Once you crank it up,” mentioned Sonos system designer and engineer Kylie Muntean, “we not must protectively tamp down the bass with DSP, so the motive force doesn’t fry.” Whereas unwilling to share energy scores on the speaker’s Class D amplifiers—normal working process with Sonos—she intimated enhanced robustness. “The woofer design is sophisticated,” she mentioned, “with 10mm of tour. And we additionally labored exhausting to enhance warmth dispersion.”

With two tweeters as an alternative of 1, Sonos’ senior vice-president of sound design Giles Martin added that there’s extra readability to vocals and devices and higher all-around spaciousness. What hasn’t modified, in response to Martin, is Sonos’ “dedication to trustworthy, uncolored sound. To not imposing a persona. We wish you to neglect you’re listening to audio system and simply respect the music.”

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First impressions throughout my demo session gave me no motive to dispute that characterization. I grew to become an on the spot admirer of the Arkansas singer-songwriter Yebba, drawn in because the Period 100 intimately rendered her observe “October Sky,” from her debut album Daybreak. I might virtually see her fingernails plucking the strings of her acoustic guitar in accompaniment to her achy-breaky vocals. Lizzo’s “It’s About Time” performed by way of the Period 100, in the meantime, actually roused the joint.

The Sonos Period 300: An immersive step up

The Sonos Period 300 homes six drivers inside its distinctive enclosure, a field with an indented mid-section—virtually like an hourglass that’s been flipped on its aspect. The motive force setup consists of a single horn-loaded tweeter firing as much as bounce frequencies off the ceiling when taking part in Atmos content material; a front-firing mid-tweeter performing as a middle channel; and two extra mid-tweeters that time left and proper for stereo output. A pair of woofers on the backside entrance of the speaker level left and proper, additionally for stereo.

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Every driver will get its personal Class D amplifier, and Sonos says it fantastic tunes every driver’s directionality with customized wave guides and digital sign processing, which is a giant a part of its secret sauce. Right here once more, Sonos declined to offer a extra granular description of the Period 300’s amplifiers.

Sonos engineer Kylie Muntean says the corporate constructed and examined “dozens” of prototypes with completely different dimensions, drivers, wave guides, and DSP tunings, and this design proved “the most effective, probably the most correct at putting the alerts into the sound discipline the place the music producer and engineer meant them to be. We have been definitely conscious of what different makers had carried out and made it our mission to prime all of them.”

Spatial audio and the Sonos Period 300

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Historical past has repeatedly proven that the primary developer of a brand new expertise just isn’t all the time the maker that reaps mainstream success. It’s typically a later arrival that advantages from watching how customers reply to a brand new idea and learns from the pioneer’s errors.

Sonos product supervisor Ryan Moore says the corporate began engaged on its first spatial audio speaker “two and a half or three years in the past.” That may place its origins a couple of yr after Sony launched its 360 Reality Spatial Audio format at CES in 2019, and 6 months after Amazon introduced the primary spatial audio speaker—the Echo Studio—to the buyer market. Sony’s personal collection of spatial audio audio system, together with the underwhelming—to no less than one TechHive reviewer’s ears,—SRS-RA5000, got here out in late 2020.

Dolby has likewise tailored its Dolby Atmos audio format, initially identified for film soundtracks, to music listening. That and Sony 360 Actuality Audio are each object-based audio codecs that promise immersive audio experiences, even with a single speaker cupboard or with sure high-end headphones, together with fashions from Apple and Sony.

Muntean says professionals mixing in Atmos, together with Manny Marroquin (Lizzo, Paramore, Flo Rida, Publish Malone, Kendrick Lamar, Maggie Rogers, and extra) “have been stunned and happy with our outcomes. On this one small field, we will precisely reproduce higher than 80 p.c of what they’ve laid out spatially within the studio with a discrete, 12-channel Dolby Atmos mixing system.”

Giles Martins’ affect in spatial audio

Giles Martin is a long-time and robust advocate for spatial sound, having re-mixed The Beatles’ catalog in {surround} sound, first for Cirque du Soleil’s Las Vegas manufacturing Love, and later for the lavish, box-set editions of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Membership Band, Abbey Street, The Beatles (aka the White Album), and most not too long ago Revolver. Martin is the son of legendary The Beatles producer George Martin (credited as producer on each one of many band’s albums besides, controversially, Let It Be).

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In his different function, as head of audio and sound for Common Music Group, Martin says he has crushed the spatial audio drum so efficiently that the majority the highest producers and engineers now have Dolby Atmos mixing services of their studios. A bunch of them are on a Sonos advisory board as properly, and so they lent their experience through the Period 300’s improvement. About 100 at the moment are utilizing particular wired variations of the Period 300 as a reference software whereas mixing in spatial audio. If their multichannel mixes go muster on these Sonos studio monitor rigs, it ought to sound equally spaced-out particular on your own home Period 300.

As to the quantity of spatial music content material now accessible to the common listener, Martin says “90- to 95 p.c of in the present day’s High 100 hits can be found [via streaming services] in spatial mixes, and plenty of classics are getting remixed for the medium.” It doesn’t damage the trigger, in fact, that these providers pay the next per-play royalty to the music labels for spatially encoded tracks, simply as they do for high-resolution mixes. Tracks encoded as Dolby Atmos qualify as each, with as much as 24-bit/48kHz decision.

Maybe this surround-sound format will endure and prosper, and never go the best way of SQ, QS, and CD-4 Quadrophonic on vinyl, or DVD-Audio, DTS 5.1, Blu-ray Audio, and hanging-by-a-thread SACD on disc.

Sonos Period 300 first impressions

Throughout its press occasion, Sonos provided just a few tantalizing tastes of a single Period 300 at work, chopping by way of and conquering a really crowded room of listeners with huge, excessive, and deep sonic impressions of works by Think about Dragons, Paul McCartney, Rosalia & The Weeknd, and an particularly atmospheric go to to Finneas’ “A Live performance 6 Months from Now.”

Sonos additionally demoed a home-theater expertise with a pair of Period 300 audio system arrange as {surround} channels in a full-blown 7.1.4 Dolby Atmos configuration with its 11-speaker Arc soundbar and two Sono Subs, one within the entrance and one at the back of the room.

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The Period 300 places out full-range and distinct left, proper, and top cues, a major advance over earlier Sonos home-theater setups, by which the {surround} audio system have been restricted to sharing a Dolby Professional Logic feed. In our demo, this improve made for some dynamic, you-are-there results, together with an ultra-scary, monster-on-the-loose scene from the movie A Quiet Place.

Must you deploy a pair of the smaller Sonos Period 100 audio system because the {surround} channels with a Sonos Arc or Beam up entrance, a Sonos tech tells me you’ll additionally get “an Atmos expertise rendered in 7.1.4…in a lot the identical approach the Beam Gen 2 does. This permits the peak info to tackle a entrance/rear depth that’s a lot better than conserving the peak content material to solely the entrance stage.”  

I can’t say these demoes all the time fooled me to pondering there have been sounds coming from above, to the perimeters, and behind me, however I would totally purchase into it if I arrange the Period 300 in a much less crowded area (our bodies do take up numerous sound) and put myself within the candy spot, which I purpose to do with a coming-soon assessment unit. And even when it isn’t precisely {surround}, I’m pondering there’s nonetheless a giant viewers and an entire lot to be mentioned for a well-executed, single-box spatial-audio answer versus a roomful of surround-sound speaker muddle.

Out of the gate, you’ll solely be capable to play spatial audio content material on the Period 300 within the type of Dolby Atmos mixes streamed from Amazon Music Limitless and Apple Music. Recordings encoded in Sony 360 Actuality Audio won’t be supported, nor will you be capable to stream spatial audio mixes from the providers Deezer, Tidal, or Nugs.web.

Sonos will proceed to assist Apple’s AirPlay 2 expertise, however that expertise will restrict you to stereo performances. As for making use of pseudo-surround processing to stereo sources, as another spatial speaker producers do, Giles Martin says that’s a no go on the Sonos Period 300. To his ears, “that processing principally provides reverberation, is dishonest, and sounds terrible.” 

Sonos engineer Kylie Muntean was maybe extra amenable to the thought, saying “Period 300 audio system are designed and able to dealing with ‘every thing,’ [and Sonos’ mission] “is to be ubiquitous, impartial, to serve, and in the end assist each platform, each content material creator. Give us time. We’ll get there.”