Sonos Roam portable speaker (Item 1683300)
photos courtesy of sonos

Hearing is believing

Sonos makes enjoying quality audio anywhere you go a reality

by Will Fifield

Listening to music while I do the dishes after dinner, or enjoying a podcast while I mow the lawn, transforms household chores into a richer, more enjoyable time. Home audio company Sonos makes setting up a quality sound system throughout your home easy by combining resonant, clear speakers and sound-system components, such as amplifiers and turn-tables, with exceptionally flexible software. With Sonos portable speakers, you can extend the experience to beach outings, camping trips, outdoor chores and more.

Setting up a whole-home sound system that can play audio throughout your home may not sound like an ambitious mission today, but when Sonos launched in 2002, it was a very expensive proposition that delivered hit-or-miss results.

Sonos founders John MacFarlane, Tom Cullen, Trung Mai and Craig Shelburne, a group of entrepreneurs who had worked together in a successful internet-based business before starting Sonos, foresaw that the internet was going to be the predominant source of music. They believed this presented an opportunity to revolutionize the whole-home audio concept.

“The mission from the very onset was making whole-home sound, which didn’t work very well at the time, something that is easy to enjoy,” says Nick Millington, Sonos’ chief product officer.

He says they also wanted to make it easier to set up and more affordable, so anyone could enjoy quality audio throughout their home. And, instead of being analog and device-dependent, they wanted their system to be digital and smart so it could have access to all the music people were beginning to enjoy through the internet.

The sound of music

“From the beginning, Sonos’ audio philosophy has been to reproduce the artist’s intent,” says Millington. “But making good-sounding speakers is kind of an art in and of itself.”

To get the quality of sound they were after, the company worked with accomplished recording engineers, including Giles Martin of Abbey Roads Studios. “His job is to essentially listen to records that he’s made, play them on Sonos systems and then sit down with our engineers and tune the hardware and software so that it sounds exactly like what he heard in the studio,” Millington explains. He says that in a world in which so many speakers are trying to get your attention with lots of bass or shrill treble, purity is what makes Sonos stand out.

Sonos Beam soundbar (Item 1671991).

Many sources, one system

To provide a consistently rich experience, the speakers and software work together to transmit quality audio, whether you stream a podcast, play your favorite music from a smart device or spin tunes from your vinyl collection. You can set up a Sonos system to play the same audio, synchronized throughout your home, or to play different music in different rooms.

“The power of the Sonos products,” Millington says, “is really that it’s a software platform that integrates all of these different services. You might buy Sonos for the sound of the speakers, but what keeps it relevant, as the world of technology moves forward, is that it’s a platform for nearly any service.” He says he’s not aware of any other platform through which you can enjoy Spotify, Apple Music, Apple AirPlay, Bluetooth, Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa.

“Every part of your life at home can be better if it’s accompanied by great sound and great music, whether cooking in the kitchen, playing with the kids or doing your taxes,” Millington says. “Making this easier is what Sonos is laser-focused on.”

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Mixed signals

Nick Millington, Sonos’ chief product officer, says Sonos has found that connecting music to speakers via Wi-Fi is the best solution for the home but that Bluetooth is better at connecting when you’re away from your home system. “Connecting an audio source in the home where you typically have broadband connection to the internet provides a much higher bandwidth connection, so it lets you enjoy more rooms of synchronized music and better audio quality, and it has a larger range,” Millington says.—WF

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