Ahead of Sonos’ recent launch of its new Sonos Play and Era 100 SL speakers, I got to speak to CEO Tom Conrad about what the company has been up to since its last big launch, the Sonos Arc Ultra in 2024.
We talked about the new speakers, and then we spent a long time talking about what went wrong with the company’s big app disaster that same year, what’s still wrong with it, and how the company has changed to fix it — and Conrad was very candid in that talk, so I’d definitely recommend reading it if you’ve taken an interest in Sonos at all.
But one of the other big things that’s happened in the time Sonos has been working on itself is the launch of Dolby Atmos FlexConnect. This is technology that lets you get a great home theater experience without needing speakers that sit in traditional front left, front right, rear left, rear right positions — you put the speakers wherever you like, even if they’re unbalanced or the speakers don’t match, and the system figures out how to provide the best surround sound automatically.
Article continues below
One of the big features of these systems is that you can have wireless speakers connected directly to a TV, with no HDMI cable — wireless sound, configured simply using an app, and you don’t lose an HDMI port.
I asked Conrad if Sonos is concerned about this major trend that effectively locks Sonos’ products out of the future of wireless home theater, and he certainly puts on the air of a man who is not concerned.
“As you know, we’re by far the most successful player in home theater, and consistently taking more and more market share from the companies that you’re talking about,” says Conrad.
“It’s a huge part of our business, and we’re the pioneer in wirelessly distributing audio around the family room, and we’ll have our own things to say about how that evolves in the coming quarters.”
I asked Conrad what he thinks of the FlexConnect technology. “So FlexConnect is interesting,” he begins. “There are really three things that have to happen in a FlexConnect-style implementation. You’ve got to get the bits from the media to the speaker, whether that’s through the television or through the set-top box or through the soundbar, something has to get the bits into the air.
“And then you have to position the speakers in the room, understand where they are and what their orientation is.
“And then the last piece is that, understanding the speakers’ position and the bits from the device, you have to render the bits appropriately for that position and orientation.
“Dolby has done a great job of telling the story of FlexConnect as encompassing all three dimensions, but the technology of FlexConnect is actually just that last bit. It’s taking the positional information [of the speakers] and the bits [from the media] once they’re on the speaker, and rendering it.
“And, the other two dimensions — positioning, and the transmittal of the bits actually from the source to the speakers — is sort of left as an exercise for the student, which is why the LG solution is proprietary to LG and the TCL solution is proprietary to TCL.
And you can imagine that — even as much as Dolby wants to talk about the universal character of FlexConnect in the same way they talk about Atmos — the LGs and TCLs of the world might not be that motivated to create a system whereby you can mix and match speakers [from other brands] with their televisions.”
So, is it something Sonos would support in the future? (Standard Dolby Atmos has been available on Sonos products for years, and support is included in the current Sonos Beam 2nd Gen, Sonos Arc Ultra, and Sonos Era 300.)
“I guess I could just say that we’re interested in that entire space, the entire domain of: How do you get the bits from the source to the speakers? How do you position the speakers in three-dimensional space? And how do you render? We’ll continue to work on our roadmap.”
As much as the insight into Dolby Atmos FlexConnect is interesting, Conrad is obviously very vague about future plans — but we can do some reading between the lines here.
Of the three questions Conrad asked at the end, we know a bit about Sonos’ technology in that area already.
“How do you position the speakers in three-dimensional space?” Sonos’ TruePlay tech has never been pitched as mapping your speakers’ positions, but rather compensates for your position in the room, and the reflections of your walls relative to the speakers.
But reading that statement, you’re probably thinking ‘Hang on, that sounds a lot like mapping the position of the speakers’ — and we’ll come back to that shortly.
But more directly, the Dolby Atmos FlexConnect systems from TCL and LG both use audio alone to detect the positions of the speakers, playing sounds and listening to them with microphones on the devices, with remarkable accuracy in 2D. This is how Sonos’ own TruePlay Quick Tuning works, so even if the current TruePlay algorithm isn’t exactly suitable, the knowledge seems to exist within the company.
When it comes to rendering the 3D sound, Conrad himself said that the FlexConnect system handles that — though again, Sonos has knowledge in this area of its own. Psychoacoustics tricks such as using reflections and time-of-flight manipulation are common in virtual Dolby Atmos devices, and the Sonos Beam is one of those. TruePlay again involves adjusting reflections for width and height channels.
But more than that, Sonos introduced the idea of a new kind of 3D sound processing for the Sonos Ace headphones and the TV Swap feature, tracking your head inside its own recreation of an Atmos-like 3D soundscape.
The 3D soundscape of the Sonos Ace can even be made to mimic the sound profile you get from your main Sonos speaker system, based on where the speakers are positioned compared to your usual seating position. It uses TruePlay data to do this — and so now we know Sonos has a product capable of creating a unique 3D sound environment based on the position of your speakers compared to your seating position.
So it seems evident that Sonos finds the same kind of tech as FlexConnect interesting, even if it hasn’t added the freedom of speaker positioning to its home theater setups yet.
But none of this tackles the first question: “How do you get the bits from the source to the speakers?”
This is where Sonos is truly at risk, in my opinion. HDMI is an open standard that has enabled any kind of soundbar to work with any kind of TV. A similar attempt at a wireless standard, WiSA, has never taken off.
That’s left TV companies free to use this part as a method of lock-in. Samsung, TCL, Sony, and LG all offer some kind of wireless speaker option that works directly with your TV, enabled by the TV software itself.
Sonos has no power over TV software, which leaves it with two options: partner with smart TV software makers to build in support, or offer some kind of HDMI dongle attachment.
The latter is relatively easy, but still uses up an HDMI port, and part of the attractiveness of these wireless systems is not having to deal with a port for your sound at all.
When it comes to partnering with smart TV makers, it’s tough. LG and Samsung make their own software. Google TV is huge, but Sonos and Google famously have not had a good relationship.
That’s a lot of TVs sold covered just in that group, especially high-end options. But there are still interesting options. Amazon Fire TV and Roku might be open to a partnership, and Fire TV support could also mean support from Fire TV Sticks, which can be attached to other TVs, of course.
And then there’s the Apple TV 4K, which is rare among streaming boxes because it can take audio from anything connected to the TV, as well as generate its own audio from streaming apps. Apple and Sonos have long had a cosy relationship, including the Sonos Amp being the only streaming amp with native Apple Music support, even today.
The Apple TV 4K is popular with home theater enthusiasts, so perhaps Sonos could arrange with Apple to provide a flexible, 3D wireless sound option support at the OS level.
Whatever Sonos’ plans are, I hope it’s able to roll them out soon — the wireless soundbar revolution is arriving at speed, and Sonos doesn’t want to be left behind.
The best soundbars for all budgets
Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button!
And of course, you can also follow TechRadar on YouTube and TikTok for news, reviews, unboxings in video form, and get regular updates from us on WhatsApp too.
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/BZ3q9YKNSeSezM4ajFoEad-1920-80.jpg
Source link
