This is Part 2 of my review of the Sonos One and Sonos Beam Smart Speakers. If you haven’t already, be sure to read Part 1.

 

Sonos One Speaker’s Audio Performance

Sonos has a long history of designing award-winning, high fidelity speakers. The Sonos One builds on the design and reputation of the PLAY:1. Indeed, both their packaging and industrial design look nearly identical. The PLAY:1’s physical buttons have been replaced with capacitive touch. In addition to volume control and play/pause, you can easily disable the microphone.

The Sonos One has two Class-D digital amplifiers, driving the tweeter and mid-woofer, respectively. The sound output is digitally processed using Trueplay, a Sonos technology that tunes the speaker to the room in which it is placed. Sonos One tuning is a one-time, two-minute, manual process. By contrast, Apple’s HomePod and the Google Home Max use automatic, real-time room tuning.

In the Sonos One, there is an array of six microphones, which use an adaptive noise suppression algorithm to focus on the person speaking. Additionally, the speaker will lower the volume of the music playing to better capture your voice commands. Sonos also highlights privacy features in the Sonos One: the indicator light is hardwired to the microphone array circuit. So, if the light is off, the microphone is necessarily off.

You can pair two Sonos One devices together to form left/right pairs for broader stereo separation. However, you cannot pair a Sonos One with a PLAY:1. You can, however, use the Sonos One to voice control your legacy Sonos speakers.

The Smart Speaker Competition

The first generation of smart speakers–Amazon Echo and Google Home–weren’t impressive acoustically. Compared to my old Google Home speakers, the Sonos One has a richer sound with far more bass, clearer midrange, and crisper treble. By contrast, the Google Home sounds more ‘muddy’.

If you are comparing the Sonos One to either Apple’s HomePod ($350) or the Google Home Max ($400), you should compare one of the competitors to two Sonos One speakers ($350). The HomePod has seven tweeters and a single woofer. The Google Home Max has two tweeters and two large 4.5-inch woofers. Both the HomePod and Home Max are heavier on the bass and, therefore better suited to EDM music.1 By contrast, the Sonos One speaker shines for music that emphasizes mid range and treble.2 Because you can purchase two Sonos speakers for the price of one HomePod or Home Max, you can achieve far greater stereo separation with the Sonos. Or, if cost is an issue, you can use the savings to place your Sonos One in a second room.3 Personally, I prefer two Sonos speakers, due to the stereo separation. After using TruePlay tuning, I then bump the bass up two stops and the treble up one stop in the equalizer.

Beyond audio quality and cost considerations, buyers must also consider the capabilities of the voice service supported by a speaker. For Amazon Echo, that means Alexa. Similarly, for Apple, that means Siri. For Google Home Max, that means Google Assistant. Sonos is the only speaker that has announced support for all three services: Alexa (currently supported), Google Assistant, and Apple Siri (both expected in 2018).

 

Sonos One’s Alexa Voice Services

Features

Sonos+Alexa currently has full voice support for Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, Pandora, SiriusXM, Spotify, and TuneIn. You can use Sonos’ controller apps to play other music services like Apple Music, Google Play Music, Tidal, or your local iTunes library. However, these services aren’t currently voice controlled. Some Alexa services remain Echo-only such as telephony, drop-in, messaging, flash briefings, reminders, and notifications.

Experience with Alexa

Recognizing that we are working with an early (beta) voice services software implementation, here are a few of our family’s frustrations:

• Adding Alexa to Sonos One
  • For each room, you must individually pair Alexa services. First, given how many steps are required during this pairing process, I would have designed Alexa pairing at the Sonos account–not Sonos speaker–level.
  • If you wish to create a speaker pair after configuring a single Sonos speaker for a room, you should delete the first device from Amazon.
• Paired Sonos speakers don’t operate in unison for voice services. Instead, they act no differently than smart speakers in different rooms. Each speaker will wake separately. And, ultimately, only one speaker plays a response.
• Sonos music services are separate from Alexa music services. To control a music service with Alexa on Sonos One, you need to add a particular music service to both Sonos and Alexa.
• You need to create recreate your rooms in both Sonos and Alexa. Sonos “rooms” are separate logical constructs from Alexa “rooms”. They only include Sonos devices. And they assume that all Sonos devices in the room are used for music playback.4
• “I Don’t Know”: Alexa knows a lot less than Google Assistant. According to 360i, Google Assistant is six times more likely to answer a user’s question than Alexa. Of 3,000 test questions, Google Assistant answered 72% and Alexa answered only 13%.5 A more recent survey found that Google’s Home speaker got 81 percent of 782 standardized questions correct. Amazon’s Echo got 64 percent. Apple’s HomePod could correctly answer just 52 percent.6

Siri & Apple Airplay 2

In July 2018, Sonos released an update to recent Sonos speakers including the Sonos One, Sonos Beam, Play:5 and Playbase to support Apple’s Airplay 2. Sonos speakers now appear in iTunes and on iOS devices as Airplay targets. You no longer need to use the Sonos mobile or desktop controller to stream to your Sonos speakers. And, it frees Sonos users with large iTunes libraries from the limitations of the Sonos Music Library. Owners of older Sonos speakers that aren’t directly Airplay 2 compatible, can group their legacy Sonos speakers with a compatible speaker to unlock AirPlay 2.

Because Sonos speakers now support Airplay 2, it is possible to use Siri on your iPhone, iPad, Mac or Apple Watch to indirectly control your Sonos speakers. As an example, Apple Music listeners can use Siri to play and control music on AirPlay-compatible Sonos speakers. To be clear, Siri is not natively integrated on Sonos speakers like Alexa is. So, your iOS or Mac device needs to be within earshot and have “Hey Siri” wakeup enabled. But you can ask Alexa to control or to provide more information about an audio stream that’s being streamed via Airplay.

Finally, you can add your AirPlay-compatible speakers to the Apple Home app. This permits unified control of your Sonos speakers along with all other HomeKit enabled devices. However, it is not possible to create an automation (like location- or time based rules) with Sonos speakers.

Google Assistant

When the Sonos One was launched, Sonos also promised that Google Assistant will be coming in 2018.7 Following are some of the features for which I will be looking:

• Google Home App Device Listing: all other Google Cast devices, regardless of manufacturer are displayed in the Google Home app. I will be checking whether Sonos One speakers appear there too (similar to HomeKit).
• Google Cast Enablement: will we be able to use any Google Cast server to send music to multiple Google Cast enabled devices including but not limited to the Sonos?
• Multi-vendor Audio Groups:
  • Can we mix and match Sonos One speakers with other vendor’s devices to create groups that span multiple rooms?
  • Sonos zones are ad hoc: users must manually recreate them each session.
  • Google Home Groups, by contrast, are a permanent groupings of Cast-enabled devices. You can select particular devices in a room and you can select devices across multiple rooms with one click. For example, in our house we have Upstairs, Downstairs, and Outside, among other zones.
• Intercom: Until Google Assistant is deployed on the Sonos One, I cannot test whether it works as an intercom using “Google, Broadcast….”.
• Voice control of Sonos services: not very many Sonos services are voice controlled with Alexa. For example, you cannot ask Alexa to play a favorite radio station from My Sonos. And you cannot ask Alexa to play music in a different room or to move music from one room to another.

Summary

Sonos has delivered on Alexa voice services integration and Apple’s Airplay audio streaming. Siri works indirectly but not natively. Sonos speakers now are Apple HomeKit compatible. Google Assistant is promised by end of 2018. Presumably, this will also include support for Google Cast and Google Home.

Assuming Sonos delivers these final features, Sonos speakers will be able to bridge the gaps between Amazon, Apple, and Google’s smart home ecosystems. Sonos owners will be in the unique position of choosing their preferred voice assistant for a task, independent from the music source, method of streaming, or smart home control. For example, a Sonos owner could maintain their music library in iTunes, their music subscription service on YouTube or Amazon, their home control on Apple HomeKit, and ask general knowledge questions to Google Assistant or Alexa. Similarly, Sonos consumers could control Nest and HomeKit devices from a single smart speaker. The only downside is that they must remember which voice assistant controls which smart home device.

Resources

• Sonos Software Release Notes (for the current version)
• Controlling Your Sonos with Amazon Alexa
• How to Group Rooms In Sonos

Next: Advanced Networking Configuration

If you are connecting a number of Sonos speakers in your home, then be sure to read How To: Advanced Sonos Network Configuration with Sonos Boost.

Updated on November 20th, 2018