Tomas Chlebek Sonos is one of the most well-known manufacturers of wireless speakers for homes, where they focus on their complete sound system, not just individual rooms. The speakers are paired with most mobile devices, where the user chooses what, where and under what conditions to hear, and from today, Sonos can also officially listen to music from Apple Music.
In connection with these capabilities, Sonos organized a worldwide study with thirty thousand participants, in which they observed the effect of music on households, more precisely the relationships between their inhabitants. The study found a positive correlation between music in the home and more sex, higher relationship satisfaction, general happiness, the number of family meals shared, or cooperation in household chores.
The second part of the same initiative was a social experiment, which included the ordinary families and households of several famous musicians (St. Vincent, Killer Mike of Run the Jewels and Matt Berninger of The National). He compared a week without music and a week with homes fully equipped with Sonos systems sounding the home lives of the participants.
The progress of the experiment was monitored through cameras and transmitters, including Nest cameras, Apple Watch and iBeacon transmitters. The captured material will be used in a new advertising campaign on which Sonos is collaborating with Apple Music. This is the first marketing collaboration of Apple's streaming service and naturally follows on from December announcing full support for Apple Music on Sonos devices and officially launching the collaboration today. So far, the Apple service on Sonos speakers has been in beta.
Joy Howard, Sonos' chief marketing officer, mentioned that while she's not a big fan of big-brand marketing collaborations, she would liken the potential of a collaboration with Apple Music to a good "tennis collaboration." Howard was referring to her past when she worked at Converse. As part of the direct collaboration between the marketing teams of both companies, "we naturally talked to each other about joining forces to take advantage of what each of us wants and each of us has."
Sonos can offer Apple five million homes filled with its speakers used to stream music from rival companies. Apple, on the other hand, has a large customer base with a very warm relationship to music.
The results of this collaboration will appear for the first time in the form of thirty-second and one-minute advertisements during the announcement of the results of this year's Grammy music award nominations in the USA. Not long after, shorter versions, such as GIFs, appear on Tumblr and elsewhere on the Internet. The samples are already available for viewing on The Sonos Tumblr, in the header of which you can see the Sonos and Apple Music logos side by side.
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Well, this brand is quite new to me. How does it play? I know from the good ones B&O, JBL, HK, Bose….
But Sonos…. is this something on Beats level?
It should play decently but I went to bowers & wilkins A7 for AirPlay and cool. They play hard.
Thanks for the post. I have selected three pieces from Sonos (2x Play:1 and 1x Play:5) and wanted to buy them before Christmas without listening to them - that's how good I look (read: sound) according to all the owners. I'd just like to hear them somewhere. If you know someone where they can be seen and heard around Prague, here is the information; after all, a thousand euros without listening is a bit of a risk (although in the case of Sonos, it's probably minimal).
I would change my mind. For that price, you can have JBL AUTHENTICS L16 - a really honest speaker of approx. 17 kg
You can already tell on YouTube that the speaker is in a different league.
Thanks Michael. The forum is that for 1000 Euro I should have 3 speakers - a large Play:5 for the living room, Play:1 for the bedroom and Play:1 for another room. The fact that the last two are mono doesn't matter at all; until now there was no music or from a tiny dachshund. In addition, each of the speakers has its own processor and electronics, which make it possible to connect to clouds of online resources. Sure, Wi-Fi is needed and the elegance of playing anything from your own source is lacking, but that doesn't bother me that much. And it should be high quality when Apple puts its name into it.
Sure Ivan, I thought you'd want to sound multiple rooms. Even so, I would consider it, the Authentics play really well and will easily fill a 50m room. Alternatively, supplement it with something smaller if you need to play several other pieces of music at the same time. A cheaper L8 variant is also on sale.
Apple puts its name everywhere - for example, Beats is quite "garbage" from the audio point of view, but it has high prices and Apple promotes it wherever possible.
I haven't heard Sonos with my own ears, but already from the samples and according to the construction and specifications, it is obvious that it will be something like Beats and the usual speakers around 5-8 thousand.
But of course it's also about what is expected from the person - "play", that will be, you can sound different rooms independently, but you won't make Hi-Fi out of it.
The JBL L16 or L8 (I think 17000) are real "replicas" - of course JBL also makes rubbish at a lower price like every brand today.
I bought the JBL L16 in October 2015 for a special price of 800 euros. I can only attest to the sound quality and range. Certainly JBL also went the route of Chinese outsourcing of production, but the Century L100 link is there. And not only aesthetic, but mainly sound. My idea was to have a B&W A7 at home, but after the test I said no. I tested BOSE, DENON Heox and nothing. You just don't feel it in the sound. Maybe B&O still gives quality, or honest Cambridge Audio. Minx edition hires. But JBL L16 is irreplaceable in this.
Sonos is a great thing, but BEWARE! It is a system designed for special environments that must meet acoustic requirements.
Try looking at this page where you can compare the sound. the quality of individual wireless assemblies. http://switcher.oluvsgadgets.net
Here's the video
http://youtu.be/FuJkEDqgIio
And here's the review
http://www.hifi-voice.com/testy-a-recenze/all-in-one-pristroje/1639-jbl-authentics-l16.html
I heard it live in Jena last summer and it sounds great - this really compares to basic Hi-Fi boxes and it packs a punch.
Honest construction, massive metal cooler, sound box made of MDF, number of connections.
Compared to that toy from Sonos - for €1000 I would be looking for something like this.
There is also a smaller model, but I haven't heard of it.
You have to listen to it, but it's not a miracle. It definitely cannot be compared to some apparatus with boxes. The price seems overkill.
Where did you hear them John? I mean the current version, released in fall 2015. You don't mean the original, older one?
I'm from Bratislava, and in our country the company Ketos has been dealing with this for much longer, and they also have a new model. Go to ketos.sk and they have it on offer there.
Great, then it could slowly arrive in our regions, if it hasn't been here for a long time and I'm now "discovering America". Thank you for the information.
I doubt that it would not be the case in your guilds.
I looked everywhere for them before Christmas and still can't find them. But maybe that has changed now. Anyway, I wrote a question to Ketos.
Good luck Mr. Berka and pleasure of listening. I wish you a nice day
Thanks, everything is more cheerful with music.
Well, Ketos has a showroom in Prague and they say they have Sonos there, so we agree on a meeting.
Well, you see, have a nice weekend. :-)