Today Sonos joined the smart speaker party and announced what they are calling “Sonos One”. Sonos One has the look and feel of a Sonos Play 1 but look on top and you will see a slightly different control scheme.
Straight out the box you will be able to use Alexa to control various apps such as Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, Pandora, SiriusXM, and TuneIn. Spotify will be available later on. Voice transport controls like pause, skip, volume up and down, and even asking what’s playing will be available for all other music services Sonos supports. With Sonos One, owners can use voice to control their entire Sonos home sound systems. You will still be able to ask Alexa things like “how is the weather?”, “whats the sports score?” and hundreds of other skills.
Sonos One is available on Oct 24 worldwide and pre-orders start today for $199.
Sonos One Details
Sonos One is part of the Sonos home sound system, so it works seamlessly with other Sonos speakers and gives you access to more than 80 music services. You can use Sonos One as a standalone speaker, wirelessly pair two of them for stereo sound, or use them with PLAYBASE or PLAYBAR to create home theater surround sound.
- Designed from the ground up to deliver surprisingly rich sound from a speaker of its size.
- Driven by two Class-D digital amplifiers, one tweeter, and one mid-woofer.
- Includes a six-mic array and an adaptive noise suppression algorithm to focus on the right person and ensure the voice service understands everything clearly.
- Voice capture technology with echo cancelation allows the speaker to still hear you over the music. The volume also intelligently lowers, or “ducks,” when you speak to it so you don’t have to shout over the music.
- The light on the speaker will be illuminated if the microphones are active. The light is hardwired to the same circuit that powers the microphone array, so if the light is off, it means the microphone is off.
- Owners can use Trueplay to easily tune Sonos One to sound great no matter where it’s placed in the home.
- Sonos One is available in all-white and all-black matte finishes.
Current Sonos Owners Also Get Voice
Millions of existing Sonos owners in the US, UK, and Germany will also be able to control their entire Sonos systems using Amazon Alexa, thanks to a free software update the company made available today. All that’s needed is any Alexa-enabled device like an Amazon Echo or Echo Dot and the Sonos skill for Alexa. Play a song, skip forward and back through playlists, target one room or an existing group of rooms, and adjust volume – all using your voice. Sonos owners will be able to access all of the innovative natural language voice controls of Alexa and only available on Amazon Music. Amazon Music customers can ask for music based on decade, genre, tempo, mood, or even lyrics if they can’t remember the name of a song.
Apple AirPlay 2 Coming in 2018
Sonos also announced that it will begin supporting Apple’s AirPlay 2 in 2018, making it possible to play any sound from an iOS device – including YouTube videos and Netflix movies – on Sonos speakers throughout the house. Owners will also be able to ask any Siri-enabled device to control music on Sonos speakers.
