No, in fact you don’t purchase a speaker to have a look at it. However ought to your gaze fall upon your speaker when you’re having fun with its sound, ideally the sight of it shouldn’t make you wince. So it’s simply as properly that Period 300, the most recent Sonos wi-fi speaker and the corporate’s first foray into spatial audio (apart from its Dolby Atmos–enabled soundbars, in fact), is such a powerful and achieved performer—its bodily look is simple to miss. Until you in some way discover it in your visual field unexpectedly, anyhow, wherein case it by no means ceases to be startling.
It’s truthful to say Sonos’ ubiquity has, till now, been established as a lot on its completely painless possession expertise as on the sound its merchandise really make. “Moderately aggressive” sound high quality is loads adequate for a lot of listeners if it’s accompanied by class-leading ergonomics, an impeccable management app, and the only, most simple multi-room audio ecosystem round.
With Period 300, although—and with the smaller, extra reasonably priced Period 100 stereo speaker that launched on the identical time—Sonos has retained all its established virtues and added audio efficiency that’s a match for any price-comparable, size-adjacent different. And within the case of the Period 300, spatial audio efficiency in addition.
Homepod Humbling
Spatial audio (which principally means “greater than two channels,” and is nearly all the time primarily based on Dolby’s Atmos format) has been gaining important traction exterior its authentic residence within the cinema, thanks in no small half to evangelical assist from the likes of Amazon Music Limitless, Apple Music, and Tidal music streaming providers.
Sonos doesn’t assist Tidal’s catalog of Dolby Atmos content material (boo!), nevertheless it does a minimum of assist Amazon’s and Apple’s spatial audio choices. And although Apple, because of its Homepod sensible speaker, is a full-service supplier of spatial audio music, it’s secure to say that in the case of the {hardware}, the Sonos Period 300 wipes the ground with the Apple Homepod. Sure, it’s costlier—nevertheless it’s price it, after which some.
The Period 300 makes use of six speaker drivers to create an impression of immersive, enveloping sound. There are 4 tweeters: one going through ahead, one left, one proper, and one loaded right into a horn and firing upward to replicate sound from the ceiling and create a sensation of sonic top. Then a few mid/bass drivers are angled out to the left and the suitable to generate some width (and supply separation when the speaker is taking part in stereo content material). Every driver will get a person block of Class D amplification—this being Sonos, although, the quantity of energy that’s obtainable is privileged info.
Paragraph 4 now ends: “And the Period 300 represents, amongst different issues, the top of an period for Sonos. The corporate used to have the clearest, most obvious naming conference for its audio system—however now we’re within the Period period, the place a pecking order is far much less simple to discern.”
On the highest of the cupboard—so unhappily angular and wonkily proportioned that my youngest daughter bodily recoiled on the sight of it—there are a couple of bodily controls. Contact-surfaces cowl play/pause, skip ahead/backward, and voice-assistant interplay (the Period 300 is appropriate with Amazon Alexa and Sonos Voice Management), and there’s an indented (and really properly carried out) quantity slider. Other than a model brand and a defeatable tell-tale LED, the entrance of the cupboard is featureless. The underside has a few little rubber toes and fixings for the cost-option stand. And on the rear, there’s a socket for mains energy, a change to kill the mics, a USB-C formed auxiliary enter (unforgivably, the bespoke line-in adapter to be used with this enter is a price choice, too) and a button for Bluetooth pairing.
Sonos Sees the Blue Mild
Oh sure, Bluetooth. After who is aware of what number of years of dismissing Bluetooth as an inferior know-how match just for its moveable audio system, Sonos has undergone a Damascene conversion. So along with utilizing its exemplary management app, into which any variety of streaming providers may be built-in, it’s doable to stream to the Period 300 utilizing Bluetooth 5.0 with bog-standard SBC and AAC codec compatibility. Apple AirPlay 2 can be obtainable, as is streaming by way of Wi-Fi—Wi-Fi 6 is supported.
In addition to grouping all of your most popular streaming providers collectively, the app provides some EQ adjustment and the most recent model of Sonos’ admirable Trueplay room calibration software program. Newly obtainable for Android (though in considerably truncated kind) in addition to iOS, Trueplay doesn’t take lengthy and proves brilliantly efficient at tuning Period 300 to your particular setting.
The app additionally provides multi-room and multi-channel prospects (if in case you have a few Period 300, they will act as rear audio system in a house cinema system together with, say, the Sonos Arc Dolby Atmos soundbar). The app stays the paradigm, the gold customary … and it makes Sonos possession appear a profoundly wise choice no matter another issues.