Library Diskette
My Sonos Plays My Music Library From A Networked Hard Disk, As Well As Spotify, Pandora, And Local And World Radio Stations.
I'm a big fan of Sonos, thanks in part to the loaner Play:5 in my kitchen. It's used by me more than the stunning Marantz receiver and classic Tannoy speakers in my living room, not just because it's in a rather more central location, but as it provides accessibility to much more music. My Sonos plays my music library from a networked hard disk, as well as Spotify, Pandora, and local and worldwide radio stations. It's truly a fantastic audio machine.
With the arrival of the lower-end Play:3, it seems that Sonos is steadily moving down the market. Maybe, I presumed, the company is going to lower its prices more, so I could afford put a Sonos box of some form in my living room. Maybe, even, when it's time to upgrade my receiver, I can be well placed to get one with Sonos built in. I called Sonos founder Tom Cullen to ask when that will be.
The answer was not what I wanted, it led on to an interesting look at Sonos ' and home audio in general. In short , according to Cullen, "We don't believe receivers are long for this world."
Cullen claims that audio receivers sounded right "before the digital world," when you required a box for massive amps and for swapping between plenty of sources. As more entertainment comes over the Net, Cullen says, "We think the concept of moving between physical sources will be seen as quaint. Instead of putting Sonos into receivers, we are going to make receivers unnecessary."
He adds, "We play in a market full of firms that haven't made significant changes to how they do sound in twenty years."
This Sonos vision definitely sounds correct, as a vision. Right now, home audio (and video) users do have to address multiple hardware sources : DVD players, game consoles, television or cable or satellite signals, and so on . Granted, more of the content is going to the Web, to both remote cloud services like Spotify, Pandora, and Netflix, and to local network storage. But you can't yet run a full entertainment system without having some way of swapping between physical signals in addition to your IP streams.
Cullen maintains that you still have no need for a receiver. The modern television, he says, can do the job of source switching. And Sonos system can can take input from a TV's output, for when that is required.
OK, I claimed, so maybe Sonos will get built into TVs? Because I also need to upgrade my Television. Again, Cullen said the company is sticking to speakers (and one dear speakerless, ampless product for people who are not ready to throw away their receivers), and that it won't do a software version for PC owners or TELEVISION vendors. The difficulty is sound quality control. Sonos systems are designed to be multi-zone, to play the same audio on different speakers round the house. Doing that so it sounds great requires precise timing of the audio output so the sound waves don't meddle with one another and muddle the sound. On non-Sonos hardware, the software cannot do that reliably, and Sonos doesn't want to chance lowering quality by making Sonos work, but only technically, on other platforms.
Maybe Sonos will make a soundbar product for TVs? Cullen said that is a probability. (Though I do not believe that is what Cullen meant when he said of the company, "The goal was always to be more horizontal.") I'm of the opinion a soundbar product may be a real breakout for Sonos.
The company was started in 2002 with the belief that "traditional A / V brands were vulnerable to the digital transition." Cullen announces the founders studied Bose, which also started by making top-end products back in 1964. "We saw an opening, we thought there was room for a new Bose." Initially, Sonos sold $1,200 systems over the telephone. If it is an indicator of how you can move a brand from the top-end to the mid market, Cullen notes that Bose is now making iPhone and iPod docks at costs like Sonos ' offerings. But he asserts the dock market isn't long for this world. Music is moving off of dedicated MP3 units (iPods) and onto telephones. "People won't leave their iPhones in a dock."
I admire Sonos for sticking to its vision over what was has turned into a long lifetime for a patron tech start-up. The Corporation has never succumbed to flipping its high-end brand into immediate market share. Instead it's purposefully and rather slowly moving into larger markets, juggling its promoting message and brand position while conscientiously riding the wave of the expansion of networked audio, neither falling behind nor rushing too way ahead of the curve. Sonos does have good technology but for what this company is doing, timing is crucial, writes tagza.com.
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