Sonos To Begin Selling Smart Stylized Subwoofer in Bid to Expand Multi-Room Audio Footprint

Sonos previewed its first subwoofer, a gloss-black design that’s as much a style and technology statement as it is an audio product. The company demoed the Sonos Sub, along with a pair of its Play:5 speakers in Manhattan Saturday, where its products were on display as part of NoHo Design Week. The $699 powered sub will be available June 19 at specialty AV stores, through custom installers, high-end mass retail distribution and from the Sonos website. It won’t likely be sold at Target, which Product Manager Jonathon Reilly said would be Target’s decision, not that of Sonos. The Sonos demo at Target is more for “customer acquisition” and introducing consumers to the concept of multi-room audio, Reilly said. “It’s not for everybody,” he said, “so we're letting our retailers look at where this fits their customer base."

Although the sub was designed by long-time Sonos industrial designer Mieko Kusano, the look is a dramatic departure from anything Sonos has had in the market. With a footprint of 15 inches square by 6 inches thick, the sub can be placed either vertically or horizontally, where the intention was to allow flexible placement, including under a couch if a consumer wanted to hide it, Reilly said. During the design process, Sonos spent time with customers in their homes to learn about their experiences with subwoofers, and they found that many were “frustrated” with having to accommodate boxy subwoofers if they wanted full-range sound, Reilly said. In addition to creating a sub that delivered high-quality sound, “we wanted to make something people wanted to put in their homes,” he said.

The Sonos Sub’s most noticeable feature is the large, square doughnut hole cut out of the middle, which allows a see-through view of the other side of the room as well as a glimpse of the custom-designed woofers pulsing in opposition to each other, Reilly said. Two Class D digital amps power the sub, and filter settings, active equalization and time alignment are done digitally through digital signal processing, he said.

The high-gloss black cabinet (a matte version will be available in October for $599) with the cutout design creates a mismatched look when paired with the current line of Sonos speakers, leaving the impression that the company has embarked on a major design overhaul that takes Sonos hardware from a utilitarian behind-the-scenes role to the designer spotlight.

When we asked Reilly if matching high-gloss speakers with related design characteristics to create a more uniform look were in the works, he said it was “an interesting question.” Consumers will be able to connect third-party speakers through the Sonos smart amp but a future matching Sonos satellite speaker “is possible,” he said. “What you're seeing is the evolution of Sonos,” Reilly said. As Sonos “gets more skilled” at design and acoustics, the company is starting to “push the envelope of design,” he said. Products will continue to “get better” and “look even cooler,” he said.

Reilly demoed the two-step setup process using the Sonos tablet app. During calibration, users select an A or B option based on whether a tone sounds in or out of phase to adjust for anomalies or seating position in a room. In the second step, users increase gain if necessary to correlate bass volume with room size, he said. Crossover is set automatically “because we know the speaker attributes,” he said. If a customer is using the sub with the Connect Amp and third-party speakers, a third step inputs speaker size to determine the appropriate crossover point, he said.

The Sub is part of Sonos’ emerging collection of smart products, Reilly said, and it can only work with Sonos amplified components including the Play:3 and Play:5 speakers and the Connect Amp. “There’s basically a computer inside each speaker” that communicates wirelessly over the mesh network that’s at the heart of the Sonos multi-room audio system, Reilly said. The Sonos products “exchange information and recognize the types of product groups they're in and adjust the acoustic properties appropriately,” he said. The Sub doesn’t work with the older, non-amplified Sonos Connect bridge, ZP90 and or ZP80 products, he said, because those are typically connected to an AV receiver whose volume level can’t be communicated to the sub “so we can’t adjust the sub to match,” he said. The smart subwoofer won’t work with third-party speakers directly, but consumers who connect conventional speakers to a Sonos Connect Amp will be able to match speakers and sub, he said.

The NoHo Design Week collaboration is part of a marketing effort to boost visibility, Reilly said. Sonos last week opened a studio in Los Angeles, in the La Brea district, where it does “artist outreach” with musicians to become “more relevant to that scene.” The studio is a 4,000-square-foot all-white gallery space that will hold revolving six-week events “to celebrate listening,” according to company spokesman Eric Nielsen. Events have included an acoustic performance by Jimmy Cliff, a deejay night, a surf-movie screening where the score was performed live by a musical trio. The space is “lightly branded Sonos” and not meant to be a demo or retail shop, he said, although there is a listening room. “It’s an immersive, tactile” lifestyle space where people can “hang out,” rent skateboards and drink coffee, he said. Sonos plans to open a similar “culture center” in Europe and possibly other locations, he said.