Dolby Atmos, Spatial Audio, 360 Reality Audio: three different names to indicate a similar experience, that of immersive audio. Where sounds, words, noises, special effects seem to come from various directions and completely surround the listener.
Perfect for gaming, thrilling with movies (especially action ones), immersive audio typically requires more speakers than a typical home theater system: up to a dozen, or even more if professional Dolby Atmos. But fortunately, soundbars that integrate everything needed for the front channels in a single device are increasingly widespread, leaving the rest of the work to the rear speakers (perhaps to be connected wirelessly with the rest of the system) and to the subwoofer. and integrating what is missing with software elaborations. For headphones, you need even less: a compatible model is enough.
A market to be invented
With the exception of the HomePod, designed specifically for Apple Music, until now there have been no single speakers compatible with Dolby Atmos and spatial audio. But tomorrow comes the Sonos Era 300, which marks a new chapter for the American company and could kick off a small big revolution for music and cinema enthusiasts.
That it is a real novelty can already be understood from its external appearance: from the front it is an ellipse, seen from above it is made up of two sections of different depths, narrower on the inside and wider on the outside. Now, such a configuration would suggest two loudspeakers, one facing the back and the other towards the listener, but this is not the case: in fact, in the rear part, the transducers are all around, while there is no emission of sounds towards the rear, as evidenced by the fact that the rear surface is completely flat and without holes.
If describing the Sonos Era 300 is complicated, setting it up at home is quite simple: it can fit almost anywhere, as long as it has some free space around it and it’s not positioned too high or too low compared to the ears. It’s not too bulky, and you can choose black or white (but keep in mind that fingerprints are quite visible).
Setup is easy too: download the Sonos app and follow the instructions; the speaker is detected in seconds and configured intuitively, then it is immediately ready for use.
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More flexible
The commands are few and require no explanation: play, pause, forward, backward. The novelty is the touch bar to adjust the volume: just slide your finger on the hollow to raise or lower it, a much more practical solution than that adopted on other Sonos models. A very small light visible through the front grille indicates the status of the speaker, while on the back there is a switch to activate or deactivate the 4 microphones that the Era 300 is equipped with. They are used for the voice assistant: you can choose between the by Sonos, (only in English, however, and only for playing music), or Alexa. This time there is no compatibility with Google Assistant, which had made the other Sonos models the obvious choice for those who want a quality smart speaker but do not want to tie themselves to a specific platform. Sonos is currently engaged in a legal battle with Mountain View, accused of having used some of its patents without permission, but it seems that the absence of Google Assistant is due to some delay in software development and therefore could be resolved with an update.
An update will also be needed for listening to spatial audio with Apple Music; at the time of our test, this feature is only available if you use Amazon Music. However, the issue should be resolved with the effective arrival of the Era 300 on the market on March 28th.
Microphones also serve another function: adjusting the frequency response in relation to location and room. It has existed on Sonos devices for years and is called TruePlay; to activate it, you press a command on the app and the speaker generates a series of sounds, then you move around the room by moving the iPhone and the system calculates the difference between the reproduced sound and the original one. It then generates a complementary response curve: if a certain frequency range is too present, it reduces it, if it is too hidden, it emphasizes it. Until now TruePlay was only available to iPhone and iPad owners: not because it’s not possible to make it work on Android, but because the huge variety of devices doesn’t allow you to precisely define the characteristics of the microphone of the smartphone you’re using. So now Sonos adopts a system similar to the one seen on Apple’s HomePod: the Era 300 microphones capture the sounds that the speaker reproduces, and then the compensation process continues in the same way. TruePlay thus also becomes available for Android users, and yet those with an iPhone or iPad can still use their device for calibration, with a sound result that – according to the company but also according to us – is slightly better. The process is not automatic, unlike what happens with the HomePod, and must be repeated every time the position of the speaker is changed.
The back of the Era 300 then reveals two other peculiarities of this speaker, absolute novelties for Sonos, even if they have already been seen on almost all competitors. The first is the USB-C port, which via an adapter allows you to connect an external source, even an analog one, such as a turntable. The second is a button for Bluetooth pairing: it’s Sonos’ first home speaker to enable it, and in its own way that’s a sign of changing times, too. The sound quality is not significantly affected, but on the other hand practicality benefits a lot.
How it sounds
The Era 300 features six speakers. The speaker’s four tweeters aim forward, left, right and up, while a pair of angled woofers handle low frequencies. This architecture is intended to spread sound throughout the room, regardless of whether the track being played is in stereo or spatial audio format. The result is always pleasant, both with standard HD songs (the devastating My Cosmos is Mine from the latest Depeche Mode album), and with those in spatial audio. TO White flag by Battiato seems to lack a bit of bite, but it is enough to get to the historic refrain, with the chorus of madrigalists from Milan, that the Era 300 reveals a spatial dimension that is absolutely unattainable for any other single speaker.
We couldn’t find the new 50th anniversary version on Amazon music Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd, which among the thousand records also boasts that of the most used disc to test hi-fi systems. However, there is a remastered version in 2001, which already offers the best possible quality for Amazon Music: Ultra Hd and Atmos. AND Time here too he makes a splendid impression, not only for the good spatial distribution of the sounds, the ticking, the voices, but also for the impact of the bass and drums attack after the intro at 2:29”. The room is large, the volume high, so inevitably Roger Waters’ voice hardens a bit. But it is always surprising that there is no obvious distortion, an excellent result considering the size of the speaker.
Moving on to a song that just came out, come on Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd by Lana Del Rey we appreciate the excellent performance of the strings and the refined arrangement, the excellent spatial reconstruction (considering that we are listening to a single speaker), while the voice perhaps does not seem very natural to us, but perhaps by choice of the producer.
In fine
Unlike 3D in movies, we believe it’s safe to say that spatial audio is here to stay. The Era 300 marks a step forward in the popularization of this format: it’s easy to use, it sounds good, it offers a flexibility never seen before in Sonos. But it costs 499 euros, an investment that might seem excessive for those who don’t give music the value it deserves. Even more relevant is the cost of building a real Dolby Atmos system (not entirely compliant with the standards): with the Arc soundbar and the Sonos subwoofer, in fact, the total reaches 2751 euros, after a small discount for the purchase of the bundle . And in this price range there are many alternatives.
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