Sonos One Reviews are starting to appear... 'Good hardware.. buggy software'. What a surprise !!

Not many dealers carry both the bits of the kit needed to do that, but if they do, it ought to be interesting. Carry music you are familiar with, in that case.

Digressing a little though with reference to the KEFs; I was intrigued enough to read some reviews. The LS50W seem to be active versions of the passive LS50, still sold in the KEF range. The difference between the two seems to be built in amplification - one amp for each of the two drivers in the box, and DSP (The play 5 has six amps for each of its six drivers, the play 1 has two for its two drivers and both have DSP including that needed for Trueplay). With just this difference many reviews claim a day and night difference between the two KEF siblings.

Is this hype, or is this truly the benefit of active tech? - no one has taken the trouble of supplying the LS50 with 200wpc external third party amplification and then comparing their sound with the W version that has a 200wpc amp built in. So that is one strike against the review quality. And a reason why the review comparisons cannot be used to determine the benefit of active tech for delivering better sound quality in this case - there are too many variables flying around. The answer to the question at the beginning of this paragraph therefore is that it is some combination of both. For what it is worth knowing, there is a lot of active tech + DSP in Sonos kit.

Most reviews for all audio kit suffer from similar defects and are, at best, entertainment and eye candy. The only useful bits are those about features and how well these work, And fewer buyers can offer anything more useful about sound quality except give subjective opinions. I freely admit to being one of these, the only good blind test I have done is one for DACs.

My reference speakers are QUAD ESL-63s.
Every time you write about these, I am reminded that I need to find a way to listen to Quad ESLs at least once in my life; I have no big desire to listen to any of the other standard tweeter/woofer in a box kind on offer anywhere, passive or active - not even those with a dozen drivers that sit in boxes that are taller than my six feet height. Unfortunately, the present Quad ESL versions are both hard to find for an audition and way out of reach to order a pair:-).

My reference speakers are QUAD ESL-63s. They take up a lot of room, need to be positioned well away from the walls, but sound splendid in the sweet spot. My Play:1 pair fit nicely on the desk in my tiny home office. They are at ear level, near field. They sound every bit as splendid in this setting as the QUADs do in their much larger setting, because Peter Walker and Sonos had exactly the same goal; accurately reproducing sound, without the nonsense so many "high end" audio companies succumb to.

I don't think you are telling anyone anything new about auditions.
That rather depends on the person that reads what I have written, don't you think?

Should I audition the LS50W speakers while I'm there? Or would that just suck more money out of my wallet? I'm curious to see how they'd compare to my PLAY:5 pair + SUB, which I'm rather enamoured with.
The only thing for certain is the money they would suck out if you fell for them.

The problem with all such comparisons is how to set these up to be as objective as possible by ruling out well known and universally caused psychological biases in favour of the better looking, the better known in HiFi circles and the more expensive. At a minimum they need to be done with both speakers kept in the same place in the same space, with the same music, at instrument matched sound levels for both and with the tested speakers not being seen by the tester. In laboratory terms, what is called a blind test, preferably one that is double blind.

With this in mind, auditions can be entertaining and have a better chance of being financially harmless.

I have a KEF pair that uses the same drivers as the LS50 and I have also compared a play 1 pair + Sub against speakers more expensive than the LS50, so this isn't just theorising. But I will also agree that if there is any audio component where the claims for better sound quality may be valid is where speakers are the component in question. Here again, though sound quality differences are more likely to be identified, it is also possible for preferences to still be for the cheaper pair if it is not known to be so.

The Kef's are quite a bit better than anything from Sonos but also a lot more expensive. Of course you should listen to them 🙂

I can only go by my lying ears :-)
I've seen different comments on sound quality compared to the Play 1. They either say they sound the same or slightly better. They sound noticeably better to me but my ears are tuned to some pretty high end speakers.

I suspect that sound differences are so small that if you kept one for a few days, then switched to another, after a few days you would not be able to express a preference for either. Human audio memory is such that only large differences are remembered - a good thing that, IMO, if understood and used wisely. It then stops equipment churn.

I got my Sonos One's today and they do sound a little cleaner, richer, and fuller.
My other powered speakers are Kef LS50 W which cost $2200 but these are fine for the bedroom.
Really liking them so far and I prefer the matte black over the Play 1.

I was looking for third party sound quality comparisons with the play 1 when I found this. The first part isn't true, but the latter is in line with what Sonos has said.
I suspect if anyone opened a Play:1 and Sonos One, the innards would be identical, speakers that is.

Sonos has stated publically many times that the innards are completely different.
Most of the reviews I have seen don't get into audio quality very much or comparison with the Play 1 except the gadgeteer review which says the One is clearer and more detailed. Sonos has also said the One has slightly more bass.

The first few reviews of the Sonos One are emerging.

https://www.engadget.com/2017/10/18/sonos-one-review/

Unfortunately, there were a few times I ran into some strange and frustrating bugs -- the speaker wasn't recognizing that it was playing music, so "pause" or "next track" requests didn't work. Amazon Music also occasionally got confused and told me it was playing on another device so it couldn't play on the speaker I asked for.

https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/10/18/16490866/sonos-one-speaker-review-alexa

The process of enabling Alexa was a different matter and left me, a tech reviewer, feeling pretty stupid. Alexa could answer general questions and control my smart lights just fine within minutes, but would give me a “Something went wrong” error when I asked for music (or podcasts) with voice commands.

https://www.wired.com/story/review-sonos-one/

Once you get things humming, the limitations of the voice controls become clear pretty quickly. The Sonos One can do most everything Alexa can do, but it can't do everything Sonos can do. So, when you ask it to play music, the Alexa living inside the One can only summon streams from the services Alexa supports. If you want to play something from your local MP3 library or one of the 80-odd services supported by Sonos (Apple Music, Google Play Music, Mixcloud, MLB.com), you have to pull out your phone and tap.

All are very complimentary about the hardware (it's a Play 1 after all) but have picked up on the unreliability of the software on several counts and the limited services that can be controlled by voice.

I'd be showing more empathy and urgency if I was Sonos as this will not go away and needs fixing quickly.

A dodgy public beta after so long since the announcement doesn't look good.

The only bug reported in your post is in the first review -- Engadget. The Verge talks about the process for setting up being difficult (not buggy); Wired talks about limitations, which aren't bugs, but known limitations (and leaves out the fact that ANY stream can be voice controlled for basic play back commands once initiated via the app -- you just can't initiate it via the app).

I think you post mischaracterizes the general tenor of the reviews. Which are all very positive.

These are reviews of Sonos One, right? So why are people focusing on the public beta aspect only?

I would expect a public beta to work better than it does. If I ask it 'play (song name) in the back room' it says ' I can't find (song-name-in-the-backroom)' which is pretty dumb. It should be able to separate the registered device name from the requested song title as a matter of basic operational function. If I ask just to play something by (artist) in the backroom it says 'ok' and then plays something completely different.


That sounds like a problem with Alexa, not with the Sonos side of things. Your echo (or Sonos One) takes your voice command to the Alexa cloud where it it's translated to text, and then interpreted. If it can't figure it out right there, it stops...right there. Sonos isn't given a command. to execute.

FYI, that's also why you can't play from your NAS or some other music service Alexa doesn't know about.


If I ask just to play something by (artist) in the backroom it says 'ok' and then plays something completely different.


Tell your echo to play that same artist without specifying 'in the backroom'. I bet your echo will play the same 'something completely different' as your first test case. So is that a problem with Sonos or with Alexa?



There's bugs and there's poorly implemented software . . .as it stands it's unuseable. Maybe my system has something wrong with it, I can't believe they'd release something this bad. It's a shame, the hardware is excellent but becoming redundant now with Alexa pairing to decent bluetooth speakers with multiroom abilities.

So do another test. Rename your 'backroom' Sonos zone to say 'zone 1' and try to play your song title in 'zone 1'. Does it work? Then rename one of your echo's to 'backroom' and tell Alexa to play the same song in the backroom again. I would be surprised if Alexa is able to complete that command all of a sudden.

To reiterate the point, before you make judgements about poorly implemented software on the Sonos side of things, it would be wise to consider if the fault really lies with Sonos or if it is an issue/limitation of Alexa itself. As a consumer, I can see why it's irrelevant, since you just want it to work. However, to imply you're going to get a better voice controlled, multi-room experience with echo'ss alone...I can't see the logic in that.

https://www.stuff.tv/sonos/one/review

This one is quite worrying, it suggests that you need to speak commands louder than when using the dot, will have to test that when the One arrives.