Now Playing Trueplay - Your Impressions

Personally, I like the Trueplay concept, my only issue, as with a lot of these “auto-tuning” things, is that it doesn’t allow for the room where you are just sitting in just a single seat. Ie - I shouldn’t have to walk around my bedroom waving my phone around, when I am tuning my bedroom speakers (Playbar, 2 x Play 3 and Sub), when there are only two very distinct “seating” positions, very close otgether, where my partner and I lie when we watch our TV shows an dmovies a tnight.

Would be nic eto have a “localised” or “single location” tuning option. WOnderful for th elount or sitting room, where it’s an open area and people could be just about anywhere, though.

Mind you, seeing as I actually do high end home theatre tuning, with calibrated microphones and stupidly expensive software via my laptop, I also know that it’s all a big compromise. Having said that, for the general user, I think it’s of great benefit, as otherwise, there would be no tuning at all, which likely would sound much worse than a compromised tuning for a room.

Z...

Just bought a Play5 this week in addtion to two 1's which i have had for 2&3 years now, I did do trueplay when it 1st came out but haven't had it for a while since either a firmware update or moving the speakers lost the tune.

Did trueplay on all 3 speakers yesterday & there was no noticeable difference to me when I toggled the trueplay on & off- does it switch on & off as soon as the toggle button is pressed or only when you come out of the menu in ios? I did do both to check but asking for future reference as I will keep trying it due to many good comments here regarding trueplay- having said that i'm happy with the sound quality i'm getting but as with most things there is always room for improvement.

The effect of the toggle is perhaps a second or two later, but while in the menu. In well placed speakers, there is often no audible effect of Trueplay.

I'm not sure about that as a reason for not providing an Android tool.

Sonos control their speaker production and would have on hand the performance curves of anything played from their speaker models.

This means they could play a set of reference tones that any mobile device could record and compare it to what they know their speaker is generating.

They can then easily fit the variance between what the phone records and the known output of the sonos speaker to a curve that can be used to adjust anything recorded by the android device. This is second/third year engineering or stats kind of stuff ...

This kind of stuff is not ridiculously hard to do in a generalised way, a bit of cynicism here but I would suggest it is more that there is not huge commercial need for them to provide this app to Android users as they are already leaders in the market and the consumer segment that Apple users sit within is probably closer aligned to the kind of people who buy high grade boutique audio equipment.

NB: This could depend on the data format that reaches the SW stack from the android microphone interface, if it is lossy then this approach may not work.

Any truplay hope on the horizon for those of us who don't drink the apple juice?

The issue is, Apple has a limited number of devices, so it’s very easy to calobrate for the microphones (though, even between “identical microphones, there will be variation). Android, on the othe rhand, has hundreds of devices, with very different hardware, often just for a single manufcaturer. Multiply that by hundreds of manufacturers... It’s impossible to calibrate for all devices.

The ideal solution, would be a USB/line level condensor mic, sold as a “Sonos Trueplay calibraiton mic”, that can then be sold for any Android device (probably could have one for Apple, too), for, say, $50, or $100... It would go a long way to making all customers happy on the Trueplay front.

Personally, I have a “Mini DSP” USB callibraiton mic, have downloaded the mic specific calibration files from the company that sells them, and it compares very well to my *much* more expensive condesnor mic that I used to use (near identical, in fact). It was about $80, and connects via USB. I’m sure Sonos could find a device like that, rebrand/adjust firmware to suit, job done. Add a nic emarkup, because, a business needs to make money, and everyone is happy.

Z...

Sonos has said time and time again that androids are produced with too many varied parts within models to support properly. They tested. They reviewed. Wouldn’t work. I’m not sure why a hypothetical debate on that fact.

Because the real reason is they hate Android and are wthholding features they could easily implement because they are giving a big nanny nanny boo boo to non-Apple people!

I have recently moved some of my play 1 units and Sub around and retuned them. I found differences in tuning in the play 1 units that are a lot more perceptible now than before, if I toggle Trueplay ON/OFF on the tuned units. No change in how the Sub is dealt with. Unfortunately the comparison baseline is not solid, but I suspect that the tuning algorithms have been changed over the years.

For what this feedback is worth, the change after tuning now is more to my liking while it was imperceptible in the tuning done two years ago.

Except that those reasons don't make any sense from a software development perspective. Each individual apple model would have known microphone characteristics, with a known reference source (a sonos speaker) you could definitely figure out the equivalent for any android device.

If you google microphone calibration poeple manually do this all the time, there are plenty of papers written on it..

I just wanted to provide a slightly more technical perspective on how they could calibrate microphones across devices as someone who works as a software developer.

Thanks for the informed and constructive feedback though.

So tell us, why do you think they are withholding this feature from Android users? Do you have any answer that doesn't involve a conspiracy?

Dude that is not a conspiracy.

Tho yes I did posit that there may not be a huge commercial incentive to build this feature as it is technically more difficult to implement that in the Apple ecosystem. I'm just saying it is technically possible. Please don't get upset, you are not Sonos.

Hi, new Sonos One owner here and very happy with it. It lives in my bedroom and now I am experimenting with trueplay. I think it brings more clarity to the sound, but at the expense of less defined mids and high bass. At least that’s how I perceive it. Whether I like it more when enabled or not, it depends on the song. Now, my question to the forum is, do you think trueplay makes the music closer to the original recording? Or does it just make it more pleasant to the average ear? I am comparing how different songs sound with and without trueplay, having as a reference a pair of decent headphones (Senn’s HD650) with a decent portable dac/amplifier (dragonfly red). The sound of the Sennheiser’s is usually described as warm, smooth, with great imaging and soundstage. So to answer my own question, I don’t think trueplay makes the music sound closer to the original recording, but just clearer in a given room. Which of course, it may sound “better” depending on your preferences. But this is just my opinion; what do you guys think?

Great post Pete! Thanks for sharing.

Also, for everyone using Trueplay, you can turn Trueplay on and off through the Room Settings by unchecking the box. It'll keep the same tuning settings, so you can toggle it on and off while listening to songs you're familiar with to hear the difference. You can also run Trueplay tuning multiple times on the same rooms to see if you get different results. Have some fun with it, enjoy the Trueplay dance!

Both rooms are perfectly ordinary domestic rooms and about the only thing that I have been able to do is provide the speakers with a decent place, which is easy given the diminutive size of the play 1 units. A month ago I bought Flexson desktop stands that tighten up the bass just a tad on the shelf located 1 units, by elevating them away from the shelf surface; I don't have the space to place the units on stands.

With my placement of the speakers and the Sub I know that I don't have a room nodes problem with respect to the Sub's output. Sub switch on/off toggling has only the desired subtle effect, before Trueplay.

Most room response DSPs I know deal with bass bloat from room nodes and smoothen out consequent bass peaks - which allows for a better mid range performance. In the few charts I have seen of post Trueplay measurements I haven't seen any smoothening of peaks, just a shelving roll off for the low frequencies. I am not sure what other tricks Sonos has been able to do via DSP that are unique and unprecedented and Sonos isn't saying.

Based on all the positive endorsements I started out by wanting to hear a difference. But I didn't, even so.

But I was and still am happy with the sound quality in both rooms, so I don't have any complaints.

In other rooms there is a profound listening difference.

The calibration demo suggests that one walk about the room. I think that one should concentrate on the primary listening location. Keeping the microphone stationary is not a great idea because the room response varies in three dimensions and your head will probably not be secured at that spot while listening. For example, if the primary area is a sofa, move the microphone around the sofa.


Where the difference is profound, are you able to see that on the usual freq response graphs and if so, how does it show up there?

I am going to take another stab at my living room in the way you suggest - as opposed to the video instruction of largely picking up wall reflected sound all around the room, from relatively close to the walls.

Perhaps that will result in something audible, but I now will not be surprised if it doesn't.

I suppose I should now hover around the listening area, with the mic pointed at the speakers, doing the wave?
Yes. The Trueplay nanny may tell you to cover more of the room, so you'll have to move around just sufficient to satisfy her.

I usually bring one or two of the 1s outside the RV... going to be interesting doing the wave once I get them placed. :D

Probably overkill, but will be interesting to see if the sound changes any from the smaller quarters inside.