Now Playing Trueplay - Your Impressions

My experience has been underwhelming.

I first ran this in a small bedroom with a single play 1 unit. Tuning done easily enough, reported only minor changes and on toggling back and forth there wasn't anything different.

In a larger open plan living room, for a 1 pair + Sub it took some time, the fourth attempt. The first three were aborted halfway through by an error message of "can't communicate with your player, try again" or some such. The successful attempt returned a similar report as above and similar results on a back and forth toggle - nothing audible.

In both places my starting eq for best sound was centre positions for the sliders.

Further to the above, I went back to see if I have missed something subtle in Trueplay in a duet album of Houston Person and Ron Carter. I toggled Trueplay, but I did not hear anything different from either. Toggling the Sub on the other hand makes a subtle but very palpable difference in how present Carter's voice is in the room because of the Sub.

You're obviously very lucky to be able to set your rooms up as close to optimal conditions as possible, in which case, as has been explained repeatedly, you aren't going to hear much difference.

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 my main room there is not much difference with or without Trueplay. I have a low end calibrated measuring system and the difference between Trueplay and not Trueplay was well within what I would classify as "measurement error" -- literally a dB here and there. This is confirmed by the listening experience. 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.

In one of my rooms there are two potential listening locations, some distance apart. If I dwell in one area the results are quite different than when I dwell in the other area.

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?

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.

Thanks...the nanny let me do the different thing in both rooms.

No change in the reported or audible outcome in both rooms this way either.

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.