Contributor I

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Beam, Playbase or Playbar with 2 sonos ones?

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Hello,

I have few questions. Right now I have 2 ones and a sub. I want to add beam or playbase or playbar. Which of these do you recommend for a 5.1 setting and playing music? I have a 30m2 living room. The center speaker is only for vocal right? So it’s not important how the sound quality of this center is? I also want to use the center and 2 ones for playing stereo music. Do you recommend that, and so which center speaker?

is 2 ones and a center speaker more powerful for playing stereo music instead of 2 ones only?

2 ones and a center is like 2 fives only for sound quality ? I doubted between 2 ones + center and only 2 fives for playing music.

thnx so far

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AirgetlamAnswer

Sonos does not make a ‘center’ speaker, nor does their software allow a setup that uses any of their speakers to act as one. All Sonos sound bars contain the center, left, and right speakers in the same enclosure, so if you use a sound bar, then you can’t have separate left and right speakers up front, but you can use them as the surrounds. All of Sonos’ sound bars are good, each has a slightly different feature set, as they were developed at different times. You should look at the one that has the most features that match your needs.

Bruce

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Tejs Dyrvig Ernst

Since you are in the Sonos-forum, I am quite confident that must users will prefer Sonos to other brands.

Sonos has been making multiroom, smart speakers for a seriously long time.

People call Sonos lazy, slow, ignorant...but I guess that is because they have gotten used to the fantastic development that has always been a guarantee with Sonos.

They support almost any music service you can think of (for instance, they were the first manufacturer other than Apple that supported Apple Music).

They are to date the only manufacturer that supports all three of Google Assistant, Alexa and Siri with built in mics.

They offer such a wide range of speakers plus the AMP and the port, if you prefer passive speakers or require an advanced surround receiver for surround etc.

Sure, Bluesound has some advantages, but they don’t support Atmos etc. either. I don’t think any of their products support voice commands via build-in mics yet (although it should be coming) so for now you need additional devices to enable voice control. They don’t support Apple Music (in fact they are telling customers that Apple does not allow third-parties like Sonos to add their service, despite Sonos having some just that...) and I am sure there are many other shortcomings.

Denon is clearly better in terms of supported file formats and supports DTS, Atmos etc., but they have other shortcomings. Limited support of music services is one. In my opinion their app is less than elegant. Built in support for voice control is also said to be enabled in 2020, but still hasn’t arrived as far as I know. So not exactly front runners either.

Generally, I just believe I am better prepared for the future with Sonos. More than 10 years in and they haven’t disappointed yet. Oh - and their speakers look pretty great :)

Airgetlam

Note that Sonos sued Denon for patent infringement, and won. Details of the settlement were not disclosed, to my knowledge, at least, but I would assume that Denon is likely paying Sonos some amount for every speaker sold.

Bruce

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Beagle

Enthusiast I

As I am “some people” I stand by not upgrading the Playbar to airplay 2 and hdmi after 7(!) years in production as really, really lazy. And not paying the licence fee for DTS is cheap when Sonos is anything but.

That doesn’t mean I dislike the sound quality nor do I underestimate Sonos multi room functionality.

But other manufacturers are closing the gap on what made Sonos unique. More than one company has thought they were too good to fail and rested on their laurels. They tend not to disappear overnight rather become less relevant over time. Maybe in May we’ll see what their plan is but as I’ve already said if it were me I’d wait before investing more money in their products.

Airgetlam

I’m curious as to how they could afford to pay the license fee for all of the already sold devices, and In the case of the PLAYBAR, I have to wonder if there’s enough processing power or a chip to handle it.
Would love to get DTS from Sonos, for sure. Just not sure I know enough of the needs requires to know if it’s feasible. Certainly should be on any future hardware, though. And I wonder about the Dolby Atmos market penetration. Is it enough to push Sonos into that area, as well? We’ll have to see.

Bruce

B

Beagle

Enthusiast I

I’m curious as to how they could afford to pay the license fee for all of the already sold devices, and In the case of the PLAYBAR, I have to wonder if there’s enough processing power or a chip to handle it.
Would love to get DTS from Sonos, for sure. Just not sure I know enough of the needs requires to know if it’s feasible. Certainly should be on any future hardware, though. And I wonder about the Dolby Atmos market penetration. Is it enough to push Sonos into that area, as well? We’ll have to see.

Regarding DTS other manufacturers manage to pony up the money, I just bought a player that transcodes DTS to DD saving Sonos the trouble.

I think you’re right that the Playbar is lacking necessary components but that would be why it should have been updated.

I’ve got a significant amount of Sonos kit, appreciate what it can do but am deeply frustrated by what it can’t. As you rightly said we’ll have to see what Sonos plan next!

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Tejs Dyrvig Ernst

Releasing updated speakers with new functionality to replace the old ones will always be a difficult balance. One of the reasons why the resale value of Sonos is so good is that they keep their products alive and relevant as long as possible.

If they had released a new Playbar with DTS support just a few years after releasing the first Playbar, the community would have gone crazy.

Just look at the companies who push new versions of their products with new functionality each year. Sure, they stay relevant - if you keep upgrading every year and accept that your old products are being pushed into obsolescence too early with little to no user base supporting the older products. No user base will grow for products which are replaced every year or every second year for that matter.

So in a way, I am happy with Sonos not releasing new and better hardware all the time. It makes it a bit more “safe” to buy Sonos you could say. The longer a product is on the market, the bigger the user base will be and that will help find solutions to whatever issues that arise in the lifetime of the products

Of course, now that the Playbar is 8 years old soon and the Beam is clearly a more advanced product in many ways, the time for an updated Playbar seems near

But if the Playbar v2 comes with Atmos, DTS and what have you - and the same functionality doesn’t arrive for at least the Beam and the AMP which are both fairly new products - we should all put on our helmets and goggles because there will be a mayhem in the forums!

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NimmaAuthor