Trending Lyricist I

Truplay with Amp locked to Sonos branded Sonance speakers only?

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
February 7, 2019
28 replies
4492 views

Announcement of the new Sonos external speakers (made by Sonance for Sonos to be sold as a Sonos branded product) has the hidden tidbit that with this setup Truplay will work to tune the speakers attached to the Amp.

There is mention of automatically detecting the signature of the Sonos-specific Sonance speakers. This sounds like a DRM to purposely prevent Truplay from working with any other 3rd party speakers connected to the AMP - including standard Sonance speakers already sold and being sold.

Is there any technical reason or is this a marketing ploy to push the new Sonos/Sonance speakers as "better" for Sonos Amp? I think allowing Truplay with any speakers attached to the Amp would be more customer friendly.

All existing AVR receivers with sound correction work with any attached speaker since most AVR makers don't make any speakers they obviously assume the customer will be choosing their own brand of speakers.

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Ryan S

Retired Sonos Staff

Lots of wild speculation around here. Why not simply ask Sonos?

Hey Sonos, do these Sonance speakers include a special chip which identifies them as TruePlay-compatible zone players within an existing Sonos household?

It's not exactly "a special chip", but there is a way built into the Sonance and Sonos Architectural speakers which allows for the Amp to identify that it's connected with them, and will unlock Trueplay for that room.

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S

SpivRAuthor

Trending Lyricist I

So can the new speakers be used with existing Connect:Amp and allow TruPlay to be used?

S

SpivRAuthor

Trending Lyricist I

The continued use of the word "unlock" sure sounds like an artificial DRM-style restriction to me.

Ryan S

Retired Sonos Staff

So can the new speakers be used with existing Connect:Amp and allow TruPlay to be used?

The Connect:Amp isn't able to run the room that's going to Trueplay with these new speakers.

The continued use of the word "unlock" sure sounds like an artificial DRM-style restriction to me.

In order for Trueplay to work, we need to know some specifics about the speakers and the microphone that's being used. It's part of how our Trueplay algorithms are designed, but I can't go into the details of the "secret sauce". This is one of many reasons why we've worked to specifically design these speakers with Sonance.

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S

SpivRAuthor

Trending Lyricist I

I understand the microphone bit (hence only iPhones and not Android?), but I use Anthem ARC and it works well with any brand of speakers. I know this is apples to oranges (standard AVR amp with 3rd party speakers versus proprietary
Sonos Amp/Speakers), but I am just pointing out that Anthem's "secret sauce" works with any speaker and for microphones, they actually now offer a mobile app but strongly suggest buying their calibrated microphone as they believe there is too much variability in the built-in iPhone microphone.

So kind of interesting - they have the "secret sauce" to do audio correction with any speaker but must use their special microphone, while Sonos "secret sauce" with work with vanilla iPhone microphone but only Sonos or Sonos/Sonance speakers.

Ryan S

Retired Sonos Staff

It's great that they offer such flexibility, that's a level of compromise worth respecting. I'm happy to pass along the message to the team that you'd like to see more flexibility here. I can only assume what their tuning does is different from what we do with Trueplay, similar intent, but different ingredients and process. Yes, the reason that we're only using iOS devices only for Trueplay is that we found too much variety with Android devices.

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chicks

Devialet's SAM system has templates for every speaker they've measured, so their "secret sauce" is specific to certain speakers, too. Lots of marketing BS here, but may be some sound engineering behind it: They do tend to market to "high end" customers, so I take them with huge grains of salt.

https://www.devialet.com/en-us/expert-pro-sam/

ratty

It looks like Devialet measure the speaker's effective transfer function in the lab then apply the inverse in the amp, so as produce linearity in ideal conditions. Quite how that deals with real room resonance modes, or compensates for a speaker stuffed inside furniture, is unclear.

S

SpivRAuthor

Trending Lyricist I

Yeah, the obvious elephant in the room is how much do any of these systems use science/tech or just voodo? How much difference does it really make and how much is just clever sounding marketing BS.

At least as far as the normal consumer is concerned, not the "vinyl versus digital and tubes versus transistor" ultra fanatic crowd.

melvimbe

I'd still vote for multiple 'levels' of tuning available based on what speakers/equipment you have, and what mics you're using. Then again, I can't really say if lower levels of tuning make a big enough difference to be worth doing.

Danny

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