Favorite Sound Experience of 2018

Do we have to name just one?

The first one is minor, but I set up the beam + play:1 + sub in the gameroom (video games). With certain games, when an NPC character is talking, and I rotate my character around and the NPC character's voice will move to a different location to match the orientation. I really like that for some reason.

I also added a pair of Sonos Ones to each of my 2 kids rooms. As a parent, I love hearing what music they're into. My son is currently listening to George Strait, while my daughter will often ask Alexa for Prince or Michael Jackson. They're both old school. It's even better when they start singing along.

As far as a specific moment, the kids and I were hanging out a neighbor's house with a few other friends on a weekend summer. Everyone decided they wanted to go back to my house to swim, totally unplanned. That turned into a 4 hour swim/dance party with the teenagers and adults all having a grand old time. My son did most of the DJing. Good times.

You definitely don't have to name just one! :)

I love the Beam as a gaming speaker! Call me jealous of that setup 🙂

Asking the Google Home Hub to play a favorite jazz album on my Sonos setup. Oh, wait, must have been dreaming...

Thanks for contributing, chicks, I'm sorry to hear you haven't had any favorite sound experiences this year. I hope when it's ready to go you absolutely love it. We're taking the time to make sure we get it right. If you're interested in getting your hands on it as soon as possible, make sure you fill out the survey for a chance to be included in the private beta.

I'll jump in....

My experience(s) for the most part have always been movies. I see a lot of complaints about no DTS or Dolby Atmos. While it sounds good in the theater the DD5.1 from my Sonos HT is more than adequate. I get great sound from Blu-Rays, AppleTV other movie Apps as well as cable.

My latest toy (I mean investment) has been fun as well...The Beam. I enjoyed setting it up and watching it configure everything for HDMI-Arc. The setup screen with the crazy pattern was interesting ...to say the least. I really liked not having to setup a remote as with the Playbar/Playbase. I will say that to get the best reproduction for speech (in an open non-rectangular room) pairing a sub with the Beam is a worthwhile investment. As a single speaker (vs Sonos One/Play:1/Play:3) its a clear winner.

Last...since moving into a new home with a media room I'm finally able to really crank my Play 5's (stereo pair) w/sub and enjoy audiophile grade music (although the staunch audiophile may disagree). Oh well :8

Now if only Sonos could just remedy the "ducking" with Alexa :? Cheers!

I think, looking back over the year, my favourite moments were listening to the Beam for the first time in 5.0 TV surround sound and Full music mode, in our Dining Room.

We have a small LG TV in that room and I was initially using a cheap unbranded sound bar, that my Brother gave to me, to listen to the TV. We also had two existing Play:1's that were being used separately for music in the room.

Checking around the back of the TV, I saw it had an HDMI-ARC port and when the Beam was announced, I thought ...'well, why not?'

Anyhow, adding the Beam to the TV and then bonding it with the Play:1’s was really very easy and initially I played things in just PCM stereo and was using 'Ambient' surrounds.

Around that time, I subscribed to Amazon Prime and Netflix streaming movie services and so I switched to Dolby Digital 5.1 output. I was so impressed by the surround sound from the various movies that they had on offer (sorry, I forget which movies they were)... the sound was just 'another level' to what we were used to in that room. (I also enjoyed later showing off the Alexa voice control to all the family and friends who came to dinner).

I quickly discovered switching the surrounds over to 'Full' mode for music playback. The sound of Pink Floyd's 'Wish you were here' album sounded just incredible to me and that took me back to the good ol' days, when the album was first released. I can still remember my Dad buying that album for me, wrapped in its black plastic album cover/sleeve and we listened to it together on an old Dynatron stereo, with Beovox 2702 speakers attached. My Dad had bought me the kit too, second-hand, for my Birthday.. Sadly 'Dad' is not around now to hear how the album sounds on the Sonos Beam/surrounds ... I’m sure however, he absolutely would have loved it.

“Wish you were here” (Dad), is still my 'go to' album ...and the Beam (with surrounds) has made it now sound that little bit more 'extra special' and (quite obviously) personal.

Great stories, guys! Thanks for sharing.