Product suggestion - Proper PC soundbar with speakerphone

Certainly would mark a move into a different market, since it wouldn’t sync with other Sonos speakers, due to the design of the software, but then again, Sonos made that jump with the Sonos Ace headphones.

Not sure that the market of computer speakers isn’t already saturated, but I don’t have access to market data. It would be an interesting thing, to be sure. 

Why would it not sync with other Sonos speakers. I'm sure Sonos could make this also happen.

Syncing depends on buffering, and real-time video/audio on a computer monitor will not sync with other Sonos rooms due to the buffer needed.

Sonos has chosen a delay of 75ms in order to synch ‘rooms’ in their software. You see this on all ‘rooms’ in general, so most often you don’t notice it. In a Home theater ‘room’, they use a low latency/low distance 5Ghz signal to sync the surrounds and Sub(s), but as soon as you add another Sonos ‘room’ to that, you end up paying the 75 ms delay for the connected room(s). In order to change that behavior, I suspect that they’d have to rewrite all of the Sonos operating system, which, amongst other things, could obsolete a slew of customers, systems, and be a substantial cost, even if it is possible. I’ve never been a coder, but it seems like if it was ‘easy’ to do, they’d have already done so, as the market changes.

Most Sonos soundbars rely on HDMI-ARC - most computers do not do ARC, so this would be a niche product.

I would disagree. For me this is just an upgraded Sonos Ray and I think would very much appeal to the PC and WFH crowd.

Apologies, what I meant by syncing with other Sonos speakers was not syncing computer audio but phone initiated audio.

I you require something with noise cancelling microphones for WFH, I would suggest looking at a “PC Speaker Phone”, specifically designed for handsfree calls from PC, rather than a “Soundbar”

I have this but the sound is poor, this is the exact reason for the suggestion. The suggested product really does not currently exist in the market and I think would sell well.

Few manufacturers eg Sennheiser, offer “Speaker Phones” and “Soundbars”, two distinct markets.

Audio is not initiated from your phone. Your phone or tablet is just a controller.  However, I think your point stands in that the PC soundbar could play audio from the PC the same way TV audio is played on soundbars, or the way that bluetooth audio is played on Ace. 

Speaking of Ace, you can use Ace for phone calls and Teams meetings currently, as you can numerous other headset/headphone/plug devices.  The question is, is there a market for speakers?  Many people would not want this simply because they want to isolate the audio they are listening to, as well as the audio being picked up on the other side.  Even if a normal speaker could noise cancel well, I don’t know that people would get the same piece of mine that headphones gives them, nor do they feel like it’s a problem that needs to be solved.

Even if you did not want to ‘wear your speakers’, many webcams have mics on them, so you don’t need a soundbar with a mic to resolve that issue.

Perhaps another problem is that the form factor would be difficult for this, since it would need to sit under monitors which do not have a uniform footprint or weight needed to carry.  Sonos had a similar product for TVs years ago, the playbase, but it could afford to be bigger and cover a wider number of TV stands since it would not be taking up valuable desk space.  Personally, I have my monitor mounted via clamp to free up as much desk space as possible.  The last thing I want is a soundbar taking up that saved space.  If I really was concerned about computer audio (I’m not personally), I would go with a normal pair of wired dumb PC speakers to give better stereo separation and only use the back corners of the desk...the least valuable space on the desk.