Sonos Five Smart Speaker Review

[DanielT]

Well, SONOS has abandoned some of their earliest gear, which no longer works at all with their newer software/firmware. You have to stick with their old software, and make sure nothing ever gets updated. Will this happen again to current devices in 5 years? Who knows?

A lot of money to sink into a multi-room system that might not last longer than a few years. Traditional components don't have this issue. WiiM sells the same or very similar functionality at a fraction of the cost (though no speaker, yet), making it a better alternative for many.

Competition is good and WiiM and its products are the best thing that has happened in within in HiFi/ sound reproduction lately.

My comment was mostly about the speaker construction itself, not so much about software/firmware.

 

[ta240]

Well, SONOS has abandoned some of their earliest gear, which no longer works at all with their newer software/firmware. You have to stick with their old software, and make sure nothing ever gets updated. Will this happen again to current devices in 5 years? Who knows?

A lot of money to sink into a multi-room system that might not last longer than a few years. Traditional components don't have this issue. WiiM sells the same or very similar functionality at a fraction of the cost (though no speaker, yet), making it a better alternative for many.

It is a weird world of borrowing the functionality of products from a company for as long as they see fit. Especially when dealing with a type of product that in the past could easily last decades.

 

[MerlinGS]

I may be wrong, but I think the engineer in charge of speaker design at Sonos is the same individual who designed the Boston Acoustics e100, apparently a well designed speaker.

 

[CedarX]

A question relative to the basic architecture... MTM center channel speakers have been regularly tested at ASR and it looks that it is considered as "less than ideal" or flat out "bad" architecture for center channel speakers. Is the Sonos Five configuration with its 3x woofers + 3x tweeters arranged in two rows fundamentally better? And if yes, why other manufacturers have not adopted a similar configuration for their center channel speakers... Or is it a case of careful design from Sonos, ironing out all the details & pitfalls, to make the speaker work? In other words no real benefit to this particular [3W+3T / 2R] architecture...

 

[GXAlan]

Assuming it runs the same way, then the measurements would be the same. On axis would be identical. Just swap the horizontal directivity charts for vertical and vice versa.

For what it is worth’s the Sonos Five turns off the side firing tweeters when it is vertical. I personally found the imaging precise but it was too narrow of a MLP so I preferred to have two horizontal stereo speakers.

The weakness is that the stereo config only allows a single sub whereas the HT products allow two subs.

The other challenge is that the Sonos Arc soundbar cannot be configured as a center channel. You can add two wireless rears and two wireless subs. With the Era300, your two wireless rears which are stereo with upfiring act as 7.4.2 when paired with the Arc. That said, if you had four wireless satellites it would be really something special.

Now that the Sonos Five has done well, please measure the Era300. When I had mine, I thought the Era 300 was far superior in sound that the Sonos Five in terms of overall timbre and balance. I returned the Era300 since I thought an Era500 would be right around the corner

Why do these traditional dedicated HiFi manufacturers still exist when a Sonus based solution performs like that? A solution for the masses that also satisfies a small HiFi minority.Maybe I'm exaggerating for the sake of discussion..or not...I seriously don't know. We'll see what happens in the future.

I own the Sonos Five (as well as the Arc and Beam and Subs).

Sonos is really really good but there is compression at higher volumes and I don’t think it has the “resolution” of an audiophile setup.

I may be wrong, but I think the engineer in charge of speaker design at Sonos is the same individual who designed the Boston Acoustics e100, apparently a well designed speaker.

Not sure, but Doug Button (formerly of JBL Professional) was behind the Era 300.

Sonos is supposed to have some of the largest anechoic chambers in the world.

 

[DanielT]

Sonos is really really good but there is compression at higher volumes and I don’t think it has the “resolution” of an audiophile setup.

Or a low powered amp driven into clipping? Those amplifiers are probably not much to hang on the Christmas tree, so to speak.

Doesn't Sonus have limiters that kick in?

 

[GXAlan]

Or a low powered amp driven into clipping? Those amplifiers are probably not much to hang on the Christmas tree, so to speak.

Doesn't Sonus have limiters that kick in?

Yeah, it has limiters. You won’t hear normal clipping but I think it attenuates differently. What I found was that it seemed to kick in at lower volumes than I expected.

Maybe it’s all sighted bias, but even though the speaker sounded good, I didn’t use it much. It was better with the subwoofer which applies a crossover so that the Sonos Five doesn’t have to reproduce as much bass.

That makes me think that it does a better job reproducing a log sweep than multitone/IMD.

To be fair, I am talking about comparing the Sonos Five against something several times more expensive like the JBL 708P.

 

[amirm]

Now that the Sonos Five has done well, please measure the Era300.

Boy, that thing has drivers pointing every which way. What would be the "on-axis" vector??? While I could measure anything, a speaker that heavily relies on every reflection may not be represented as well in the graphics.

 

[Gwreck]

Boy, that thing has drivers pointing every which way. What would be the "on-axis" vector??? While I could measure anything, a speaker that heavily relies on every reflection may not be represented as well in the graphics.

I am assuming the directivity heat map would look like a Kandinsky painting.

 

[napilopez]

It's nice to see these speakers measured, and to see them perform so well. These hold a bit of a special place for me. Back when I was reviewing speakers, these were actually my "wake up call" about the hi-fi audio industry.

I distinctly remember playing these side by side against a model from a popular hi-fi brand fully expect the Sonos to lose. It didn't. It sounded better on pretty much every track. It's what led me to start researching about the science of sound and what actually makes some speakers sound better than others.

A handful of conversations with Sonos folks over the years always left me impressed with how goal-oriented they are in their acoustic designs. No speaker is the best at everything, but they really seem to try to optimize for the expected use cases with science, while looking for useful innovations too.

On that note, it's also worth noting that these were one of the very first mainstream speakers to come with any kind of room correction (TruePlay). Still one of the very few, in fact. If I recall correctly, at the time it was basically an MMM sweep using an iPhone as a microphone.

Anyway, not that Amir needs to remeasure these, but as has been mentioned these do have an orientation sensor. From my recollection, they were somehow more "hi-fi" in the vertical orientation... but that was over 8 years ago so take that with a huge grain of salt! In retrospect, it might've just been that the horizontal directivity is more even in the vertical orientation, so they had better imaging (assuming the directivity doesn't change too much due to the orientation sensor).

 

[A Surfer]

It changes its output based on whether it's in a stereo pair or not. In stereo it only uses the middle tweeter.

Not what I heard. I thought that when it lay on it's side, regardless of being in a stereo pair, that is the only time that all of the drivers fire. Perhaps I'm incorrect, but that was my understanding.

 

[Robbo99999]

What's the main use case (& configuration) for this type of speaker? I thought I should know before voting.

 

[staticV3]

What's the main use case (& configuration) for this type of speaker? I thought I should know before voting.

Look no further than Sonos' product page: https://www.sonos.com/en/shop/five

 

[Deleted member 48726]

In what sense? Every speaker Sonos has ever sold except for one (the original Play:5) still works with the newest app, and even that Play:5 still works fine on the original app which they’ve continued to make available. Any “smart” device is going to have a limited lifespan by nature but it’s my impression that Sonos actually has one of the better records on that front. The Sonos speaker I bought for the kitchen almost 10 years ago now is still working just as well as it did the day I installed it.

That was ONLY because of the outrage they got back then. I remember it very well. They caved in and kept the old speakers alive not because of kindness but because they faced a shitstorm and were scared to loose money.

 

[A Surfer]

These are lifestyle audio products, and clearly Sonos attempts to balance this while also crafting very nice sounding products. They of course create for their Ecosystem, nothing wrong with that. All companies seek to enhance their client retention/loyalty as much as possible.

 

[A Surfer]

That was ONLY because of the outrage they got back then. I remember it very well. They caved in and kept the old speakers alive not because of kindness but because they faced a shitstorm and were scared to loose money.

And that differs from all of the for profit businesses how? Do you genuinely believe this is not normal corporate behaviour? I am not aware of Sonos positioning themselves as a social enterprise so not sure if they should be expected to behave any differently than any other company in their industry would likely act in the same situation.

It isn't as if Sonos is only responsible for the totality of the business environment they play in. There are other agents at work and Sonos clearly has to balance competing needs and a very dynamic business environment.

 

[Deleted member 48726]

And that differs from all of the for profit businesses how? Do you genuinely believe this is not normal corporate behaviour? I am not aware of Sonos positioning themselves as a social enterprise so not sure if they should be expected to behave any differently than any other company in their industry would likely act in the same situation.

It isn't as if Sonos is only responsible for the totality of the business environment they play in. There are other agents at work and Sonos clearly has to balance competing needs and a very dynamic business environment.

Did I say they were? -No. I did not.

It isn't as if Sonos is only responsible for the totality of the business environment they play in. There are other agents at work and Sonos clearly has to balance competing needs and a very dynamic business environment.

I was only reacting to the comment praising Sonos for their decision on longevity. Was it not for the people standing up, it wouldn't have happened. They were forced.

 

[MayaTlab]

The main thing that's interesting about this speaker to me is how they ignore conventional wisdom about the ideal sound power response for a very wide directivity source.

Generally, companies that make very wide directivity speakers target a sound power similar to a forward-firing monopole: downwards sloping. Invariably, that means the direct sound is downwards-sloping as well, because the direct sound and sound power are nearly the same. Two examples are OG HomePod

and the old Mirage OMD series (here, from top to bottom, OMD-15 tower, OMD C1 center, OMD-5 mini-speaker).

Yet here we have a flattish on-axis/LW target, which combined with the directivity means sound power is flatter as well:

I'm not sure what to make of that, except that now I'm curious to try one and see how it sounds compared to an OG HomePod and an elite forward-firing speaker of more conventional directivity and similar size, e.g. as JBL 705 or Neumann KH 120 II.

I have been thinking about this, but I am not certain that this line of thinking can be applied to speakers such as the HomePod - and while I don't know how the Sonos Five operates, perhaps to it as well.

The HomePod may behave like an omnidirectional speaker if it's the middle of a room and you feed it a mono signal, but it no longer behaves like an omnidirectional speaker if it's against a wall and you feed it a typical stereo music signal. Sonos mentions that, when placed horizontally, the Five does seem to orient the R and L channels to the respective tweeters but do we know exactly how ? And what does that imply in terms of analysing sound power and directivity ?

 

[A Surfer]

Did I say they were? -No. I did not.



I was only reacting to the comment praising Sonos for their decision on longevity. Was it not for the people standing up, it wouldn't have happened. They were forced.

Fair enough, and perhaps I misjudged the context of your post, but it did seem that you perhaps were making a value judgement. If not, that was my error and please accept my apology. I actually don't think that Sonos, or any other serious business, really wants to lose customers, but they also have to balance the costs of taking activities such as they did designed to retain customers in difficult situations.

 

[Ron Texas]

I have never auditioned anything from Sonos nor have I thought about buying their products. What I do know is they sell very well. Thank you for an interesting review @amirm