About three years ago we bought our first Sonos speakers. Today we have a total of 9 of them. We have 4 pair of the Sonos One and one stereo Sonos. They are placed around the house and work in conjunction with our home sound system.
I absolutely love the Sonos speaker system. The company by-line sums up their products really well: Any music, any time, anywhere. Using their smartphone/tablet or desktop apps, you can select any music source to which you have access and play that music on any of the speakers in any room (or rooms) of your home.
For example: We can play music from my iTunes music library in my office while playing music from Steve’s iTunes library in his office while playing Pandora in the living room while playing music files located on my phone in the guest room, and Spotify in the den. We also have speakers in the master bedroom, the master bathroom, the backyard, and the upstairs outdoor terrace. The possibilities are endless. Now, typically, we just play one or two musical source(s) all over the house, and all of it is in perfect sync.
TruePlay Tuning
The Sonos speaker system tunes their speakers for the specific acoustical properties found in the room in which they reside. And here’s the best part: the audio sounds unbelievable. And, of course, you can adjust the volume level independently in any room.
AirPlay 2
Recently, Apple released AirPlay 2. With AirPlay 2, you can send the audio from any app on the iPhone or Mac desktop to any AppleTV in the house. You can also send the audio from the AppleTV to any other AppleTV.
Naturally, Sonos stepped up to the challenge, and with at least one of their newer speakers in your Sonos system, you can send the AirPlay 2 audio to the Sonos speaker system as well. We added a new pair of Sonos speakers to our system in my office specifically to be able to AirPlay anything to our entire Sonos system. As best I can tell at this point, with the exception of Spotify, when using AirPlay, you can not split out the individual rooms with AirPlay. You can only play the music to the entire system at once.
Sonos Versus AirPod
I’ve always been an Apple fan boy. I have friends who have the new HomePod speaker from Apple, and they really like it. However, I’ve heard mixed reviews about the quality of the sound they produce. None have dissed the HomePod. They just don’t seem to love it the way I love Sonos.
I’ve not decided to purchase a HomePod for two reasons.
- We already have the house “fully speakered out” and have no need for an additional speaker pair.
- The HomePod is a shockingly more expensive than the Sonos speaker ($150 more–each! when compared to the equivalent Sonos product model), and I really doubt that the HomePod sounds any better and, according to some at least, perhaps not as good.
Finally, voice control is available for Sonos through Alexa. However, I want Google and everybody else out of my home, not listening to everything that goes on in it or invading my privacy any further than Google already does.
I’ve heard mixed reviews about how well the HomePod works with Siri using voice control. At least I like the fact that Apple says they are not listening to anything in your home until you say “Hey Siri…”. I trust Apple just a tiny bit more than I trust Google. As Steve has always said, “Separate but evil.”