Audio company Sonos, makers of the popular wireless music system, is simplifying its product and effectively reducing the price by £40 after ditching the need for its wireless “bridge” dongle.
Facing stuff competition in home audio devices from Pure, LG and Samsung, Sonos has redeveloped its software so that it can connect directly to existing home wireless networks, rather than using a “bridge”.
Sonos is also working on high resolution audio, the company told the Guardian, to deliver professional quality audio with file sizes as much as 34 times the size of a typical MP3 track.
The Sonos bridge will still be available as a Wi-Fi signal booster, with a more powerful version called “boost” for homes that suffer badly from Wi-Fi blackspots.
“We’ve spent the last couple of years trying to figure out if we could deliver rock solid wireless experience through software,” explained Patrick Spence, Sonos’s chief commercial officer. “The vast majority of people can now just get started with a speaker on their existing wireless, which is easier, faster and cheaper.”
Those with a Sonos home cinema set up, using five speakers and a subwoofer in a lounge or living room for instance, will still require a Sonos bridge connected to their router, due to the demands of data rate and signal strength over Wi-Fi, in order to maintain sync with a TV.
Pure’s Jongo multiroom audio setup boasts microsecond timing of audio, claiming better sound quality than Sonos at a lower cost, while LG and Samsung recently entered the space with their own wireless music systems. Audio technology company DTS – which creates standards for cinema, audio and DVDs among others – also became a competitor with its Play-Fi system recently.
‘Big technical challenge’
As part of Sonos’s pursuit of music streaming, it has recently been looking at high resolution 24-bit music; the kind that Neil Young’s Pono Player and Linn records have been pushing about recently.
“It’s a big technical challenge for us, but it’s one we’ve definitely been working on,” explained Spence. “We’re looking at overcoming the limitations of streaming 24-bit in the home, as there seems to be a lot of momentum around it at the moment, so stay tuned.”
Hi-res audio files, also known as studio master tracks, are much larger than the highly compressed MP3 and AAC files commonly streamed and downloaded from Spotify, iTunes, Google Play and Amazon. Albums of studio master tracks can take up between 2GB and 5GB of space, while MP3s typically take up 5MB per track.
The increased file size and subsequent data rate required to stream hi-res music over a Wi-Fi network causes issues for bandwidth and technology.
But Spence is positive about Young’s moves. “Anything anyone’s doing to help bring high quality music listening back is a great thing,” he said.
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