2022 marks the XNUMXth anniversary of Sonos. Over the past two decades, the company has mastered the art of hi-fi, pioneering smart speaker systems and intuitive control, and creating a brand that is now synonymous with music throughout the home.
Even though Sonos makes wireless audio easy, it took the company a while to get to this point, and it hasn't been without a completely smooth ride. A controversial decision to raise prices in 2021 means Sonos speakers are among the most expensive consumer hi-fi products on the market, while a decision to block older products was reversed after a public outcry.
However, there are many things to love about Sonos. Devices like the Sonos Arc, Sonos Move, and Sonos Beam often top our "best of" guides. In this feature, we take a shameless look back at 20 years of Sonos' greatest hits, with anecdotes from those who were around those days.
Sonos: The Early Years
Founded in 2002 by John MacFarlane, Tom Cullen, Trung Mai and Craig Shelburne, Sonos was built on a new premise: the home network is the future of music. The quartet of music lovers believed that one day meandering interconnects and complex stacks of hardware would no longer be necessary to enjoy great sound at home; in fact, no physical media is required.
To summarize, these are the greatest successes of Sonos:
ZonePlayer 100
CR100 Controller
Play: 1
reading bar
Sonos / IKEA SYMPHONIC
Beam (Gen 2)
Remember that in 2002 neither iTunes nor Spotify existed. The iPod had just come out and CDs were still pretty popular, although MP3s were definitely the way to go. The landscape of listening to music was changing, but in 2002, if he wanted to be surrounded by sound throughout his house, he just had to turn up the volume or do the work of running the necessary cables through the walls.
Stephen Rhead, Sonos Installed Solutions UK & Nordic: “When I started working with Sonos almost 12 years ago, we talked to resellers and installers. You had to ask, "Have you heard of Spotify?" If they said yes, then you could explain what Sonos is and how it works. If they didn't, the music stream would have to be explained, which blew them away.
When Sonos made its first showing at CES in 2005, it quickly became clear that the brand wasn't just another hi-fi wannabe. Bill Gates was one of the first to get a demo of the original ZonePlayer 100 (ZP100) and CR100 controllers at the Tech Show in Las Vegas.
When Sonos first launched, the company wasn't just selling a product, it was selling the idea of network audio, a whole new way to listen to music at home. So how hard was it to sell the idea of multi-piece music when Green Day's American Idiot was at the top of the charts? Very, apparently.
Tad Coburn, Principal Software Engineer: “Early versions of Sonos did not rely on the user's Wi-Fi router. We required that one of the Sonos players be connected via Ethernet to the user's router. other players could wirelessly communicate with this first player via SonosSet (which is Wi-Fi). Sonos definitely did not trust the user's router in 2005!
"Another thing to remember is that when Sonos first hit the market, there were almost no music streaming services. Our first products focused on the user's local library, a shared directory on their Mac PC, or a NAS drive where the user put all your ripped CDs in. That sentence probably doesn't even make sense to most people now…”
Now I understand why Sonos has over 1700 patents: we had to invent the future.
Sarah MorrisBut the brand's persistence (and some innovative mesh networking work) would soon take consumers hand in hand with a whole new multi-room music environment. Our way of interacting with music was about to fundamentally change.
“Bringing Sonos into my home was a game changer,” recalls Sara Morris, senior product manager for Sonos. “Now music is everywhere. Homework is the time to catch up on my favorite podcasts; dance parties are part of my routine; and if I want more popcorn, I can go to the kitchen and not miss the game. At the time, I didn't know all the work that went into making this magic happen, but now I understand why Sonos has over 1700 patents: we had to invent the future. »
According to Sonos' own "How It Began" blog (opens in a new tab), the first song played publicly on the ZP100 was No Sleep Till Brooklyn by the Beastie Boys. Sonos then released a limited-edition Beastie Boys Play:5 speaker in 2018, with all proceeds going to charity.
Reviews have been positive since the early days of Sonos, and both the ease of use and audio quality have been universally praised. But while sales were strong, something was missing from the ecosystem. This turned out to be the original Play:5 wireless speaker, introduced in 2009. It was followed by the Play:3 in 2011 and the Play:1 in 2013.
Sonos: better by design
Technological innovation may have been key to Sonos' success, but design has also been a touchstone. Minimalist, contemporary, almost architectural, the brand has refined its own design language over the years, achieving Red Dot Award status. With innovative finishes and materials (it even developed its own plastic resin for loudspeakers and subwoofers), its products are distinguished by a meticulous level of detail.
"The times that come to mind are when we're fussing over the details, working on something you might reasonably say isn't worth tackling, and yet we want to get it right," says Scott Fink, Sonos distinguished product manager. .
"For example, back in 2012, in the midst of the development of the Playbar (the first Sonos soundbar, released in 2013; direct ancestor of the amazing Sonos Beam), we made a fairly significant change to the fabric grill to improve heat dissipation on the the product. .After making the switch, everything worked fine. Thermal issues have been resolved. Acoustic performance was not affected. And the fit and finish was perfect. Except... a beta tester shared a photo of his Playbar at home with a faint grid pattern on the cloth grid.It didn't look right and we haven't seen it on any other unit.
"It turned out that the beta tester had a cat that liked to rub against the Playbar, which encouraged the tester to vacuum his Playbar every day. The frequent stretching and rubbing of the fabric against the underlying frame brought out the slight grid pattern. While it's unlikely that most customers will experience the issue, we didn't like the idea of Playbar's appearance being affected over time by someone who just wants to keep it clean.
"With an extremely short amount of time before mass production begins, the Playbar team sprang into action and converted an entire wing of our Santa Barbara engineering lab to suction test lines. To solve this problem, we had "We had to put various variations of the grid cloth through thousands of vacuum strokes. There wasn't time to automate the test lines; we had to vacuum by hand. So we've asked people from all over the company to come into the lab and, well, , suck it in. Engineers, designers, accountants, VPs... It didn't matter, their title, anyone who could spare an hour and had a cold arm would help.
"With the right combination of fabric, tension, and adhesive, we fixed the problem. We didn't have to, but I'm glad we did, so you don't have to live in a world where you have to choose between a nice soundbar and your cat.
We don't have to live in a world where you have to choose between a good soundbar and your cat.
scott finkIt's probably fair to say that the Sonos Playbase didn't enjoy all the success of the Playbar, but the 'base, which rode a short-lived wave of motherboard-style TV audio upgrades, was loved by all who used it and continue to use it. being admired for the precision of its construction.
More importantly, it turned out to be crucial to the Sonos products that followed.
"It's been really encouraging to hear an inordinate amount of love for Playbase from customers," says Fink. “It solves the problem of bringing amazing home theater sound into your home in such a unique way that I've noticed people go out of their way to tell us if they like the product.
“Our eyes in research and development are always looking to the future as we try to predict how we can best help and delight customers for years to come. We started to see trends like Dolby Atmos benefiting from upgraded speakers, and the rise in sales of extra-large TVs that end up wall-mounted, which were no longer aligned with the product's value proposition. So I'm very, very proud of the team, for having the discipline to not "turn the crank" on a next-gen release and instead focus on solving new home theater challenges.
"What's probably not obvious is that many parts and processes at Playbase have really evolved and continued to improve new Sonos products. The surround speaker design; the exceptional laminar airflow control through the bass port. A lot Playbase's learnings help us make the Sonos products of today and tomorrow even better.
Morris says: “Playbase is the result of many years of research into how people live; and the idea that we don't always want to see a speaker didn't escape the team. Years later we used this idea as a basis for other products and in our partnership with IKEA: people want sound but they don't always want to see the speaker. How could we produce sound, not loudspeakers? »
