Sonos addressed the most common complaint with their headphones, with their new Ace Ultra cans. The Ace Ultra are able to be addressed directly as a device within the Sonos ecosystem, with a single button press allowign the user to transfer sound between headphones and nearby speakers without a phone. They cost $449 with general availability on September 29th.
That same day will see the introduction of the Beam Ultra, with 9 drivers stuffed into its small form factor, including two upward-firing speakers and a redesigned center channel. The Beam Ultra will run $699. Sonos has also announced their Sonos Fabric feature, which allows a pair of portable speakers such as the Play and Move 2 to function as surround speakers. Sonos mentioned engineering required to seamlessly network the portable speakers directly to the soundbar to ensure latency low enough to have a seamless home theater experience.
I attended a demo of the new Beam Ultra soundbar at CEDIA, demonstrating the new 7.1.2 Dolby Atmos abilities, with a fun interplay with colored lighting controls. Upfiring Atmos remains as ephemeral an experience as ever, though the Jurassic Park scene of velociraptors stalking children did not showcase height channel effects. The use of Play speakers as rear channels was more impressive, despite some asymmetric placement to emphasize lighting and viewing demo rather than ideal speaker positioning. For those already invested in Sonos’ portable speaker ecosystem, this could be a lightweight and cabling free approach to dynamically add surround capabilities. No word on if the less expensive Roam series will join in, though battery and sound limitations may keep that reality from manifesting.
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