UPDATE
Sonos has announced that its speaker-tuning Trueplay technology is now available - you just need to update your Sonos app.
The software update is available for Play:1, Play:3 and Play:5 devices and as this YouTube video shows, the technology is impressive - especially given that it is completely free.
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Sonos is back with new high-end, flagship speakers and an innovative way to make sure they sound perfect no matter where you put them in your home.
The original Sonos Play:5 has been the home audio hero's flagship smart speaker since it was released some five years ago. This newly announced version has been designed to deliver a listening experience as close as possible to the original studio master you will hear from such a compact speaker.
Sonos has completely redesigned the driver layout. Where the previous Play:5 was rocking a pair of tweeters, a pair of mid-range drivers and a beefy built-in subwoofer the new Sonos Play:5 has gone for a driver array with three mid-woofers and three crystal clear tweeters.
This new setup is part of what allows the new Play:5 speakers to be aligned in three different orientations.
The standard, standalone horizontal orientation is familiar, but you can also pair them up vertically if you want to create a stereo effect with a tightly focused sweet-spot for shutting the outside world out and absorbing yourself in your favourite music.
You can also pair them up horizontally which will create a far wider stereo soundstage to really fill the room up.
The new Sonos Play:5 are available now for $499 (£429 and AUS$749).
Keep true
When you're investing in such high-quality audio you want to make sure your speakers sound as good as possible and Sonos has created an iOS app to make you an instant audio calibration engineer. At the touch of a button.
Life gets in the way of actually being able to set your home up as an acoustically perfect environment and traditional speaker acoustic tuning is stuck in the realms of the hyper-rich having audio specialists fitting their Linn systems for them.
Sonos' Trueplay application though simply uses the microphone on either your iPhone or iPad, a simple tone from your Sonos speaker and is then able to calibrate it specifically to your room.
The app analyses the tone sent from the speaker and measures how the sound bounces off the various walls and materials used in your home.
The downside is that it's calibrating for what your iPhone or iPad can hear through its microphone, not what the human ear will hear, but as something you can use in your own home it's an impressively simple bit of speaker tuning kit.
Sonos is also working on Android support for the future, but right now mic calibration is just too varied between individual Android devices for it to work properly right now.
Trueplay isn't restricted to the new Sonos Play:5 speakers though, it's being made available for all Sonos Play:1, Play:3 and existing Play:5 systems.
