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Sonos is selling a limited-edition Beastie Boys speaker for charity
Prior to today, the easiest way to get the Beastie Boys on your Sonos Play:5 was to queue up your favorite songs from the trio. A new limited edition version of the speaker will always have the Rock and Roll Hall of Famers on it, even when you're listening to something else, thanks to a Beastie Boys-themed skin. Proceeds from the short run of speakers will go to charities that expand access to music and education.
Sonos confirms only newer speakers will support AirPlay 2
When Sonos announced forthcoming support for AirPlay 2 back in October, it was pretty vague about exactly what that would look like. Now, it's clarified matters, and while support is definitely on its way, there are a few caveats involved. In an announcement to MacObserver, the company says that AirPlay 2 will only be compatible with the Sonos One, Sonos Play:5 and Playbase. Older speakers won't have native support.
Apple will start selling Sonos speakers today
Sonos still offers one of the best experiences for those who want to keep music in sync throughout their home. But it's not a brand that everyone knows, and in a place like Best Buy or Target it has to fight a lot of other competitors for shelf space and attention (that's not the case in its massive NYC retail store, of course). Today, the company's retail presence is getting a boost thanks to a new partnership with Apple. Starting this afternoon, you'll be able to buy the Sonos Play:1 and Play:5 speakers on Apple's website in the US. By October 5th, the speakers will be on sale in 468 Apple retail stores around the world, and they'll be coming to more markets online in the following weeks.
Why Sonos thinks you're ready for a $500 speaker in your home
Sonos faces a unique challenge on the eve of launching the most important products it has developed in years. The company's mission statement is simple to sum up: It wants to make it easy to listen to high-quality music anywhere in your home. And it believes its new products, the flagship Play:5 speaker and new software called Trueplay, move that goal forward. But there's one part of that mission -- "in the home" -- that speaks to perhaps the toughest problem facing the company: How do you convince people who've grown up listening to music with their iconic iPod headphones to spend hundreds of dollars on an expensive home audio setup?
Sonos app hints at new speaker with gesture control
Keeping your new product secret until launch is a tricky business. Especially when you want to co-launch an update to your mobile app with renders and guides for said new product. A beta version of the Sonos app popped up online, and was promptly unpacked, and sifted through over at Zatznotfunny -- revealing images of a speaker not in the current Sonos range. The renders offer no sense of scale, so it's hard to say if the device could be something like a Play:6, or whether one of the (now years old) existing products is getting a facelift -- but there's definitely a sleeker, more modern design language going on. Perhaps most interesting, is that the renders hint at swipe/gesture control in lieu of buttons. Always (and literally) a nice touch. Right now that's all we have to go on, but we like what we see.
Sonos Sub review
More Info Sonos' wireless Sub adds extra thump to your Sonos system for $700 (ears-on) Sonos Play:3 review Sonos S5 ears-on review: a premium iPod speaker dock without the dock Every audio product Sonos has delivered so far has worked on the assumption that you would never need anything else after you bought it, whether it's linking to a sound system you already owned or an all-in-one system that Sonos built itself, like the Play:3 or Play:5 (born as the S5). The newly released Sub, by its nature, is entirely dependent on having one of the two Play speakers, and shows the company is becoming more of a traditional audio brand with a full ecosystem. A primary Sonos component can now be just the first step in a growing collection that improves as you expand it -- much as you'd buy a basic stereo, then better speakers, then more at a high-end audio shop. The Sub's $699 price certainly catapults any Sonos system into high-end territory, however, and sets some decidedly lofty expectations for how it will perform. We'll find out after the break if the sheer power and a few clever tricks are enough for the Sub to be an essential ingredient of a wireless home audio setup.%Gallery-158435%
