The Sonos system has been accessible for blind and low vision users for the past few years and now they have unveiled a new ‘Sonos One’ smart speaker that is capable of supporting multiple voice services.
At launch, music fans in the US, UK, and Germany can ask Amazon Alexa to control Sonos One out of the box, with full voice support for Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, Pandora, SiriusXM, and TuneIn. Alexa voice control for Spotify on Sonos One will be coming soon after launch.
Voice transport controls like pause, skip, volume up and down, and even asking what’s playing will be available for all other music services Sonos supports. With Sonos One, owners can use voice to control their entire Sonos home sound systems.
In 2018, the Sonos One will gain support for Google Assistant. The Sonos One speaker works with other Sonos devices as a standalone speaker, wirelessly paired for stereo sound, or used with PLAYBASE or PLAYBAR for surround sound.
Features:
- Designed from the ground up to deliver surprisingly rich sound from a speaker of its size.
- Driven by two Class-D digital amplifiers, one tweeter, and one mid-woofer.
- Includes a six-mic array and an adaptive noise suppression algorithm to focus on the right person and ensure the voice service understands everything clearly.
- Voice capture technology with echo cancelation allows the speaker to still hear you over the music. The volume also intelligently lowers, or “ducks,” when you speak to it so you don’t have to shout over the music ?.
- The light on the speaker will be illuminated if the microphones are active. The light is hardwired to the same circuit that powers the microphone array, so if the light is off, it means the microphone is off.
- Owners can use Trueplay to easily tune Sonos One to sound great no matter where it’s placed in the home.
- Sonos One is available in all-white and all-black matte finishes.
Millions of existing Sonos owners in the US, UK, and Germany will also be able to control their entire Sonos systems using Amazon Alexa, thanks to a free software update the company made available today. All that’s needed is any Alexa-enabled device like an Amazon Echo or Echo Dot and the Sonos skill for Alexa. Play a song, skip forward and back through playlists, target one room or an existing group of rooms, and adjust volume – all using your voice. Sonos owners will be able to access all of the innovative natural language voice controls of Alexa and only available on Amazon Music. Amazon Music customers can ask for music based on decade, genre, tempo, mood, or even lyrics if they can’t remember the name of a song.
Sonos also announced that it will begin supporting Apple’s AirPlay 2 in 2018, making it possible to play any sound from an iOS device – including YouTube videos and Netflix movies – on Sonos speakers throughout the house. Owners will also be able to ask any Siri-enabled device to control music on Sonos speakers.
You can pre-order the Sonos One here for $199. It will be released on October 24th.
