Hearing is believing
Sonos makes enjoying quality audio anywhere you go a reality
by WILL FIFIELD
Listening to music while I do the dishes after dinner, or enjoying a podcast while I mow the lawn, transforms household chores into a richer, more enjoyable time. Home audio company Sonos makes setting up a quality sound system throughout your home easy by combining resonant, clear speakers and sound-system components, such as amplifiers and turn-tables, with exceptionally flexible software. With Sonos portable speakers, you can extend the experience to beach outings, camping trips, outdoor chores and more.
Setting up a whole-home sound system that can play audio throughout your home may not sound like an ambitious mission today, but when Sonos launched in 2002, it was a very expensive proposition that delivered hit-or-miss results.
Sonos founders John MacFarlane, Tom Cullen, Trung Mai and Craig Shelburne, a group of entrepreneurs who had worked together in a successful internet-based business before starting Sonos, foresaw that the internet was going to be the predominant source of music. They believed this presented an opportunity to revolutionize the whole-home audio concept.
"The mission from the very onset was making whole-home sound, which didn't work very well at the time, something that is easy to enjoy," says Nick Millington, Sonos' chief product officer.
He says they also wanted to make it easier to set up and more affordable, so anyone could enjoy quality audio throughout their home. And, instead of being analog and device-dependent, they wanted their system to be digital and smart so it could have access to all the music people were beginning to enjoy through the internet.
The sound of music
“From the beginning, Sonos’ audio philosophy has been to reproduce the artist’s intent,” says Millington. “But making good-sounding speakers is kind of an art in and of itself.”
To get the quality of sound they were after, the company worked with accomplished recording engineers, including Giles Martin of Abbey Roads Studios. “His job is to essentially listen to records that he’s made, play them on Sonos systems and then sit down with our engineers and tune the hardware and software so that it sounds exactly like what he heard in the studio,” Millington explains. He says that in a world in which so many speakers are trying to get your attention with lots of bass or shrill treble, purity is what makes Sonos stand out.
