Sonos Open House: Live updates from the Sonos 27 product launch

We just got out of a long demo and got quite a few questions answered, including the one that we got from our commenter earlier today! Nate is hard at work putting together his impressions and that should be up here shortly. Thanks for joining us today, we'll be closing this liveblog soon. We appreciate you all here hanging out with us!

We were also able to try the Ace Ultra's ability to grab audio from the soundbar and play it through the headphones instead. The original Ace was able to do this as well (at least after some long-awaited software updates), so this isn't a major new feature. But as someone who has never watched a movie at home with a pair of headphones, they did a great job reproducing all of the audio madness from the F1 scene as well. 

We also got to see Sonos Fabric in action, as the demo team brought in a pair of Play speakers which were placed behind us. As promised, they automatically connected to the system and added rear surround audio. That made a huge difference in the overall immersion; panning audio was much more noticeable, and there was nice reverb on the announcer voices as well. 

Alright, Cherlynn and I just got our first demo. We got to hear the Sonos Beam Ultra in a few configurations: on its own, with a pair of Play speakers as surrounds and with the Ace Ultra headphones.

It's hard to tell in such an open space how much difference the new speaker array in the Beam Ultra contributes to a sense of immersion — but it sure sounds loud, and good. We watched a scene from F1 that had a lot going on, including announcer voice-overs, dialog in the car and lots of ambient sounds like engine noise, helicopters flying over, fireworks and so forth.

It was all nicely balanced, with a pretty impressive bass presence given that there wasn't a subwoofer connected. I couldn't really get a sense for how much the side- and upwards-firing drivers contributed to this, because there aren't really walls or a ceiling for audio to bounce off.

And here's the new Beam Ultra. Looks the same from far away but up close you can see the top has perforations for letting sound through, as well as a redesigned interface. 

Here are the Ace Ultra headphones! 

We're off now to try and get some in-person demos of Sonos 27 and Sonos Voice. I'm actually pretty intrigued by the idea of custom agents and multiple third-party and first-party models co-existing. We'll be back shortly with our impressions, stick around!

OK, with the presentation wrapped it is time to go see if we can experience some of the demos for ourselves. Hang tight and hopefully we'll have some first impressions of the new hardware as well as some software tricks soon!

Conrad came out without his mic to thank everyone that's here, which doesn't just include reporters and Sonos company people but also supporters from Reddit. 

Honestly though this is what the headphones should have been the first time.

Of course, I'd need a new soundbar... and the two speakers, not to mention the headphones. Better start digging change out from under my couch.

I already have been thinking about a pair of Play speakers, and this functionality would give them a completely different and intriguing use case. 

I also love the idea of two portable speakers automatically becoming rear surround sound speakers. I've never set up surrounds, but this might get me to try it.

For me, it's the Ace Ultra — headphones that are a full-fledged part of the Sonos ecosystem sounds great to me. Being able to bounce music from my turntable to a pair of wireless headphones is pretty cool. 

Now that things appear to be wrapping up, what did you like most of the news today, Nate? 

Conrad's formal presentation appears to be done and now we're getting a highlight video here. 

"The end result is a home that delivers any mood in any moment; that is where we are going and this is just the beginning."

Conrad challenges us to find a company that can do all four of these things at once (sound, design, software... and something else I missed).

"The intelligence you already trust should work better in a Sonos home than it does anywhere else." 

Conrad's talking about the company's sound quality bonafides, its hardware design skills in addition to everything else it has introduced today. Excellence in sound quality, design and intelligence is the goal.

Wrap-up time — the hardware piece of this actually feels a lot simpler than the software capabilities that are being teased here. Sounds like they're going at a very deliberate pace too, to avoid any... issues.

Sonos Custom Agents is a "technology preview" for now but the company intends to make it a full product next year.

"Three agents, three frontier models, three distinct personalities all created by me." 

Finally, a "trivia champion" powered by Gemini is telling us about some major historical events that have taken place on September 1.

 Curator's trick is that it'll also find concerts related to what is playing in addition to having information on the actual songs playing.

This seems like a lot for a company that botched its last big app update. Hopefully its proves me wrong!

Curator is talking about the music playing, giving some context on what's playing.

Kitchen Helper is powered by Anthropic, and it has a distinct personality. Now he's connecting to "Curator." 

He's asking for recipe recommendations. And for something "French" to go along with the meal.

One more demo here to see the different agents. "Hey Sonos connect me to kitchen helper."

And they can all run on the same speaker, with Sonos Custom Agents.

He's talking about having multiple agents, each with its own voice, summon phrase, powered by a different model. 

So we've seen app, voice and AI control. Conrad says he's ending on one thing that no one else is doing.

Sonos27MCP will be available a week from today in open access.

Sonos is partnering with ChatGPT to make this work, but any AI that uses MCP will be able to do this.

He's now asking it to find some music that people have been talking about on TikTok, "Maybe something new but shoegazy-ish" and play it to the grouped speakers in the office. 

Demo time again; Conrad's going to a laptop and running ChatGPT in a browser tab.

Sonos27mcp is an open interface for model context protocol; it lets you invite any AI agent to discover and work with your Sonos system.

"Every other company in our category sees something to lock out, we see an opportunity for choice."

"Most of you already have an AI you trust for other parts of your day: Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini. Maybe something you even built yourself." 

We don't know yet what is powering this knowledge base yet, but it's a pretty big expansion from the voice assistant's humble origins. English availability during open access this fall.

"Optimize for the common case, reach for the horsepower when the moment comes." 

Feels like there's a ChatGPT or Claude cameo coming...

He's talking about how most of our commands take a round trip to a data center and a model that does the work for you.

Forth thing is that it has to be fast, and it has to be built in to the system.

"When you ask, the world's knowledge should be right there."

"Hey Sonos what temperature do I need to cook a pork tenderloin to?" The speaker answered... another thing that existing Sonos doesn't do (at least with its own voice assistant). 

Third thing is sometimes you do want to ask "bigger questions" and the system should know the answer.

Customers want to play music, move sound around the house, turn on night mode when they're watching SNL, maybe set a mood with some lights. They mostly just want to understand a request the way that people would understand it.

As someone who's attended launches by companies like Amazon and Google, I have to say this idea of speaking more naturally to a digital assistant is a common theme.

Second thing Sonos hears from customers: meet them where they are, not where the tech wants to pull them.

The old Sonos voice assistant very much cannot execute commands like these. 

"Hey Sonos, play some jazz. Actually not jazz, something with that Drive-By Truckers vibe." Music starts again! 

"Hey Sonos, play me some folk-pop from that guy in... what's the band, Water From Your Eyes?" Music starts.

Time for another demo! 

One: you should just be able to talk. 

He says they visited homes to see what people were trying to say to their speaker and had four findings.

Sonos 27 as an "entirely new way to interact with Sonos with voice." 

"They were good at setting timers, though."

The problem was that the assistants understood too little of what you asked, they stumbled, you had to guess exactly what they wanted you to say. 

He's now going back over the Sonos One from 2017 that had voice assistants built in. Hands-free, screen-free control was the goal. 

Conrad's now talking about the fact that Sonos lives inside your phone or tablet, which comes with its own challenge — you're going to get bombarded with notifications that you might be trying to ignore. 

Some big updates for iOS: it'll work with Shortcuts, so you can build your own routines and ask Siri to run them.

This is a fun feature: the Sonos app now has a universal volume gesture that you can use anywhere in the app. If you make a "turn" gesture like you're adjusting a volume knob, it'll adjust the volume accordingly.

The app has a new tabbed navigation for home, system and search. It's been rolling out in early access this summer but will be available to everyone this fall.

Conrad is now in the "bedroom" setting showing off an iPad-optimized version of the app. It definitely looks like it uses the space better than before. 

Now we're moving on to the Sonos app. "Our customers have shared a lot with us about what's been working and what's not in the app. Trust me, I've heard it all."

Portable Surrounds will work with Arc Ultra, Beam Ultra, and the 2nd-gen Beam speaker.

Conrad is breaking down the tech here that makes this work. It starts with the accelerometers that can tell when the Play speakers were moving. When they settle in place, the speakers emit an ultra high frequency tone so that the portables and soundbar know they're in the same place and they link up. 

This is a neat idea in theory, if a bit wonky in the demo. 

I believe the whole point of this event will be to let us check this stuff out ourselves soon, so we'll hopefully see how it works soon.

Conrad is showing how he can get a pair of the portable Play speakers and bringing them into the living room. When he sets them in position in the living room, the surround sound is supposed to come to life. But, we have a demo that isn't working! Classic tech event goodness right there.

And now we're getting details on the Sonos Fabric features that make the Beam Ultra unique.

Like the Ace Ultra, the Beam Ultra is up for pre-order now and available everywhere on September 29.

It has four levels of speech enhancement, because Conrad says clear dialog is the number one thing customers ask for.

Now we're talking about the Beam Ultra which runs 7.1.2 Dolby Atmos.

Essentially, the Sonos system is able to move music between the headphones and speakers. This means you don't have to play music from a phone or other piece of hardware — they'll just work with the Sonos app. 

This is starting with an "early access" program, which gives customers the ability to opt in to new software experiences. This is giving Sonos the ability to get feedback on new updates from its customers. Definitely feels like an acknowledgement and way to work around the issues it had in 2024 with its app launch.

This demo is starting with music playing from a turntable, and with one press of a button it pulls the music from the speaker into the headphones. It stopped playing out loud and is now on the headphones.

And he can "throw" the music from the headphones to the soundbar he's in front of with another button press.

He's saying Sonos knew they had to be a "full member" of the Sonos system. It can securely link to the Sonos Fabric / system.

Conrad has the agave-colored headphones but it's hard to see them as anything but a nice dark grey in this space.

They're up for pre-order today, on sale and available on September 29. 

The driver is brand new, as well. And there's an adaptive EQ feature on board; the headphones will tune themselves every time you wear them based on how they fit in that exact moment.

Ace Ultra has a ten-microphone array with twice the noise-cancelling power of the original Ace. 35-hour battery life, with 3 hours of battery from 3 minutes of charging.

He's also touting the benefits of its 25 years of working on this and figuring things out. And now we're going to see some of the new tricks in Sonos 27 with the Ace Ultra.

We're going to get some demos momentarily, but Conrad let us know that there are around 50 million devices in 17 million homes around the world.

If you're curious about news coverage of the event, our articles are now live:

• Sonos Beam Ultra soundbar
• Sonos Ace Ultra headphones
• Sonos 27 platform news

Fourth promise is products that work better together. This is the part doing the most work under the hood. It's called Sonos Fabric, a technology that lets your system understand where all your hardware is, what it is capable of, and how it works together.

Third promise is seamless control your way — app, voice assistant, in your browser, in your favorite music app.

Living room is nothing like the tiled bathroom which is nothing like your patio, etc.

Second promise is sound that is tuned to your home.

Sonos 27 is built on four promises. First is an open approach to your audio ecosystem, however you get it.

It's not a home OS, for home appliances. It's an OS "for the way your home feels. It's a mood assistant." 

Conrad just slipped a pair of the new Sonos Ace Ultra headphones around his neck, but said that he wants to focus on software more than hardware at the start. Sonos 27 is the name of the company's updated audio operating system for the home.

Of course, we're getting new hardware that "we think is kind of Ultra." 

Basically admitting that the original Ace were nice headphones, but didn't really come with the things that make Sonos significant. 

He's talking about when they started making headphones and that it was a moment where the company realized their problem was they had a beautiful pair of headphones, which is something lots of other companies make.

"We have made so many wonderful things, and yet, somehow, in the middle of it all we stopped talking about what brings them all together. The thing that makes Sonos Sonos."

"We learned household to household how sound helps a collection of rooms become a home."

Of course, he's recapping the Sonos ethos of fill your home with music, any song anywhere in the house.

CEO Tom Conrad is up and discussing how four guys in Santa Barbara realized that the internet was about to become the "infinte jukebox" but it was stuck on a PC.

Other hits include going portable with the Move and Roam, the voice assistant, and the more recent Sonos Play.

And things are kicking off with a look back at the last 20-ish years of Sonos products, including vintage items like the Play:3. 

Presentation is about to begin, it's basically pitch dark in here now. 

It's worth noting that Sonos doesn't usually do events quite like this. They'll often brief the press ahead of time and do in-person events where you get to see and try products before they are announced, but they don't do live announcements. Of course, in this case the products are already on the website which makes things even more unusual.

I can see the teleprompter from our seats, which is surely going to be helpful with product names later on.

Lights are getting dimmer here, which honestly was a challenge. It's very dark in here, at least for my old eyes. 

Alrighty, we just got the five-minute warning here. The assembled crew of reporters are making their way to their boxy, unsupported seats. Won't you think of our backs next time, Sonos?

I love it when my headphones match my speaker(s). 

I do like the gold accents on that pair of headphones, though. The Sonos Play is also now available in a matching Sand color as well. 

Technically, this "sand" color is another option. But... if you're a fan of bold colors, it's likely not doing much for you. 

These are lovely. Ace Ultra is $50 more than the original Ace ($449 vs. $399).

Any additional headphone colors would be a welcome change. The company never added any to the Ace beyond the black and white options at launch. 

The standard Beam only does virtualized Atmos, so this is definitely a step up in that department —with a corresponding price increase, as well. $699 for the Beam Ultra, $499 for the older Beam. I was surprised to realize the old Beam really is getting old — it came out way back in 2021.

The background music here at the event just stopped, which led me to think things are kicking off, but it's resumed. We should be just about 12 minutes away, folks.

Back to the comments section for a moment, user "No One" said this about the subtitle (or dek) of our liveblog: What do you mean "unfortunately"? What's wrong with AI? That's like saying "a company is coming out with a smart phone unfortunately". You don't even know how well it performs. If it performs poorly, then yeah, their AI would be unfortunate. If it does well, then that's great.

I think there's a slightly fair point there in that judgement can be held till we actually see the AI in action. But as the person responsible for that dek, I was more tired of seeing the word AI over and over, especially when it's often a misused term. That's what "unfortunately" was referring to, and I thank you for leaving your thoughts! :) 

Best I can tell the Beam Ultra looks identical to the older Beam, but it has a completely new speaker array, including two upward-firing drivers for true Dolby Atmos.

Hah! So, as expected, there's a new set of headphones (Ace Ultra) and a new soundbar (Beam Ultra). I was drooling over the "agave" color of the headphones, subtle but very nice!

I got you, Nate!

Well, if you want a head start, the Beam Ultra and Ace Ultra are indeed up on the Sonos website. That's it for new hardware though (at least for now?). Obviously, we'll probably get more info during the event than what's on the product pages.

Nate is busy scouring the Sonos website now looking at the new gear and drooling over new colors. TELL US ABOUT IT HERE, NATE!

Re: Alexa, I think we'll hear mostly about Sonos' own approach to a voice assistant today rather than integrations with others. But, hopefully whatever platform upgrades are coming can fix that issue if the company keeps Alexa around. 

Uhm, commenter "Sonos" said the products are already on the website and Nate has just gone to look. He said "Oh my god..."

Reader "RaxCentral" asked: I'd like to know when Google Assistant/Gemini integration is making a comeback. The Ray soundbar has also been neglected. So hopefully they have a lot to show here.

I agree!

Oh I see we have three comments! Let's start with "SonosUser," who said we should ask the company about when it might fix the Alexa integration of its speakers. I didn't know this but according to SonosUser, the assistant "talks through the start of media, and can't even play a simple flash briefing without having to ask multiple Times. It's embarrassing how everyone but Sonos can get this right. Great product overall, but Alexa really needs to be fixed."

Well we'll certainly ask about this when we get to talk to company reps later, but Nate, Billy, what do you both think?

Good shout, Billy. That's always the concern with these sorts of things. Hopefully it'll be useful, but also easy to ignore if that's your preference.

We're probably going to hear about AI today, and I'm worried about Sonos' strategy in that regard. It seems like every company is racing to shoehorn AI into its products in some way, even when it doesn't make sense to do so. Perhaps the company has found a way to leverage the technology in a way that enhances its platform, but I'm not entirely sure what that would be. Let's hope it's more than just checking a box. 

More MCM vibes here at the open house. 

Hi yall, I'm back from figuring out the Wi-Fi situation, the coffee and pastries selection and making sure you can all find this blog. So, no, I do not have lower back pain yet. But I have settled into this cube stool and yea it's not going to be great. I will persevere however!

So what about potential surprises? I'd love to see Sonos cram its Sound Motion tech in more devices. It would be a way to add additional bass without a separate subwoofer thanks to some novel component design. Here's a Sound Motion explainer I wrote back in 2024.

I still love the Sonos 5, even though it hasn't been updated in forever. It just sounds great, but I have a feeling it's going to quietly disappear sooner or later. 

Doing some at-home investigation of Cher's photo, that definitely looks like a small soundbar in a living room setup on the right. Obviously, too far away to tell for sure, but that could be the new Beam. 

Hashtag office goals. 

Hey all, Cherlynn's assessment of the space is spot on. I can't say this is what I expected to walk into first thing in the morning, but it definitely has an immersive vibe. 

RIP your lower back, Cher. 

We've walked in and Nate just exclaimed "It's like we've walked into the Sonos website." The vibe here is really interesting. The room is dark, and a round stage takes up the middle of the room. Around is are stools and couches spread out in concentric circles. It's certainly different!

Speaking of FCC filings, a new Sonos soundbar also popped up on the commission's website last month. First spotted by Bloomberg, this device appears to be an updated version of the compact Beam soundbar. I expect we'll see a full reveal of this speaker today as well, and that both the new Beam and revamped Ace headphones will serve as the first two devices to support whatever software upgrades Sonos has planned for this year. 

We've arrived at the Sonos event and doors just opened!

We're also likely to see new headphones. The Sonos Ace Ultra already popped up in an FCC filing in August, spotted by What Hi-Fi. The only additional info, besides colors, is that the new version could support Wi-Fi pairing straight to a home network and that it could work with a revamped voice assistant. Of course, neither of these are confirmed, just details gleaned from the filing documents. 

Of course, Sonos has spent the last two years recovering from a massively botched app launch around its first headphones, the Sonos Ace. The company released its latest update in July, and I expect software and platform news will be a big part of today's event.

News of today's event first broke in the company's third quarter earnings call. In an interview with Janko Roettgers, Sonos CEO Tom Conrad explained (albeit vaguely) what the company had planned for the AI age. He said the company had already spent 20 years preparing for this phase, or has he called it, "hardware that can converse with quality across every room." 

Morning! Let's do a quick rundown of what we might see later this morning from Sonos, shall we?

Good morning everyone! I wanted to say "surprise!" but I'm not sure how much of a surprise this liveblog is to most people. We're on our way to the Sonos event, and will share tidbits from the scene soon. Meanwhile, are there any hardcore Sonos fans here? What are you hoping for later today?