Sonos has announced a new partnership with Amazon Prime Music, adding to its already extensive roster of brands available on its wireless speaker systems. This news follows the introduction of a new Trueplay update to its speakers, which is one of the first to cater a speaker’s sound to any room.
Sonos speakers work by connecting to a wireless network to access online music accounts or a private music library. Users simply log in to their music accounts through the Sonos software system, and the speakers play the selected music.
To get a better sense of how this system works, here is a detailed breakdown of some of Sonos’ features, and how it works in concert with apps such as Deezer Elite and Murfie.
The Speakers
The strongest selling point for Sonos is its high-quality, sound-focused speakers. They specialize in high-fi technology, with choices between the small Play:1 speaker, the larger Play:3 or the largest, and newest, Play:5. With a warm mid-woofer and a single tweeter per speaker, the sound on the speakers comes as close as possible to the original sound heard in a recording studio. Its bass tones are especially prevalent in the mix, and users get full control over the audio they hear on each individual speaker.
To use the system, simply download the Sonos software online, and follow the tutorial when you sign in to the new account. You are free to put the speakers wherever you want, as long as they receive the wireless signal from your router of choice. From there, you can control the music played on each speaker using your computer or your phone.
Trueplay
This is where the newest Trueplay feature comes in. As any audiophile knows, a great speaker can struggle to fill a room with amazing sound if the room isn’t ideal for sound production. The Play:5 speakers have built-in Trueplay software that sets the speaker according to its surroundings.
It works by playing a specific tone in the room, then calculating where the sound reverberates against the floor and walls. The software adjusts for inconsistencies in the speaker to create a sound that perfectly matches the size and wall textures of the room.
Deezer Elite
Sonos works by connecting users with their current music libraries spanning across multiple apps, including Deezer Elite. Deezer’s premium service offers a higher-quality streaming service for music, allowing users to fully experience the sounds of the speakers.
What sets Deezer apart from some other online streaming services is that it uses FLAC files as opposed to MP3 files. This means that the music is less compressed, and has a clearer sound and frequency than services that use simple, smaller MP3 files.
To use the service through Sonos, users need to have both a Sonos account and a Deezer Elite account. The Sonos account comes with a purchase of the speakers, and is essentially the main remote control for the other accounts you add into its master library. When you sign up for Deezer Elite as a paid subscriber each month, you get access to it through Sonos automatically.
Simply go to the Sonos control panel, then select Deezer Elite from the music streaming options. From there, users sign in to their Deezer accounts and stream music directly through the speakers. Sonos takes you to a page that has the full available menu of music from Deezer, where you can choose a specific artist, album or radio station based on your interests.
One caveat with any of the music apps available through Sonos is that users must have a recent subscription in order to listen to the music on the speakers. For example, if a listener has a Deezer Elite premium account, but decides to get rid of the premium service, the listener will no longer have access to Deezer’s music through Sonos.
Murfie
Sonos’ partnership with Murfie takes this idea one step further. Murfie is a company that helps music fans collect their physical albums for cloud storage, and keeps the physical copies on-site for safety. For fans who have hundreds of CDs and vinyl records, having a safe place to store them while gaining online access to all of the music in their collections is essential.
To use this system, sign up for an account through Murfie, and they will explain how to store and ship your physical music collection directly to them for processing. When the physical copies of the albums arrive, Murfie’s staff upload the albums to your cloud account in the highest-quality format, then safely store your entire collection in a specialized on-site warehouse. To receive one or more of your physical copies back from the company, you need to send a request, and they will have the copies shipped back to you.
Unlike other streaming services, Murfie is focused only on the physical albums you have in your collection, which might include rarities that are not available on any other online format. This system is a safe way to keep those rare records stored through the years.
As with Deezer, to access your music on Sonos, you have to sign in with your Murfie account through Sonos’ app on your computer. From there, you have the option to play all of the music you synced through Murfie’s system on your speakers.
Adding More Music
Even if you don’t have accounts on streaming services, you can still use your Sonos speakers. The software has an option to add a music library from your computer to the software’s syncing service. If you add a music folder from your computer to the Sonos music library, you get full access to that folder on your speakers.
You can also sync your music folders with Sonos whenever you add new music, which automatically updates your Sonos system. In other words, if you delete the folder from your computer, you lose access to it on Sonos.
While Sonos doesn’t have every music streaming service on its compatible library yet, it already has some of the biggest companies such as Spotify and Soundcloud. With the addition of new services like Amazon Prime Music, Sonos users will have even more access to the music they love in one place.
Leave a Comment