Sonos has a new sound bar speaker for improving TV sound and connecting to its wireless whole-home music systems.
Music system maker Sonos has carved out a niche with its wireless music systems. Now it wants to physically connect your TV to better sound.
The new Playbar one-piece sound bar speaker ($699, out March 5) has nine built-in speakers and connects to the TV for improved sound for movies, TV and games. In homes with other Sonos products, the Playbar will connect wirelessly to that current network and can be used to play music.
Santa Barbara, Calif.-based Sonos markets wireless music speakers that can be used to create a whole home music system for streaming music libraries and online music services from computers and mobile devices. About two years ago, it began working on a TV sound bar product. "The room with the flat panel TV was always an area where we were not happy with the experience," MacFarlane says. "Flat panel screens are getting thinner and thinner and that is problematic for good audio" and home theater audio/video receivers, he says, are becoming "a relic of the past."
The Playbar, which has three tweeters and six midrange speakers, connects to the TV with an optical cable and gets sound from all the components connected to the TV – cable or satellite set-top boxes, DVD and Blu-ray Disc players and game systems. The speaker handles various audio formats (MP3, WMA, WAV, ACC, FLAC) and surround formats such as Dolby Digital. As with other Sonos products, it can be controlled using the company's free remote apps for iPhone, iPad, Android and Macintosh or Windows computers.
In addition to be placed on a credenza in front of a TV, the Playbar -- it's about 3 inches tall, 5 inches deep and 35 inches long -- can be mounted above or below the display. Its built-in infrared pass-through feature aims to solve a problem many home setups have in which the sound bar blocks the signal to the TV, MacFarlane says. "We will see the (infrared signal) and pass it out the back of the unit (to the TV)," he says. "I think we are the only sound bar that does that well. A couple have tried, but I don't think anybody has achieved it. We've worked hard on all the details in making it easy."
As more homes have big flat screen TVs with ever-decreasing built-in speakers, MacFarlane expects sound bars to become even more important for TV viewers. "We are pretty firm believers that the TVs will get drastically smarter in the form of something, probably from Apple, like a 55-inch iPad that has good apps and stuff like that," he says. "It will get flatter and flatter as the OLED and 4K TVs have content and traction and market pricing. So you need a great complement to that for sound."
The Playbar will be available online at Sonos.com, as well as from Amazon.com, Crutchfield, Target.com and Best Buy.com. Best Buy stores with Magnolia Home Theater sections and about 3,000 U.S. hi-fi stores will also have the Playbar.
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