Multiroom audio setups existed before Sonos, but it’s fair to say the company’sspeakers and sound barshave made the process of playing music around your home or workplace dramatically simpler, and a better fit for the age of music streaming we all live in.Alternative speakersexist, but you’ll get the smoothest experience with Sonos.
What’s great is, even if Sonos has made decking out your space with speakers practically wire-free, there’s still a lot of tweaking and experimentation a new owner or devoted audio enthusiast can do to customize their specific setup to their liking. With that in mind, we created this guide with nine of the best tips and tricks for getting the most out of your Sonos speakers, from installation all the way through playback.
1Add apps and other music services
You’re not limited to Sonos Radio
Sonos runs its own ad-supported music streaming service called Sonos Radio that’s exclusive to Sonos devices and has multiple different stations built around genres and other themes. It’s better than you might expect and a great way to be introduced to new music, but youy likely have speaker to listen to music you already curated for yourself and love.
To connect a streaming service or audio app to your Sonos system:
2Connect to your Vinyl
Sonos-ify your whole A/V set up
Your Sonos isn’t exclusively limited to music you stream, of course. Several Sonos speakers feature a line-in port for playing audio from connected audio equipment like a record player. You can hook up your record player to the Sonos Play:5,Five,Era 100,Era 300, orMove 2, or use the audio-in jacks on a Sonos Port or a Sonos Amp.
How to properly and safely clean your records
Whether you inherited your parent’s records or an enthusiast, knowing how to properly clean your vinyls is crucial to great sound.
Once your record player is connected (you might need an adapter):
You can also access line-in audio in Settings:
3Tune your audio with TruePlay
Take advantage of a Sonos staple
Sonos' secret sauce isTruePlay, which uses onboard mics or your smartphone to adapt your speaker’s audio playback to the acoustics of the surrounding room. It can fix your audio, but it doesn’t hurt when you’re trying to make everything sound better, especially when you’re dealing with multiple speakers.
How to tune your Sonos speakers and soundbars with Trueplay for better sound quality
Sonos Trueplay is a software feature that allows you to tune your Sonos speakers and soundbars to the room they are in. Here’s how to do it.
4Control playback
Intuitive buttons
Once you’ve actually set up what audio you want to play, Sonos supports several ways to control playback, group speakers, and modify what you hear. The Sonos app offers easy access to a Now Playing screen where you can play, pause, skip tracks, and rearrange songs in your queue. Individual speakers include physical or capacitive buttons for doing the same thing (sometimes buttons serve more than one purpose).
5Control with voice assistants
Hands-free control
You can both interact directly with voice assistants through Sonos speakers with built-in microphones and control Sonos speakers through voice assistants on your other devices. Sonos even has its own voice assistant calledSonos Voice Control. The level of integration with voice assistants varies depending on your preferred choice.
Amazon Alexais accessible on all Sonos speakers with microphones. We havea guidegoing into the best practices for setting the voice assistant up, but here’s the simple version:
Google Assistantis available on all Sonos speakers with microphones, except the Era 100, Era 300, and Move 2. Given the difficult relationship between Sonos and Google, it feels highly possible this will be a trend that continues with future speakers. Again, we havea guideon how to do this, but here are the basics:
Best smart speakers: Solid sound and assistance from Sonos, Amazon, and more
No matter which smart assistant you prefer or your budget, there’s a speaker out there for you.
Apple’sSirican’t be interacted with directly on Sonos speakers, but you can use Siri to control Sonos devices. To enable it, you need a speaker that isAirPlay 2-compatible (theSonos Ray,Beam,Arc, Playbase, Play:5, Five,One,One SL, Move, Move 2,Roam, Roam SL, Era 100, and Era 300 all work) and your Apple Home app:
6Group Sonos speakers together
Amplify your listening
Sonos' speakers are nice alone, but are best together, and creating speaker groups is one of the best ways to get music playing in multiple rooms. Grouping and un-grouping speakers can be done in the app or physically using the buttons on your speaker.
To get started on the app:
If music is already playing in one of your other speaker groups you can add a new speaker just by pressing and holding the play button. You can even keep holding the power button to cycle through multiple groups if different groups of speakers are playing different songs.
7Adjust your speaker for dialogue or nighttime viewing
Enhance Speech Enhancement
If you’re looking for another way to improve the quality of the audio from your Sonos speaker beyond Trueplay, Sonos has built in a couple of software features that can help. On home theater speakers (Sonos sound bars in particular), you’re able to use Speech Enhancement to boost human voices in whatever you’re watching on your TV.
Assuming you have a Sonos speaker connected to your TV, to enable Speech Enhancement:
If you’re watching TV at night at a low volume, you’re able to turn on Night Sound to rebalance the audio to make whatever you’re watching understandable without waking anyone up at a higher volume.
Turning Night Sound is nearly identical to Speech Enhancement:
8Use the Sonos as an alarm clock
A smart alarm and speaker all in one
We coveredthe benefits of a Sonos alarm clockin detail previously, and trying it for yourself isn’t difficult:
All current Sonos speakers feature an LED light that can indicate if it’s on, if it’s connected to Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, or if you’re adjusting the volume, among other things. It’s pretty bright and in a dark living room or home theater, it might be the kind of thing you want to turn off. Luckily, you’re able to.
To toggle the LED status light off:
9Make a Sonos playlist
Limit app-switching
Music streaming has fractured people’s listening habits across multiple monthly subscriptions. While exclusives are less common than they used to be, if you have a niche interest there’s a good chance you’ve got multiple different music libraries or playlists you’re managing. The beauty of the Sonos app is you can create playlists that collect tracks across streaming services, so one playlist can play everything without you having to switch apps.
