Founded 16 years ago in Santa Barbara, California, the brand Sonos is synonymous with smart speakers. Known for their easy installation, thoughtful software, and pristine sound, Sonos speakers adorn the lives of more than 7 million households, according to some industry reports. Its India story, though, is relatively new kicking off officially only in 2021 when it set up shop here in partnership with Sun Group subsidiary Luxury Personified.
The portfolio has grown sizeably since then. The underlying technology, too. Take the new Era 100 and Era 300 for instance. While the entry-level Era 100 adds stereo and improved bass, the Era 300 brings spatial audio inside a reasonably portable form-factor. Sonos never ceases to impress. Speaking exclusively to Financial Express.com’s Saurabh Singh, Kylie Muntean, audio systems engineer at Sonos, takes us through the nitty-gritties of the brand, what it does and why it does it, India focus, and the fateful ruling in its long-standing legal patent battle with tech giant Google. Excerpts.
Let me start by saying it is an absolute pleasure to be speaking to you today. The brand Sonos and its great legacy need little introduction. Still, I would like to start off with a little background into what you have been doing.
In the past few years, we have had the goal to launch three products a year and we have been doing that. The idea is, we want [to make] products that move people. If people have different lifestyle experiences, we want them to have a product that will allow them to listen to music in that space. We want to create an experience, not just a product and so, we are creating [those] experiences.
What kind of a brand is Sonos, how do you position yourself in the market?
The way we call [it internally], Sonos is a premium brand. It is a mass brand accessible to everyone, just at the premium level.
Let us talk a bit about how Sonos does music. What is the approach and what are the focus areas?
When you think of how people hear music, there is a story [in there]. It starts with an artist who has an idea, they go, and they record it. The producers make sure that it sounds like they want it. Then it goes into a streaming format. From there, it goes into a speaker that plays it for the listener. So, there are a lot of steps and what Sonos strives to do is to make the experience that the consumer is hearing is the same as the artist’s intent.
If you look through that whole chain, we are getting the same experience that the artist was trying to put out. Adding a stereo tweeter to the Era 100, makes it [sound] truer to the artist’s intent because you are going to get that space in that air that the Sonos One was not able to deliver. The Era 300 [likewise] is bringing a different level of content that people are going to [now] listen to. Now that the artists are mixing in Dolby Atmos, we are going to have a speaker that plays back that immersive audio. So, we just want to complete that chain so that people can hear the artist’s intent into music.
The Era 100 seems like a mighty powerful product for its compact size. Could you take us through the features that make it truly special?
One of the things that is cool about the Era 100 is how much more deep bass comes out of it. It is still the same acoustic volume [as the Sonos One] so the fact that we can get so much more low-end out of it, is a cool feat of technology. The design is also much more elegant than the One. The box design is a little dated now. But it is [definitely] the sound experience that sells it. Elsewhere, we have a new lean user interface, and the speaker now connects with Bluetooth. You can also directly connect line-in from an auxiliary cord.
And what about the Era 300, your flagship product?
If you were to think of the chain of events, you would have an artist mixing in a room filled with say seven speakers and then Dolby will make a file that plays back on seven speakers in someone else’s house. The feat that we did is, we took those seven speakers, or more precisely, the equivalent of seven speakers, and we made it come out of one speaker by sending sound all over the room and reflecting it off the walls. That is a huge thing because now, you do not need to buy seven speakers. You can just buy a single speaker and get the same experience. We work closely with the top artists in the community. All the top producers and mixers are saying, this –spatial audio— is the future and we – Sonos— need to do this and we need to do it right, because if you do it wrong, it is going to fall apart. So, working directly with them, we made sure that we were bringing something cutting-edge that was going to represent their sound to the world accurately.
But how do you bring that sense of balance on speakers across different price points?
Our approach is the same whether it is the Era 100 or the Era 300. The Era 300 just has that much more technology in it than the Era 100. I know it can get tricky. Fortunately, at Sonos, the user experience and the sound experience are the top deciders and so, we do not compromise [on] those experiences for costs. I would also like to add that these are sustainable products which was a huge cost add. It was cheaper not to do it that way [but we did it anyway] and so we care enough to add that cost to make it that way. We do balance things in a thoughtful way.
Do you tailor sound depending on the market, like India is seen as a bass-preferring region among other brands?
We do not flavour the sound [basis of the market]. We want the sound to come back like how the artist designed it. Drake throws tons of bass in there and we want the sound to be all bass and all highs because that is how he mixes it. And so, if the sound is mixed in that favourable way to, let us say, have people like it here, if it is deeper bass in general, then that is how the speaker will play it. We do not want to touch it. Of course, we always have the same user control things that we provide with all our speakers. You can turn up the bass, you can turn up the treble. It is all adjustable to taste. So that way in case your personal flavour is different from what the artist intended, that is fine, too. We still allow that.
Talk a little bit about India as a market for Sonos. How excited are you about the prospects here?
We want to create products that move people. There is an emotional connection that everyone has to music. From my own personal standpoint, I am working for a consumer audio company because I want to bring high-quality audio to as many people as possible. I think that should be a global thing. I think everyone should have access to high-quality audio in their homes and so knowing that the market her in India has so many people that want that focused listening experience, it is just a great application to have Sonos here in their living rooms as well. We are trying to make sure that it is more accessible to people.
You have recently suffered a big setback in your ongoing legal patent dispute with Google in California, US, with the federal judge terming your key patents unenforceable and invalid, theoretically tossing out the USD 32.5 million verdict you won in San Francisco in May. Any comment?
I cannot speak specifically to that. I have been told not to speak to that. All I can say is that we create lots of great ideas and we have a great team behind us and that is all we want to do, to be innovative.
What does the future look like for Sonos? Any updates there?
I am excited for what we are working on. I cannot say anything more to it, but I love working here because we do very interesting things. Working with producers, mixers, these multi-Grammy award-winning people and having them teach us exactly how to hear the tiny details of what’s right and what’s wrong and learning that critical listening skill, has been an amazing experience.
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