About a year and two months ago, I was watching an interesting briefing about the Sonos Ace headphones. There was palpable excitement about the new product — the (botched) app update hadn't yet come to the table, and Sonos was riding high after years of excellent hardware releases.
There was one big takeaway from the meeting about the headphones. Replaceable parts, and a software update pathway that would help them last a long time. That's a big promise to make, given the often throw-away nature of even expensive flagship headphones. Yet, here we are, a full year later, with new features coming in a software update.
This approach has rung true for the Sonos Arc Ultra as well. There are new features for the soundbar designed to make it more useful for every user. But just how good are these new features, and what do they say about the potentially tumultuous future for Sonos?
The new Sonos features have now been around for a month or so, and I've been thourougly road testing them to see what they're all about.
Sonos Ace — TrueCinema
The Sonos Ace has always had some form of audio swap feature that plays your soundbar's audio in your headphones when you don't want to wake up the rest of your house. This updated feature is supposed to make the mode sound more like your own setup, so that it's less jarring when you switch over.
Does it work, though? Yes, it does — and very well too. Since the update, I've found the spatial mix for movies and TV a lot more spacious, with objects much easier to place in the environment. Helicopters flying overhead, or cars flying past you.
There's still some degree of "I wish my soundbar actually sounded like that" given how much easier it is to make a surround bubble with headphones that are right next to your ears as opposed to a soundbar at the end of the room. It does a great job of acoustically matching your space, though, and as a result, feels more convincing.
I'd already say that the Spatial Audio and Dolby Atmos playback were excellent reasons to buy the Sonos Ace, but this gives even more incentive to Sonos soundbar users to upgrade their headphones.
Sonos Ace — SideTone
SideTone is something that loads of headphones have, but you still might not have heard of it. The idea is that your voice is pumped into the headphones when you're calling someone so that it feels more natural. I've never been a huge fan of the technology, and things aren't all that different now.
I've become so used to hearing my headphone-muffled voice when speaking that SideTone (whether it's here on the Sonos Ace or with another pair of the best headphones) it feels pretty jarring with the switch over when I initiate a call.
Despite my reservations, however, the Sonos' Ace's new SideTone works very well. Your voice sounds good, and fairly natural. It just takes a moment to get used to hearing your voice like you're whispering into your own ear.
Shudder.
Sonos Ace — TV Audio swap updated
TV Audio swap has always been one of my favorite Sonos Ace features, and now it's even better. It's a simple update this one. Instead of just one person using the TV swap feature and watching surround sound movies all on their lonesome at 3am, now you can watch your Dolby Atmos content with two pairs of headphones.
It works! It's TV swap for two people. Perfect if the kids have gone to bed and you really need to get that annual rewatch of Predator 2 going at 11 PM.
Sonos Ace — smarter ANC
Finally, and one of the best updates to the Sonos Ace, are the noise canceling improvements. The ANC of the Sonos Ace was already good, I need to make that clear. It was up there with Sony for noise blockage, and when music is playing it can completely silence an office.
But the improvements are many. It's not really about blocking more noise, but making the ANC more consistent amongst a variety of use cases. That means the ANC has been reworked so that it can work around stuff like long hair or a hat so that the ANC is still good without a perfect seal.
To test it, I wore the headphones with a baseball cap and with my hair down over my ears. I wanted to test it with a wintery bobble hat, but there where two problems; my head is too big for the headphones to fit over the bobble hat, and I suspect my melon may well have melted in the summer heat.
The update has worked very well indeed — the noise canceling pre-update when wearing a hat was not as good as it is now. It's seems to do a better job when reading the enviroment and adapting the ANC to compensate. The result is more consistent ANC — which is always a good thing.
Sonos Arc Ultra — Speech enhancement
As good as the Sonos Arc Ultra is, it can't negate the dreadful surround mixes from the likes of Netflix and Disney Plus. You know the ones — when you have to turn up the volume to hear what the characters are saying, and then turn it down the moment there's an action scene with loads of loud noises.
Except, now it can negate those dreadful surround mixes. The speech enhancement mode now built into the Sonos Arc Ultra experience has been a game changer for movie buffs like me. I'm now able to hear what characters are saying when I watch movies on Netflix, without having to constantly adjust the volume.
I was watching Chef over the weekend, and I was surprised by how clear the dialogue was — it never had been before. I turned off the speech enhancement feature, and quickly discovered the same old woeful muffled dialogue.
It's very clever, and uses AI to boost the volume and clarity of dialogue. There are even more extreme modes for those who are hard of hearing, making it even easier to make out what characters are saying on screen.
I don't think I could live without Speech enhancement anymore as a result — it's easily my favorite new Sonos feature of the bunch.
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