This article is the winning article for the “Best Experience Officer” award in the Sonos Play public testing event launched by Minority Group and Sonos. The prize is free reservation of two Sonos Play units for testing. You can see the works of other participants from the public test topic page.
Currently, the second phase of the Sonos public testing event has been launched. The new upgraded version of the Soundbar soundbar and the flagship headset noise-canceling headset Sonos Ace Ultra are available for everyone to experience. You are welcome to actively sign up to participate.
Preface
In 2020, I just ended my student status and came to Hangzhou to work alone. Fortunately, the company was able to provide a small single dormitory. Being able to have a room of your own in this city is a sign of the beginning of a new life.
Coming to Hangzhou with me, in addition to the suitcase, there was also the Nut Brick Bluetooth small speaker launched with the Nut mobile phone in 2018. It has retro styling, what I think is a beautiful industrial design, and terrible sound quality and battery.
When I took it out of the suitcase, I knew it could no longer accompany me. The best place to end up is as a decoration on the desktop.
Fortunately, at that time, I was still busy adapting to the rhythm of work, so maybe I didn’t need the company of music. The ten minutes I wore headphones on the bus to and from get off work were enough to replenish my energy.
It was winter, and I chose a small and exquisite black HomePod Mini at the Apple store in Pudong, Shanghai. I couldn’t use the official HomePod because my room was relatively small, but in fact it was my tight income that convinced me.
I will never forget the buzzing sound it made when I activated it in my hotel room after returning from the Apple Store. Its activation requires an Internet connection, and the WiFi in the hotel cannot support its startup; I even used a mobile phone hotspot to temporarily use it.
Later, this little speaker accompanied me when I moved out of this small room and into my new home. I bought a 65-inch TV in my new home and paired it with an outdated Apple TV 4K. This small speaker suddenly took on too much, so I naturally bought a second HomePod Mini, also black, to form a pair of stereo speakers.
In this way, my home audio system was solidified and has been accompanying me in all my subsequent lives – getting married and having children.
Life is passing by little by little, and it is not that I have never thought about upgrading the audio system at home, but before various matters, its priority seems to always be at the back, and it always has to make way for various matters.
Even after having children, I had less and less time to devote to music. The time in the car was given over to podcasts. My mood and thoughts were too complicated, and no song could sing this state of mind. The two HomePod Minis do nothing but stay on either side of the TV.
Until Minority and Sonos sent these two Sonos Plays, I had the opportunity to re-examine the place of music in my home, and of course, more importantly, my relationship with music.
Equipment and Applications
Walkman in the scenery, listening to the heart in the mind
I have never owned any Sonos device before, so I was still full of curiosity when I received it by express delivery. Opening the express box, there are two kraft paper-colored boxes inside, which are the speaker body and a 45W USB-C plug.
Opening the box, what is surprising is that the space utilization is so high: the entire speaker bodyfill upThe inside of the box is wrapped with a layer of white non-woven fabric.
The moment I picked it up, I knew it was a “solid” speaker. The weight, which is almost contrary to expectations, and the gentle, edge-free design fit perfectly in the hand. Judging from the weight alone, the hardware team must have packed a huge amount of energy into this small space.
Although it weighs 1.3kg on paper, the excellent industrial design makes it not appear heavy. When holding it, the palm of your hand fits the arc on the side of the speaker, and a concave area is thoughtfully designed where your fingers touch it.
If you turn your hand over when holding it, you will find that your middle finger, ring finger and little finger just fall on the Bluetooth switch button, microphone privacy switch and power switch in this concave area. Everything is so natural.
Of course, this speaker that focuses on playing anywhere is also designed with an additional convenient carrying handle, which is fixed on the back with a screw and is located in the center of the recessed area like the power button. When you don’t want to hold it, you can lift it up and go at any time; when used as a fixed ornament, the handle can also be rotated downwards, so that it will not protrude when viewed from the front.
The front is finished with a matte white metal paint grid. There is a slightly larger space in the upper and lower centers of the grid, which contains the playback indicator light and the charging indicator light. The upper and lower sides are made of skin-like rubber, which is as gentle as the overall design language, ensuring that every moment of touch is comfortable and non-intrusive.
The matching charging base is also pure white on the outside, and the inside of the slot is the same light green bean color as the handle. There are two contacts for charging contact, and there is a non-slip rubber strip on the bottom. The extended cable is long enough. If you are like me and only designed a socket on one side of the TV during decoration design, you should understand my pain.
At first, I was a little regretful: it needs to be pointed when charging, and it doesn’t have the refreshing feeling of just sucking it in like MagSafe. But then I thought about it, it would be more convenient: people can just lift it and leave without any burden.
Sonos proudly launched its new app this year – Sonos 27, using “The system behind the system” as the main concept on the official website as a response to last year’s bad app update.
It’s amazing that the company hasn’t released any new products for an entire fiscal year and is only focused on fixing a bad software experience. But this was a new experience for me, and the entire setup process was clear and simple. After the device is powered on, a card will pop up below the App to guide you through initialization.
An interesting point is that during the pairing process, Sonos Play and HomePod Mini use the same audio pairing method: the phone is placed next to the speaker and plays music with a certain rhythm to identify the device.
Since the firmware of the speaker is not the latest when pairing, you must wait for the firmware update to be completed before proceeding to the next step. It’s really not very friendly to a user sitting on the floor, distraught. It took me about ten minutes to wait for the update and pairing of the two speakers to be completed. In the past ten minutes, I paced back and forth in the living room and washed the dishes before I could get over it.
Just like the moment when I heard the “buzz” boot sound, the first playback of Sonos Play also gave me a surprise. From the configuration point of view, a pair of tweeters brings good stereo performance and good high-frequency response; paired with a mid-woofer, it is solid and stable, ensuring good mid-range and excellent bass.
This combination also gives it enough loudness, which can be said to be a bit too loud. For daily use at home, setting the volume of a single speaker to about 40% is enough to hear the sound in every corner of the home.
When I first listened to some of the songs I often listened to, I came across some unexpected feelings: It turned out that there was a bass in the background in some places (I really wasn’t making a joke about the bass player), and there were a few regular clapping rhythms hidden in some places.
Compared with the original speaker in the home that only had one full-range driver unit, the treble has rich details, the midrange is clear and powerful, and the bass slowly spreads out at the height of the coffee table, like a wave of waves pushing through the home. The three levels are separated and connected, just right.
Like most Sonos products, the Sonos Play comes with Trueplay, which measures a space and optimizes sound for it. That is to say, it can automatically adjust the sound according to the home environment, whether it is a hard floor or a low ceiling, it can present just the right sound effect.
Especially since Sonos Play is a portable speaker with its own microphone, it also supports automatic Trueplay, which is turned on by default during pairing and does not require separate adjustment using a mobile phone. I haven’t made any adjustments since initialization, and it still delivers good sound anywhere, anytime.
at home
“Who comes from mountains, rivers, lakes and seas, but is limited to day and night, kitchen and love”
My family layout is relatively simple and basic, with a two-bedroom and one-living room layout of 89m². The living room and dining room are connected together, about 28m², and the master bedroom and second bedroom are both about 20m².
At first, I configured the two speakers together with HomePod on both sides of the TV. After configuring the stereo in the Sonos app, I connected it to the Apple TV through AirPlay with little effort.
It would be unfair to think of it as just a pair of TV speakers in the living room. Home is not a place where you can easily spend time on the sofa with your loved one. You need to treat it with your heart and treat it as a part of your life, or even a partner. We’re not wizards—the ability to turn on the TV and play music from the comfort of your couch doesn’t just happen, and meals don’t automatically appear on the table.
I admit without hesitation that my attitude toward my home has changed dramatically after having children. The frequency of cleaning and tidying has dropped significantly, and I am often too lazy to cook and just order takeout for a meal. I’m not someone who hates cleaning, but with the exhaustion of life and work, I really need some motivation to push myself to treat my home environment well.
Therefore, I like to play music on the speakers while finishing the work at hand. The previous home audio configuration seemed a bit embarrassing: two HomePod Minis could still be used when cleaning the living room, but it was obviously not enough once the cleaning area gradually moved to the dining room and other rooms. The volume wasn’t loud enough and the sound coming through the walls was hollow.
Of course, part of the problem can be solved by turning up the volume, but good neighborly relations also need to be considered. Turning the volume up just so that you can hear the music clearly while sweeping the floor in the next room is obviously not very friendly to the neighbors above and below.
It has been three years since I moved into my home. Every time I clean, I have to endure listening to music in the living room, which really affects my good mood when cleaning, and also indirectly affects the effectiveness of cleaning. I would often find an album I liked randomly in the middle of scanning in the bedroom, and my hands would speed up unconsciously, just to rush back to the living room; when I returned to the living room, I would find something to do and listen to the entire song.
The change that Sonos Play brings to the entire work experience as a cleaning companion is simply a leap. I can comfortably put away all kinds of clutter in the living room, sweep and mop the floor, and dust off the dust (oh my god, cleaning up the black HomePod Mini with dust and cat hair is a disaster). After that, I can directly hold the broom in one hand and lift the handle with the other and carry it to the next room to continue working.
The entire process is natural and smooth, and there are no interruptions when detaching from the charging base. Music flows smoothly throughout the home and becomes my best companion when doing family chores.
After everything is cleaned, make yourself a cup of coffee and put it on the coffee table. Put the stereo back on the base and turn on the TV. It is simply the happiest moment outside of daily chores.
In addition to cleaning the house, cooking at home is another way for me to relieve stress. It is also gratifying to prepare various ingredients, firepower, and cooking methods and finally serve a pot of food to your loved ones.
But unfortunately, the listening environment in the kitchen is worse than in a room separated by several walls. The roar of the range hood and the hum of the gas stove when using hot water will directly hit the eardrums, and the speakers fixed in the living room cannot cover this environment. Even if the volume is turned up to the maximum when playing music on the phone, only human voices can be vaguely heard. So most of the time I choose to play podcasts on my phone with the volume at maximum. Even the worst option is to wear noise-canceling headphones while cooking at home, which is hilarious to think about.
Sonos Play undoubtedly solves this dilemma perfectly and can be carried directly to any place in the kitchen – on top of the refrigerator, on the countertop, or on a shelf. It can provide stable sound performance and cover up the annoying noise from those objects.
Because of its pure white appearance, it can be perfectly integrated into the environment with white appliances and tableware in the kitchen, and it is also very pleasing to the eye as decoration. And the Play has an IP67 protection level. When used in the kitchen, even if there is water on the countertop or water splashes on it when shaking hands, it will not be damaged; just wipe it with a kitchen towel and it will be clean.
I didn’t have the habit of listening to music or singing in the shower before, unlike some of my friends who installed a stereo in the bathroom so that I could sing while taking a shower.
There is a built-in niche in my bathroom, which can store some bathroom supplies. Until one day when I was taking a shower, I saw an empty space there, which seemed to be a place reserved for it. So from then on, in addition to clothes, I carried this small white speaker into the bathroom. It turns out that being able to sing along while taking a shower is a really good experience.
In this way, in the home where people “live”, music is no longer just a pair of sound-producing machines trapped on the TV cabinet. I can carry it to every corner of my home, and music can flow anywhere in time and space, without being constrained by cables or troublesome operations.
Living room, master bedroom, second bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, every room is accessible. Play breaks the boundaries of margins, and it’s almost as if the company deliberately designed it to save you from buying a few speakers.
Of course, if you have higher needs for music and home theater, Sonos also provides other product options, but there is no doubt that Sonos Play is the most suitable one for me at the moment.
here
Labor is endless
How wonderful it is to live without relying on physical evidence
In 2018, I was 22 years old and had just graduated from undergraduate school. Google launched GoogleTask. At that time, I didn’t have the concept of TODO. Just to experience this new app, I made a list and wrote down the ten things I particularly wanted at that time.
I stopped using it after that, but the amazing thing is that every time I buy something big, I can think of this app and make a check.
It took me seven years to get ahead of the LLM wave and I completed the last item on this list – a Mac. This Mac has been on my desk for nearly a year now.
At the beginning of the renovation, I positioned the second bedroom as a study + a bed. I do most of my personal projects and overtime work in the second bedroom, which is kind of my personal sanctuary. This Mac Mini is also on this table.
When using it, I quickly realized a problem: I don’t have a speaker in my entire study, and the Mac Mini’s speakers are so bad that they can’t really be heard even for a person like me; my monitor doesn’t have built-in speakers either.
When I sit at my desk and work, I habitually click on the focus playlist in Apple Music and then play it on my phone. I habitually pick up my phone every time I need to change songs. But every time you pick it up and put it down again, the attention thief will steal a lot of time. Looking back at the computer screen, my thoughts have drifted away and I have forgotten what I just wanted to do.
Sonos 27 provides the function of accessing Apple Music. You can directly control the speaker to play music from Apple Music in the sonos application on your computer. You can easily browse various music stations and my own library. Currently, this native integration can play up to 24-bit/48 kHz audio sources.
It is very convenient to carry it directly from the living room to the desk when working, and it is directly in the working state. The built-in battery can support up to 24 hours of playback time. Even if you enter a complete office flow, you don’t have to worry about the playback stopping due to insufficient power. Even if you really work until the entire battery is used up, you can continue fighting by simply connecting a Type-C cable from the Mac mini to the speaker.
Perhaps the biggest regret in this environment is that it does not support Dolby Atmos and can only be played in ordinary stereo; and if you have other Sonos speakers at home that support spatial audio, group them with it, and Dolby Atmos will also be downgraded to stereo.
In this speaker, Sonos also brings their own voice assistant function-Sonos Voice Control. Just say it and it will play the music you need. All requests are handled locally on the speaker; no conversations with him are recorded, sent to the cloud, stored, transcribed, or heard by anyone.
But the biggest regret is:Only supports English and Frenchthe usage situation in China is really not ideal, and errors were reported when trying to configure it many times. Since I am not very dependent on voice assistants, I can only give up. Sonos also provides another option: configuring it with Amazon Alexa, which is not impossible in this domestic environment, but it is always extremely awkward.
Although I am dissatisfied with the voice aspect, I am lucky: when Sonos launched their Sonos 27, they also launched their own MCP service. Now you don’t even need to install the official software. I just need to directly tell my Hermes to connect to Sonos’ MCP service and throw this extremely simple web page to it. I even suspect that the design does not require human participation, and having a page is just to appease humans.
In this way, any AI application you are using can be transformed into a Sonos client that “can use natural language input”. If you need any music control, just tap it directly in the dialog box, and the rest will be handled by the silicon-based creatures behind it.
After memorizing playback using Sonos MCP as a skill, it takes about fifteen to twenty seconds from issuing the command to playing it on the speaker, but its intelligence is far beyond all the music apps you can see on the market.
At present, I have tested various tricky commands and it can be reliably received, for example: “Help me pick a song that is suitable for two people to listen to in the room at night.” It picks out “Nothing’s Gonna Hurt You Baby” — Cigarettes After Sex. You can also use this song as a seed to create a radio station, and let it continue to follow the atmosphere. If you directly tell it to play Eason Chan’s Live album, it will directly hit the 2010 Duo concert album.
Although it will take some time to transfer and process through the smart assistant and MCP, it can be done and it’s cool enough, isn’t it? In addition to playing in natural language, it also provides additional tools for finer control. Judging from Sonos’ official attitude towards MCP and AI, this software has done well.
MCP can support the ability to control:
① Discovery and status (3)
get_households_and_groups_and_players— 拿 household / group / player IDget_now_playing— The current source (playlist/radio/album) + current track + next songget_registered_music_services— Which music services have you connected to?
② Play content (9)
| tool | used to put |
|---|---|
play_track |
single |
play_album |
The entire album (in order) |
play_artist |
Singer mix (must pass shuffle) |
play_playlist |
Playlists on music services |
play_station |
Unlimited radio stations (singer/genre/track as seed) |
play_radio |
Designated stations/radio programs |
play_sonos_playlist |
Sonos own playlist |
play_sonos_favorite |
Sonos Collection |
play_player_line_in |
Line input of a certain speaker (external player) |
③Transmission control (5):pause / resume / skip_to_next_track / skip_to_previous_track / seek(Jump to a certain second within the song)
④ Volume and mute (8):get/set/adjust × player/group,add set_player_mute / set_group_mute. player refers to a single player, group refers to the entire group
⑤ Playback settings (4)
get/set_shuffle_repeat_crossfade— Random/Loop/Crossfadeget/set_night_sound_and_speech_enhancement— Night mode and vocal enhancement
⑥ Rooms and groups (3):add_players_to_group / remove_players_from_group / move_audio_to_players(Move the sound being played to another room)
⑦ Collection and playlist (2):get_sonos_favorites / get_sonos_playlists
Sonos has always been committed to making its speakers a part of the home, rather than a cold machine. Now that I have a smart enough home environment, I naturally want to incorporate it into it.
The official library of Home Assistants includes Sonos integration. After adding the configuration normally, the two speakers can also be controlled in HA. This integration basically covers all control functions, and compared to MCP, it also has more detailed battery power, charging status, EQ (bass/treble/balance), loudness, fade, TV autoplay, battery/charging/microphone status. After adding it to my Dashboard, I can control each speaker as easily as I control lights.
Due to the limitation that this is a battery-powered speaker, once you take it away from the charging base and the body enters sleep mode, the entire device will enter a disconnected state, and you need to manually press the power button to restore it to the home network. Of course, this is an inevitable state due to technical limitations, and I can’t ask for more.
As mentioned before, the voice assistant that comes with Sonos is obviously not suitable for domestic users, but since it can connect to my HA and Hermes, it only requires a few tokens to make it understand my intentions and speak. After a few rounds of dialogue, a weather report can be completed through the following workflow:
- Say “Let my speaker announce today’s weather”
- I get the weather: adjust the weather MCP (Hangzhou) → get it
今天 10/5 晴，23°/14°，北风1-3级；明天 24°/14° - AI writes the broadcast script:
“Miku reported that it will be sunny in Hangzhou today, with a maximum of 23 degrees during the day and 14 degrees at night, with a north wind of one to three degrees. The difference between morning and evening is nine degrees, so be sure to bring a jacket when you go out. It will continue to be sunny tomorrow, with a temperature of 24 degrees during the day.”
- Execute on Mac:
announce "那段稿子"→~/.hermes/scripts/announce.py - The script is forwarded to the NAS, and the NAS uses edge-tts (Xiaoxiao) to synthesize speech → ffmpeg converts to mp3 → saves
http://192.168.31.50:8899/announce-20261005-092021.mp3(13.9 seconds, 218 KB)
- Script to adjust HA
media_player.play_mediapointing at the two speakers (rightke_ting/ leftke_ting_2），media_content_id= The URL above; before playing, please raise the volume of both channels to 30% - Let the two speakers get the mp3 by themselves (with Range request) and play it for 13.9 seconds – but this step will push out the music being played (also due to device limitations, battery-powered Sonos does not support it)
announce: trueaudioClip insert. So there is no way to “pause music, insert a sentence, resume”, you can only occupy the media channel) - After playing, the script restores the volume to its original value: right
0.28/ left0.22
In addition to reporting the weather, since there is a local HA, it can also be used to report the status of various devices in the home, which basically fulfills the needs of a smart speaker.
It can also be seen from the above process that the speaker’s microphone cannot directly call monitoring, so several detours are required. Even though I have configured shortcuts for it on my phone, I always find it a bit troublesome. I still look forward to Sonos engineers working harder to bring voice assistants to domestic users.
There
Let me have a happy journey and let me remember how happy I am
Because I was worried that the child was still too young, I never took my child back to my hometown in Jiangxi to visit relatives. When my child was 15 months old and could walk, I took the Mid-Autumn Festival holiday to take my wife and children on a self-driving trip.
The journey takes about six hours. If it were just my wife and I, it would be a relaxing and enjoyable journey. But this time with the kids, the journey turned into a journey to the West. Diapers, instant hot water bottles, instant noodles, milk powder bottles, strollers… stuffing these into the car is just a matter of physical work and space planning. A restless, energetic child who is unwilling to sit quietly in a child seat is the biggest challenge on the journey.
When I was packing my luggage, I saw Sonos Play on the TV cabinet and stuffed it into my backpack. The car got on the highway, and the child was fussing in the child seat and refused to sleep. I took out the stereo from my bag and handed it to my wife so that she could play children’s songs for the child in the back seat (because I need to listen to podcasts to concentrate while driving). While driving, I couldn’t pull out the manual to instruct her on how to connect the Bluetooth to the stereo. I just told her to press the Bluetooth button on the back and give it a try, and she successfully connected it in one go.
After my wife played the children’s song, the child became a little quieter. Then she turned down the volume and put it directly in the child’s hand as a toy, letting him listen while playing. (Never follow suit. Only when you think about it do you realize that this is a very dangerous operation). Just like that, the baby slowly fell asleep holding this speaker.
We were able to spend the six-hour journey in peace, and we did the same thing on the return trip. As long as this speaker is convenient enough, it can even become a magic tool for coaxing babies. But please do not put it into the hands of children while the vehicle is moving.
The Mid-Autumn Festival is followed by the National Day. After settling the baby in my hometown in the countryside, I finally had some opportunities to be alone. At times like this, I always like to find a comfortable coffee shop and spend the whole day with my computer. The only difference this time when I went out was that I also brought a Play with me before going out.
The coffee shop is a simple community shop, not large in scale. The boss uses an old YAMAHA to play background music in the shop, so I am not prepared to let this stereo disturb the boss’s habits.
Until a customer came to the store holding a long flute and asked the boss if he could borrow the store’s stereo to play the accompaniment so that he could practice playing the flute in the store. Because this YAMAHA is too old, although it supports Bluetooth, it is very troublesome to set up. Standing next to me, I offered to try out the Sonos Play I had. Thus, the achievement of randomly lending speakers to customers in coffee shops to listen to the flute was achieved.
Conclusion
Some time ago, a friend asked me: “I have been emo for a whole period of time. I feel like I have failed in life and I can’t escape from my thoughts. What should I do?” ’ I immediately thought of myself in the UK, standing on the steps of my dormitory in a daze, faced with a paper I couldn’t write, intertwined relationships, and a confused future.
Then I told him, listen to music, a lot of music. At that time, I was almost saved by music. Thanks to Eason’s “My Happy Era”, I can listen to him singing again and again: let me have a happy journey and let me remember how happy I am; but I don’t have to feel bad; if you come back or not, it will be a disaster.
I am grateful to have music in my life that can support me, but the things around me will not gradually decrease as I grow up, and music cannot appear anytime and anywhere. Thinking back, how long has it been since you only opened your favorite playlists and never added new music to your library? How long has it been since you listened to an album that you listened to repeatedly before?
Sonos Play allows me to rediscover my sense of music during breaks in life. A device that guarantees the presence of music at home, here and there. This is how I have experienced and felt about it during this time.
Note 1: Sonos Play is priced at RMB 2,999 and will be officially launched on September 9, 2026.
Note 2: There was no intervention or suggestion from the brand in the writing of this article. Everything is based on personal experience and does not represent the opinion of the brand.
Sincere thanks to Minority and Sonos for providing the device experience.
