Sonos Ray: the promise of maximum sound at a mini price and format

You run out of room to house the soundbars Bow Where Beam Gen 2 in your living room? Sonos has the solution: its new Ray.

A very compact and affordable model, Ray joins the dance of small, versatile and connected models.

Sonos Ray: very compact and very (too?) refined

Even smaller than the very good Beam Gen 2 (559 x 95 x 71 mm for 1.95 kg), the new Ray soundbar nevertheless does not fail to display a design in the style of Sonos, made of extremely simple lines and some rounding at the ends. Here, the only real difference lies in the arrangement of the curves, placed vertically and no longer horizontally.

If the format can almost suggest a desktop model, Sonos presents the Ray as a TV model only. As such, this sound bar has notches for wall hanging and is compatible with most (infrared) TV remote controls on the market.

Unfortunately, the simplicity of the product is largely reflected in its connectors. Forget the modern HDMI eARC type sockets, it only accommodates a single digital input, of the optical type. This grip is certainly universal, but quite limiting. Added to this is an RJ45 socket and of course a Wi-Fi chip.

The Sonos universe, simplified immersion

As you can imagine, the device is part of the manufacturer’s connected/multiroom range. Thus, if for example it is not possible to connect a subwoofer or rear speakers by wire, it is possible to pair them (Sonos model only) to the Ray via the dedicated Sonos application (in its version S2), in order to create a more complete home cinema set. This application still allows to support various music streaming services and create sound zones within the same network. If Airplay 2 compatibility is still in the game, Sonos does not provide any details as to compatibility with a Chromecast.

Due to its single optical port, the Ray does not support advanced audio formats such as Dolby Atmos. Here, only uncompressed stereo streams (PCM), Dolby Digital and DTS are supported. On paper, compatibility therefore stops at 5.1 or 7.1 compressed. In practice, the Ray mostly looks like an “extended” stereo model. To be checked in practice.

The sound architecture is logically simpler than on the brand’s other sound bars. Two bass/midrange speakers cohabit with two tweeters. These tweeters are supported by waveguides, allowing the sound to be better dispersed and projected towards the walls. The bass/midrange speakers, for their part, are loaded with bass-reflex, with the use of rather atypical vents. Everything is powered by four class D amplifiers, one per loudspeaker. The power is however not announced.

Some functions inherited from the first models also improve the sound experience. iOS product owners can, for example, use TruePlay to create a product calibration based on the room.

Available from June 7 with us, in black or white, the Sonos Ray is announced at 300 euros.

Sonos Voice Control: the offline assistant to control your devices

Another highly anticipated novelty, the Sonos Voice Control, the manufacturer’s voice assistant, will be available from 1^er June on all brand devices compatible with voice assistants. This integration will be done in a fairly simple way, by activating it in the dedicated application. One of the advantages of the service here is that it works locally, with the processing being carried out by the devices.

The range of commands is not yet known exactly, but we already know that it will be possible to adjust the volume, to navigate between audio tracks and of course to define commands related to the multiroom universe (example: ” Hey Sonos, play this music on all the speakers in the living room “). Initially, advanced actions related to streaming services will be limited to Amazon Music, Deezer, Apple Music, Sonos Radio and Pandora.

Little Roam takes on colors

We were talking yesterday about a leak from the brand on this subject, the Sonos Roam speaker welcomes three new colors, after its very classic black and white versions. The product is therefore available in Olive (absinthe green), Wave (blue-grey) and Sunset (orange/coral) versions. Of course, we remain on a very “Apple” vision of colors, with relatively pale tones.

The three versions are available now, for a price of 200 euros.

Source: Sonos press release