Sonos 16.0 drops a hint for 2024 new products

hey guys welcome back to the channel and I have been so busy with the ch's new year and this is the new year according to the lunar calendar andai and what that means is well it's just prosperity and hope that you get rich so type Kai in the comment section down below so that I know that you are here if it is too much a simple H will work what means also get rich so very quick upfront summary SOS 16.0 that's the S2 version 16.0 was released on the 6th of February just in time for the chines new year and really there are no new features updated no new products was launched nothing is broken so what is fixed I'm not very sure they claim some Buck fixes and they' have been putting that in the release notes for a very long time now um some users are saying that the Bluetooth for the era series of speakers is now fixed but I didn't know what was broken in the first place now more importantly the sound is okay there are very minor shifts in the mid-range if you want to know more do stay on else you are good to go but one very important point before we end our FR summary if you're using an iPhone that's older than the iPhone 8 or the se2 please take note true play will no longer be supported so on to the main content of the video now what is missing from this 16.0 firmware update now for one the minimum iOS version support is now 16 right so iOS 16 and above meaning to say the iOS 16 and iOS 17 that will do now they skip entirely iOS 15 so the last version of Sonos S2 it supported back to iOS 14 so it skip 15 all together so for those of you who don't know what that means it means that your iPhone 6 and your iPhone 7 can no longer be used now these are the unsupported functions which I'm going to list up here you can get it on the SS website but I'm just putting it up here for your reference you may pause here if you need more information now more importantly the main feature that I think is missing or rather not supported if you're using an older iPhone is true play so if you're using iPhones before the iPhone 8 you won't get true play anymore now there's no iPhone 9 so the next jump is iPhone 10 right now I don't know many people were using iPhone 8 is it was such a quiet release now iPhone 7 used to be great for True play in my initial years of testing well it turned out that the iPhone did better true play and the sound sounded better but over the years I realized that the technique of true play matters more so if you are interested in that do check out this video right here and you'll see how the different true play methods will impact the sound quality of your Sonos setup now what else went wrong in the Sonos update well the update process is broken it's been broken for a while already it never updates fast when it says two to 3 minutes it's never two to 3 minutes and it almost never succeeds at the first try well that is actually for me because I do have quite a few Sono systems and few Sono speakers around the house so if you have less complex setup maybe it maybe Sonos just doesn't like customers with more than a couple of speakers well the thing is it will succeed it just takes long and maybe a few tries right and meanwhile the lights will just bling orange and white and it happened for me like 30 minutes I turn off a few speakers so was just the beam gen one beam Gen 2 set up with the subs and the suround as well as the S Arc but it did take about 30 minutes and two tries so some of you might say that I can leave it on auto update and let it update throughout the night well that can work now one of the reasons why I don't want to do it is that SOS has the history of actually McKing up the sound right so it may mess up the sound I think about two years ago with version 14.12 it broke the sub right so if you have a sub um with your AR or your beam soundar and you enable through play the sub output was neutered completely it took them 3 months before it got fixed well I didn't put it on auto update since that incident because I don't want my system to get updated I have to wait 3 months with a NE sound now how will you know whether the sound is okay or not okay well you've come to the right Channel and on this channel I will test almost every single update right save for 15.11 which was about two months back I didn't make a video but I did post on my section so if you do want to keep updated then subscribe to this channel ring the notification Bell and check whether the version update is good to go I will let you know for this particular case yes it's good to go now did it change the sound so I will explain a little bit more in my channel I do frequency response sweeps uh which measures the setup that I have in this particular case in this particular video it is a Sonos art with two subs and surrounds speakers uh using the era 300 so when I do a frequency response sweep I measure the entire range from 20 HZ all the way to 20 khz and try to see if it keeps up a response which we are familiar with and whether base is taken away or whether mid-range or treble is taken away now I will first pull up the green chart so in the green chart you'll see that well this is the 15.11 right so before I did the update I actually R some test I measured the frequency response of the system now ideally it's going to be flat right if you put in 90 DB of sound 90 DB of sound at that specific frequency will come up right and the same uh goes throughout the entire frequency but no system is perfect no room is perfect so you will see that some frequency response um at specific points in the frequency will be higher and lower now from the green chart which is the Sonos Arc uh at 15.11 from where version it uh emphasizes the base a little bit now this is normal this is common in my setup I prefer that anyway and Sonos does emphasize the base now that's because I also have a sub in fact dual sub paed to the Sonos up so this is what we are familiar with this is what we have been happy with now I'm going to pull up the rate chart now the rate curve indicates uh the same setup done just about 1 hour apart and that is for firmware version 16.0 now you will see that there might be some differences here and there and there are some pulling back of the base regions between about 50 and 80 htz or so and there will be some pulling back of vocals at about 700 Herz plus minus right and some pushing up about 2 khz to 4 khz now what this all means is that it it's just very little change the sound curve the sound the the response the sound signature is still very much the uh the same as before now you won't be able to realistically tell any difference even if I would put the two setup on different versions side by side for ab comparison for all intents and purposes there are no changes and this could also be measurement errors although I do run a few times to average it all out for each of the version so the question that we want to ask is why update the firmware why should we update the firmware in fact why did Sonos launch the firmware now since a couple of years ago Sonos has been launching a new major version meaning to say from 14 something to 15 something to 16 something as the first version of every year so 16.0 seems to indicate that it is a major version but you know in the true uh spirit of house Sonos thing it is just an indication of a new series of firmware for the new year right it is not necessarily major now in 2020 the first firmware version was in June right so this we are getting in February but in 2020 we're getting for uh first version in June and that was for the launch of Sonos Arc Sonos 5 as well as the Gen 3 sub now that is a meaningful update because you want to be able to support the new hardware the new products that is being launched but 16.0 brought about no new updates Sonos did Skip One in January usually they do monthly update they only updated in February this time round why is that so maybe they are preparing for new hardware I did a previous video speculating about the possible Hardware that they're going to launch and I would say that there is a possibility that it might come soon right I mentioned uh 12.0 it was launched in June of 2020 to support the arc the 5 and the subry uh 13.0 was launched in March 2021 first version to support the room and in 2022 14.0 was launched in January in which the there was no new product right the ray for the new product for 2022 was launched in June and 15.1 was brought about in February of 23 and that Skip 15.0 and it was meant for the era 100 and the era 300 now let's talk a little bit about the products that are possibly and likely to be launched now we have the subg 3 the sub gen 3 has a four years update cycle the last update was in 2020 and now is 2024 so it sounds like it is right for updating but I'm not sure how much more you can improve on the sub gen 3 but that that said the Gen one to Gen 2 to gen 3 didn't see a huge Improvement in terms of performance yes the processor was actually changed but not much else the beam gen 3 the beam gen 3 was on a three-year release cycle so the first version was launched in 2018 the second version was launched in 2021 and 3 years since it will be 2024 so that's the beam gen 3 that's a possibility there now the arc Gen 2 right so the arc had never had a previous version and the last release the first release was actually in 2020 and it's been 4 years since so if you are looking for a soundbar there is a possibility that the arc is going to uh come up with Gen 2 maybe in 2024 we don't know about that now the fourth product we're going to be talking about is M right the solos M came from a line of solos connect connect M uh and the release cycle is actually pretty long but the M was last released in 2019 so it's been 5 years since now what can they do to the m to make it even better well the m is actually a very capable uh class D uh digital M right um I would say that if you wanted to release something meaningful it could be something that will combine audio and visual now I spoken about the possibilities of upgrading an m in my previous video so check out one of of those previously released videos for more information now the M if it combines audio which is what Sonos is good at and visual then it becomes like the Sonos TV that they were talking about I don't know it maybe it might be like working like a AV receiver and that will be one interesting product so all these four products that I've mentioned here they kind of like um sound possible that it could be released and maybe that's what 16.0 is meant for but there's one more product that has been speculated for years and has never seen the light of day and that is the Sonos headphone so headphones have never been released before it is a new product category SOS has hinted Patrick Spence himself has hinted that the new product category will be entered into in this year now whether it's going to be released in the first half of 2024 or the second half of 2024 we don't know now if you were to compete with the rest of the market and like son like B they are releasing those headphones in the second half of the year in time for maybe some Christmas shopping so I would think that if Sonos wanted to compete in that Arena they will probably enter the headphones in the later half of the Year okay so these are the possible products that the Sono 16.0 is meant to support now that's a hint that we're looking at here right because I earlier mentioned that iOS 16 is now the minimum requirement for your AIO uh for your iPhones right they have skipped iOS 15 now iPhone 6 iPhone 7 are no longer supported so why Skip One version completely why alienate the iPhone 6 iPhone 7 yes they are old but you know it if it still works it still works why not iOS 15 right because a new home app was released on iOS 6 and it has support for mattera right uh not not the physics mattera but this is Apple's mattera so what is mattera mattera is like a a smart home homekit control right uh and it ties in all the protocols I don't know exactly how it works I only know that it helps integrate a smart home now if there's meta and there's homekit control what could it be use for I don't know anyway this is me speculating uh I will suspect that the focus on an iOS device or uh iPad or Mac uh ecosystem Apple ecosystem is probably going to alienate the Android users right now even true play isn't accessible to Android uh users right so how is Android going to work on mattera I'm actually not very sure but more importantly why it matter is because home control visual now you have maybe the amp uh being able to show a screen on your TV and you're able to control things around the house so maybe you want to control the sound maybe you want to control Maybe you get a new user interface to control the lights the door the air conditioner I'm not sure anyway this is all speculation I could be way wrong very very wrong so if you are considering buying anything from Sonos check out one of my extensive reviews right here if you want to speculate on the headphones do join me here on this channel and I'll see you in one of those videos

Channel: Peter Pee

Views: 29,188

Keywords: Sonos, Sonos 2023, sonos new, new sonos, sonos arc, sonos beam, sonos one, sonos era, era 100, era 300, Sonos era 500, sonos move, sonos roam, sonos sub, sonos headphones, sonos atmos, sonos five, sonos ray, sonos bluetooth, sub mini, mini sub, sonos sub mini, sonos go, sonos headphone, sonos 2024

Id: x7kYzKbs8LA

Length: 14min 20sec (860 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 12 2024