When Sonos announced its Era 300 earlier this week, it made waves about the wireless speaker that supports Amazon Music’s Dolby Atmos-powered spatial audio. But it couldn’t say anything concrete about support for spatial audio via Apple Music, except that it would be coming soon. Well, Sonos has now confirmed that it is indeed coming on March 28 (the day the Eras go on sale) – and not just for the Era 300, but also for the Arc and Beam (Gen 2) soundbars.
It’s a welcome, but perhaps unsurprising, confirmation given that, like the Era 300, the two Sonos soundbars also have the Dolby Atmos props to deliver Apple’s spatial audio music. The Arc features upward-firing drivers (as well as front-firing and side-firing drivers) to convincingly deliver the height channels of an Atmos track (or ‘spatial audio’), while the more affordable second-generation Beam front-firing drivers has been able to create the impression of height thanks to clever processing. The Era 300, meanwhile, adopts a more wireless speaker-like “cinched hourglass” form factor with an arc-like driver spread from the top, sides, and front.
On March 28, these three Sonos devices will be the first products outside the Apple ecosystem to support spatial audio tracks on Apple Music, with the Era 300 appearing to be a direct rival to spatial advocate HomePod 2. It’s a comparison we can’t compare. can wait to try .
Unfortunately for Tidal Hi-Fi Plus subscribers who want to take advantage of their access to Dolby Atmos music in the service’s catalog, Sonos hasn’t announced spatial audio support for Tidal. Still, anyway.
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