Competition Heats Up in Smart Speaker Market With Sonos, Google Home Launches
Wednesday was big for voice-controlled speaker announcements, with major players Sonos and Google making preholiday season announcements. The latest Sonos and Google products will join a crowded voice-controlled speaker market that includes new Amazon Echos, Harman Kardon’s Cortana-based model and Apple’s HomePod.
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Wireless multiroom audio market leader Sonos is playing Switzerland in the voice control space, announcing Wednesday a new entry-level speaker that will support Amazon Alexa voice control out of the box -- when it ships on Oct. 24 -- and then Google Assistant in 2018. The company began taking preorders for the $199 Sonos One Tuesday.
The Sonos One is the same price as the Sonos Play:1, which will remain in the line. “As great as voice control is, not everyone wants to have one in their home,” a Sonos representative told us. The new speaker has “a little more” bass, he said, "but not a significant jump.” The speaker, with two Class D amplifiers, one tweeter and a mid-bass woofer, adds a six-mic array and adaptive noise suppression to “focus on the right person” for better voice recognition, Sonos said. Voice capture technology with echo cancellation allows the Sonos speaker to pick out a voice over the music, and it turn down the music when Alexa is addressed, said the company.
At launch, music fans in the U.S., U.K. and Germany will be able to ask Alexa to control Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, Pandora, SiriusXM and TuneIn from the speaker. Alexa control for Spotify on Sonos One is “coming soon,” it said. For the other 80-some services Sonos supports, users will be able to voice-control transport functions such as pause, skip, volume up and down, and what’s playing, Sonos said, and they’ll be able to control their entire Sonos system by voice.
Current Sonos owners will get an Alexa upgrade, too, now able to use their Echo devices to control Sonos speakers via a free software update.
Sonos announced Apple AirPlay 2 will be available on systems next year, making it possible to play any sound from an iOS device -- including YouTube videos and Netflix movies -- on Sonos speakers throughout the house. Users will also be able to ask any Siri-enabled device to control music on Sonos speakers, it said.
Google, meanwhile, unveiled two new Google Home speakers, the $49 Mini, designed to be “placed anywhere,” said Isabelle Olsson, senior industrial designer. The circular device, taking on a role like Amazon’s Echo Dot, lets users add voice functionality to other rooms at a lower cost than with larger speakers. She called it a sous chef for the kitchen, white noise generator for a nursery and alarm clock for the bedroom. Google began taking preorders Wednesday with availability set for Oct. 19, she said. The Mini can connect to larger sound systems with Chromecast built in for “bigger sound,” she said.
For consumers looking for Google Assistant capabilities “from a higher quality speaker," the company launched the $399 Google Home Max (December, with preorders starting Nov. 13), which combines the company’s machine learning capabilities with hardware and software. Audio engineers “obsessed over the bass,” said Google Vice President Rishi Chandra, highlighting a pair of 4.5-inch woofers with 22mm of excursion that can move “a lot of air” and reach very low frequencies. The speaker is 20 times as loud as the Google Home, he said.
Google Home Max has self-tuning capabilities allowing users to compensate for room anomalies or speaker placement, said Chandra. “To sound great, a speaker needs to adjust to you and your home,” said Chandra, and the speaker incorporates Google’s SmartSound that adapts to user’s environment, context and preferences.
SmartSound uses a machine learning model trained with “thousands” of room configurations, Chandra said. If the Max is moved a few feet, the dynamic sound system will adjust within seconds, he said. Over time, the speaker will adjust to the tastes and surroundings of owners, setting volume for listening to music vs. a podcast, for instance, or turning up the volume when the dishwasher is running.
Google Home Max users have access to You Tube Music along with Spotify free and paid accounts and other streaming music services, said Chandra. It supports Bluetooth and Google Cast and has an auxiliary input for a turntable or other audio source. The speaker has Google’s Voice Match, which personalizes libraries and playlists to individual users, and it works with other Google Home speakers, plus “hundreds” of speakers with Chromecast built in, he said.