Sonos’ new wireless Playbase speakers are coming to Malaysia and here’s why you need them

There are good speakers and there are speakers that beguile you with their aurally seductive wiles to the point that you’re left with a beatific grin of delight after listening to just one track. Sonos’ new Playbase soundbar was just that kind of speaker and in the short space of a two hour field test in Singapore it left us wanting for more.

The latest addition to their line-up of wireless speakers which currently consists of the compact Play 1, the Play 3, the Play 5 and the hefty Soundbar, the Sonos Playbase is a flat, pedestal shaped 3.0 wireless  sound bar designed for home setups that prefer to mount their TVs pedestal-style on a table or mantelpiece rather than a wall-mounted setup like what the aforementioned Playbar was designed for.

Where the Playbar is a rectangular, horizontally aligned array of speakers shaped like an angular rectangular-shaped bazooka, the Playbase is instead large and flat with the dimensions of your average chair seat while weighing in at 8.86kg that sits under your TV.

All that heft is put to good use as the Playbase comes with ten speakers with six mid-range drivers, three tweeters aiming at each frontal edge and directly in front along with a subwoofer, all of which have been specifically  designed for the rather unique acoustic dimensions of the Playbase; unlike most speakers that are vertically oriented, the Playbase is essentially a giant pedestal. Each of these ten speakers are further beefed up with their own dedicated Class-D amplifier.

Mr. Richard O’ Carroll, Head of Retail from Sonos sharing more about the interior design of the Sonos Playbase

The astute would wonder how something as ostensibly fragile as a speaker would hold up to propping the ponderous weight of a full sized latter day flatscreen telly but the Playbase is surprisingly resilient. To ensure it doesn’t buckle under the weight, Sonos has, according to their boffins, come up with a custom formulated amalgam of plastic, polymer and glass that has been specifically designed for structural strength and more importantly, is acoustically inert meaning that it doesn’t echo or have sound bounce off it. A Playbase is actually rated to withstand up to 35kg of weight which means it’ll be able to prop up almost anything up to a 54-inch panel or a waifish supermodel.

Playing it smooth
From afar, the Sonos Playbase  is  an unobtrusive affair that wouldn’t look out of place in all but the most outlandish home decor with the only indication of its purpose being the distinctive Sonos logo vertically emblazoned on its front. Look up close and you’ll notice an intricate series of machined holes – there’s 43,000 of them densely spaced throughout the front and sides of the Playbase’s casing to allow for the internal speakers to work their magic.

Look closer and you’ll notice that the size of each pin-sized hole has been specifically machined according to its location for maximum effect based on the speakers ensconced within the Playbase  – the smallest holes are drilled where the tweeters are to offer tighter, pinpoint precise sound while the sides are larger to give the sound ‘more room’.

Look around the back of the Playbase and you’ll notice that it actually lacks ports, missing the de facto audio line-in and, for the matter,  almost anything else barring an optical audio output and a power cable. Music for the Playbase, like the rest of the Sonos line is piped to it purely via Wi-Fi off a device like your phone or online via almost every mainstream music streaming service possible including the usual like Spotify and Tidal.

Modular Magic
Audio is streamed wirelessly from devices via Wi-Fi and the Playbase, via their Sonos Controller app for iPhone and Android, is able to pair-up  with other compatible Sonos speakers to form increasingly more powerful home theatre setups as needed. The magic of Sonos’ line-up is that it is able to do this without the need for onerous wiring tangling users underfoot and the speakers are able to work in concert, sharing the load and optimising themselves for best effect based on where they are in your room or house. 

Another interesting feature that Sonos took great pains to demonstrate was their TruePlay functionality. In essence, it’s a feature on the Sonos line of speakers via their Sonos app that actually sizes up the acoustic dimensions of your playing area and then adjusts the Sonos equaliser settings to deliver best results, allowing Sonos kit to work in odd rooms that would have been considered an acoustic nightmare. This finally allows poor sods who have odd rectangular or wedge shaped living rooms to finally enjoy some decent audio without having to renovate a good chunk of their house to do so.

A short field test with a host of movie trailers on the Playbase yielded truly pleasing results. The Revenant’s frantic firefight against the natives with arrows and muskets flying around sounded vivid with even the low-pitched frantic whispers as Leonardo Di Caprio’s terrified associates attempting to scarper for it sounding distinct and crisp. Arrows zipped by with high-pitched zings even as muskets let out a dull sounding crump onscreen.

Another trailer from The Force Awakens put all the classic Star Wars musical and aural tropes on parade to excellent effect with the classic basso roar of X-Wings zipping about and TIE fighters with their distinct high pitched whine dogfighting about to John Williams’ classical track. The soundstage of the Playbase was excellent with a convincing sense of being in the middle of the scene. As the preview wrapped up, we managed to test Hotel California by the Eagles on the Playbase via Spotify streaming. The acoustically demanding track has highs and lows that can put a speaker through its paces and the Playbase  handled it with capable aplomb.

While the Sonos Playbase has the modularity of its siblings in that it can act as the centrepiece of a home theatre system made up of Sonos speakers, it works perfectly fine on its own. Even as a standalone speaker, the Playbase in our short test was remarkably capable,  leveraging all ten of its drivers to handle everything throw at it.

The magic happens though when you start adding more and more Sonos speakers like the Play 1, Play 3 and Play 5 to it via TruePlay. As more Sonos speakers are added, it then offloads some of the workload to them for directional audio for a true home theatre system with a theoretical maximum of up to 32 speakers to a single Sonos Wi-Fi enabled home theatre setup.

If you’re keen, the Sonos Playbase will arrive in Malaysia at Harvey Norman and Radio Shack for RM4,299 by the end of April. For more details please swing by the official distributor TCAcoustic ‘s website at www.tcacoustic.com.my.