Sonos One Gen 2 review: Audio quality

Sonos One Gen 2 review: Audio quality

Befitting its legacy, the Sonos One Gen 2 speakers sound amazing for their size. Just one of them was able to fill my living room with full, balanced sound; pairing a second speaker to the first made it all the more richer.

One of the nice things about Sonos speakers is that you can tune them to the acoustic properties of the room you’re in. For example, I listened to Belle and Sebastian’s “I’m a Cuckoo” before tuning the speaker; the song came through well, but the vocals were very bright, and the bass was hidden. After tuning the speakers, the bass was much more pronounced, and the vocals weren’t as bright, but warmer in tone.

From ABBA to Frank Zappa, anything I threw at the Sonos speakers came through spectacularly, given their size. My living room was filled with rich, full sound. I tried turning the speakers to 11, but could only manage about an 8 before they were ear-splittingly loud.

The bass line in Kool & the Gang’s “Summer Madness” popped, while the high notes of the melody, way at the top end, came through cleanly without any distortion. The vocals in the chorus of The Five Stairsteps’ “O-o-h Child” sounded a little compressed, but there was great separation between the bass line, the brass and strings.

The same thing happened with “Highway to Hell” from AC/DC - the chorus sounded compressed compared to the rest of the song, but the bass line really thumped. The stereo setup of the two speakers was great in showcasing the competing guitar solos in Iron Maiden’s “Aces High.”

Sonos’ speakers were just as good at more mellow fare: Dave Brubeck’s “Blue Rondo a la Turk” sounded as warm as my vinyl album, as did other jazz tracks from Vince Guaraldi and others.

While Alexa lets you stream music from a variety of sources, including Pandora, iHeartRadio, SiriusXM and TuneIn, YouTube Music as well as Amazon’s own music services, one of Sonos’ strengths is that it opens up world of other sources, including Apple Music, Google Play Music, MLB Gameday Audio and Napster. You can also control Spotify playback through the speaker using Alexa.

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