9 ways to get the most out of your Sonos speakers

Main points

• You can add apps and services to Sonos for even more music selection and discovery.
• Connect your vinyl record player to Sonos speakers for a seamless audio experience.
• Use TruePlay to tune your speakers for optimal sound quality and customization.

Multi-room audio setups have been around before Sonos, but it’s fair to say that the company’s speakers and soundbars have made the process of playing music in your home or workplace much simpler and better suited to the music flow we live in. media age. exists, but you’ll get the smoothest experience with Sonos.

The great thing is that even though Sonos has decked out your space with nearly wireless speakers, there’s still plenty of tweaking and experimenting that new owners or dedicated audio enthusiasts can do to tailor a specific setup to their liking. With that in mind, we created this guide with nine of the best tips and tricks to help you get the most out of your Sonos speakers, from setup to playback.

1 Add apps and other music services

You’re not limited to Sonos Radio

Sonos operates its own ad-supported music streaming service called Sonos Radio, which is exclusive to Sonos devices and has several different stations built around genres and other themes. It’s better than you think and a great way to learn about new music, but you probably have speakers to listen to music you’ve already curated and loved for yourself.

To connect a streaming service or audio app to your Sonos system:

1. Open sonos app.
2. Go to set up The rightmost tab of the bottom menu bar.
3. tap Services and Voice.
4. then click Add service under Music and content.
5. Select the service or app you want to connect to and click Add to Sonos.
6. You may be prompted to log in or create an account, but you should be ready to listen once you’re done.

2 Connect to your vinyl records

Sonos transforms your entire A/V setup

Of course, your Sonos isn’t limited to the music you stream. Some Sonos speakers have a line-in port for playing audio from a connected audio device, such as a record player. You can connect your record player to a Sonos Play:5, Five, Era 100, Era 300, or Move 2, or use the audio input jack on a Sonos Port or Sonos Amp.

After connecting your record player (you may need an adapter):

1. Go to Browse tab, second from the left in the bottom menu bar.
2. tap line input and then Select source.

You can also access line-in audio in Settings:

1. Go to set up Label.
2. tap system.
3. choose one Room One of the speakers has a line input.
4. scroll down to Line input options.

3 Tweak your audio with TruePlay

Get the most out of flagship Sonos products

Sonos’ secret sauce is TruePlay, which uses an onboard microphone or your smartphone to adjust the speaker’s audio playback to fit the surrounding room’s acoustics. It can fix your audio, but it doesn’t hurt when you’re trying to make everything sound better, especially when you’re dealing with multiple speakers.

1. Open sonos app.
2. Go to set up Label.
3. tap system.
4. choose Room (and speakers) you want to adjust.
5. then select real gameThen Trueplay tuning.
6. Follow the on-screen instructions and you should be good to go.

4 Control playback

Intuitive buttons

Once you actually set up the audio to play, Sonos supports a variety of ways to control playback, group speakers, and modify what you hear. The Sonos app provides easy access to the Now Playing screen, where you can play, pause, skip tracks, and rearrange songs in your queue. A single speaker contains physical or capacitive buttons that perform the same action (sometimes a button has multiple purposes).

5 Control using your voice assistant

Hands-free control

You can interact with the voice assistant directly through a Sonos speaker with a built-in microphone, or you can control the Sonos speaker through a voice assistant on another device. Sonos even has its own voice assistant called Sonos Voice Control. The level of integration with your voice assistant depends on your preference.

All Sonos speakers with microphones work with Amazon Alexa. We have a guide on best practices for setting up a voice assistant, but here’s the simple version:

1. Open sonos app.
2. Click set up The tab in the far right corner of the bottom menu bar.
3. tap Services and Voice.
4. choose Add voice assistant under voice part.
5. Find and click Amazon Alexa.
6. choose Add to Sonos.
7. elect room (and speakers) You want to add Alexa and click Add Amazon Alexa.
8. Sign in to Amazon and follow the on-screen instructions.

All Sonos speakers with microphones except the Era 100, Era 300, and Move 2 support Google Assistant. Considering the tense relationship between Sonos and Google, it’s likely this trend will continue with future speakers. Again, we have a guide on how to do this, but here are the basics:

1. Open sonos app.
2. Click set up Label.
3. tap Services and Voice.
4. choose Add voice assistant.
5. tap google assistant.
6. choose Add to Sonos.
7. choose room and speakers You want to add Google Assistant and click Add Google Assistant.
8. If Amazon Alexa is enabled, Confirm that you will switch.
9. Just follow the prompts Go to Google Assistant app, sign in to your Sonos account, and set your Google Assistant preferences.

Apple’s Siri cannot interact directly on Sonos speakers, but you can use Siri to control Sonos devices. To enable it, you need an AirPlay 2-compatible speaker (Sonos Ray, Beam, Arc, Playbase, Play:5, 5, 1, 1 SL, Move, Move 2, Roam, Roam SL, Era 100, and Era 300 Everything works ) and your Apple Home app:

1. Open Home app.
2. Click Plus sign (+) symbol,
3. choose Add accessories.
4. choose more choices.
5. then click Speaker you want to add and click complete.

6 Putting Sonos speakers together

Amplify your hearing

Sonos’ speakers work great on their own, but they work best together, and creating speaker groups is one of the best ways to play music in multiple rooms. Speakers can be grouped and ungrouped in the app or using the buttons on the speakers.

To start using the app:

1. Open sonos app.
2. Click system The tab is located in the center of the bottom menu bar.
3. Find the speakers you want to group and click Square symbol with arrow Come out of it.
4. Select or deselect the various other speakers you want to group or ungroup, then click complete.

If the music is already playing in one of the other speaker groups, you can just hold the play button to add a new speaker. If different sets of speakers are playing different songs, you can even hold down the power button to cycle between sets.

7 Adjust the speakers for conversation or nighttime viewing

Enhanced voice enhancement features

If you’re looking for another way to improve the audio quality of your Sonos speakers besides Trueplay, there are some software features built into Sonos that can help. On home theater speakers, especially Sonos soundbars, you can use the voice enhancement feature to enhance the vocals of whatever you’re watching on your TV.

Assuming your TV has Sonos speakers connected, to enable voice enhancement:

1. Turn on the TV and make sure the audio is playing through the Sonos home theater speakers.
2. Open sonos app.
3. Click system The tab in the center of the bottom menu bar.
4. choose Your home theater speakers and open Now playing screen.
5. Click speech enhancement Button (dialog box) turns speech enhancement on and off.

If you watch TV at low volumes at night, you can turn on night sounds to rebalance the audio so that what you’re watching is easy to understand without waking anyone up at higher volumes.

Turning night sounds is almost the same as speech enhancement:

1. Make sure your TV is on, your speakers are connected and audio is playing through them.
2. Open sonos app.
3. Click system Label.
4. choose Your home theater speakers and open Now playing screen.
5. Click night sound Button (Crescent) turns night sounds on and off.

8 Use Sonos as an alarm clock

Smart alarm clock and speaker in one

We’ve detailed the advantages of the Sonos alarm clock before, and it’s not difficult to try it yourself:

1. Open sonos app.
2. choose Guest room tab and click alarm (clock symbol) icon.
3. tap new alert.
4. Set the time, the room you want it to play in, how often you want it to repeat, how loud you want it to play, and how long you want it to play.

All current Sonos speakers have LED lights that indicate whether they’re on, connected to Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, or whether you’re adjusting the volume, among other things. It’s very bright, but in a dark living room or home theater, it’s probably the kind of thing you’d want to turn off. Fortunately, you can.

To turn off the LED status light:

1. Open sonos app.
2. choose set up tab and press system.
3. tap your speaker’s name Then scroll down to hardware.
4. switch status light On or off.

9 Make a Sonos playlist

Limit application switching

Music streaming has disrupted people’s listening habits with multiple monthly subscriptions. While exclusive music isn’t as common as it used to be, if you have a specific interest, there’s a good chance you have several different music libraries or playlists that you’re curating. The beauty of the Sonos app is that you can create playlists that collect tracks across streaming services, so one playlist plays them all without having to switch apps.

To make a Sonos playlist:

1. Open sonos app.
2. Click Browse The second tab from the left of the bottom menu bar.
3. choose streaming services of your choice and click album, song or artist.
4. Click Three point menu then click Add to Sonos playlist.
5. If you have an existing playlist, you can select it from the list, or you can select new playlist and make a new one.