Sonos Demo, Dolby at SXSW 2023 – Austin, Texas

I snapped a picture of these SXSW participants enjoying a Sonos demo at Dolby. Sonos is a wireless audio systems company known primarily for easy-to-set-up, whole-house, centrally controlled music. They released rear speakers that are Dolby Atmos compatible, giving a 3D sound field for movies and music.

Dolby carved out this living room simulation in a section of their SXSW experience.

Here’s the view from the back showing the faux-living room and TV.

I didn’t need a whole-house audio system, but I did upgrade the sound in my guest-room-turned-home-theater man-cave, which I set up during COVID. I use Sony’s HT-A9 Spatial Sound Mapping Dolby Atmos System. Conceptually similar to what Sonos is doing but better since Sony uses four front and up-firing speakers. The two front speakers should also create better sound separation than a soundbar.

The Sony HT-A9 is both incredible and frustrating. 99% of the time, it works remarkably well. In conjunction with the big screen, the sound system is so good I see no reason to go to a movie theater. However, the wireless systems occasionally glitches for a sub-second, breaking the illusion of the movie experience. It only seems to affect a subset of people, and their firmware updates appear to be improving it.

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