The Vergecast - Giles Martin and Sonos CEO Patrick Spence on the new Era 100 and Era 300 speakers

Episode Date: March 7, 2023

Today, Sonos announced a new line of speakers — the Era 100 and the Era 300 — with the latter finally taking on this format that has been a hit-or-miss experience for music lovers, supporting Amazon Music and Apple Music’s spatial audio. Though spatial format Dolby Atmos has been supported on the Sonos Arc soundbar, the Era 300 signals a music-first approach to its speakers supporting 3D soundscapes. Sonos CEO Patrick Spence believes this is the right time to do it. “We didn’t know that, in 2022, 85 of the top Billboard 100 artists would actually release Atmos tracks, but they did,” Spence says. “We feel like we’re at an inflection point.” On board with Sonos for this shift in music listening is record producer Giles Martin, who mixed the first-ever spatial audio album (a remix of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beatles album that his father, George Martin, originally produced) and several albums and live experiences in Dolby Atmos since. Martin is also the senior vice president of sound experience at Sonos and was involved in the development of the speaker. “When you’re building a product which has multi sort of use and orientations, you do prioritize ... in a way of, what’s the wow factor?” Martin explains. “The wow factor, which I think is truly extraordinary out of the 300, is the fact that it does spatial out of a single box. And it’s really compelling.” Both Patrick and Giles joined Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel for The Vergecast to talk about the new speakers, supporting spatial audio, and why this is the time to do it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. Hello and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of guitar players sneaking up behind you, spatial audio. I'm your friend, Neelai. Chris Welch is here. Hey, Chris.

Hello, it's good to be here. The day has finally come, Neelai. The day has finally come, Chris. You have scooped this day many, many times leading up to this moment. We're publishing our usual Wednesday episode one day early on a Tuesday because today on the show, I spent some time with Sonos CEO Patrick Spence and Sonos Senior Vice President.

of sound experience, Giles Martin, who's also a very famous record producer. I just want to put that out there. I could have talked to Giles about just making records for the entire show. But like Chris said, the day is finally here. Sonos has announced the new era 100 and 300 speakers, which if you've been following the verge cast or following the verge, following Chris. You know, Chris has been inside the air ducts at Sonos for months. Just banana camming these speakers. Yes, yes. First, there were renders, then there were photos. And now the whole thing is finally unveiled for everybody. I will say, by the way, just to put, these were not planted leaks. I don't think so on us was pleased with Chris. But very gracious. Chris, I believe Patrick said, you're just doing your job, which is true. Exactly. But they know that we love audio products.

They know that we love social products. They're very gracious and still came on the show to talk to us. Before Patrick and Giles came on the show, Chris and I got a chance to go listen to these speakers, to hear from the designers and product managers. Let's start with the 100 quickly. Chris, I think it sounds great. It's just a regular stereo speaker, though. Oh, yeah.

It's now stereo-ish, I guess, since there's just one woofer. But the Sonos one was just mono. So this definitely does sound quite better from the test that they ran for us. But it looks similar. It's like barely bigger in size, but it has Bluetooth and line-in now, which the Sonos one did not. So you've got a lot more options for playing stuff from your turntable. Or if somebody comes over and wants to play something in your house, that's a bit easier with Bluetooth. So that's a big deal, I think.

and it's 249, which is not much more than that Sonas one was. So I think it's going to do pretty well. How about you? I thought it sounded great. I think we've caveat this every time we talk about speakers we listen to in demo environments. We listen to it in their demo environment. If it sounded anything but great, it would have been a story. It sounded great in the demo environment.

It is a little bit taller. I think the line-in is really useful. I think a lot of people are going to plug record players into this, which Sonosnessness a lot of people are doing. But it is an incremental improvement over the Sonos one. The thing that stands out, honestly, over the Sonos 1 is that it no longer has Google Assistant support. And Sonos says that is down to a change on Google's end. I think that might be done to the fact that Sonos and Google are suing each other over patents.

Yes, the timing does leave some kind of room for interpretation. It does. So the Sonos 1 had Google Assistant support. I use Google Assistant on my Sonos devices and with my Google devices. I think I'm the only person in the entire ecosystem that has a reasonably good experience doing that anyway. like Tom Warren is always like this sucks like what does anybody do this that's it like in terms of notable changes

yep it's got stereo tweeters now it's a little bit taller it's got line in and Bluetooth which is great but kind of the big omission the big tradeoff is you know like Google support which I might be the only person who cares about yeah they seem pretty confident with the combo

of the Sonos voice control that and Alexa I think Sonos voice control just added timers so it's slowly doing more than just music functions but I think those two they should cover a lot of ground. But I'm sure some people will miss Google Assistant if that's what they're paid into and bought into. So that's the Sonus Era 100, which is a very nice product.

Sounded great in the demo room, but a pretty incremental upgrade over the Sonus one. The Sonus Era 300 is a radically different beast, a much more important product. I think in this entire category, the first real, stand-alone, multi-service spatial audio device that I can think of. There's the HomePod, but that only does spatial with Apple. music. There's the Amazon Echo Studio, which only does spatial music with Amazon service. This supports them both. It will support more services over time, one imagines, and it's spatial audio in a box. What's going on with the Air 300, Chris? So it was built from the ground up for spatial audio, they said, started three years ago with a project. And the shape and design, people have had some

opinions on. We published the photos of them on her site. And I saw one thread on Reddit where someone was like, I've been a lifelong Sonas fan. This is the ugliest speaker I've ever seen in my life. But I will say it plays better in person than it does in, like, photos. It looks bigger somehow in photos than it does in person. It's actually not that large at all. But, yeah, it's been built from the ground up for spatial. There are six drivers in there.

And, yeah, Sonos thinks that you really can't do real spatial audio with, like, a round speaker, like the home pod. That just fires in all directions. Giles said you have to have some kind of, like, front-facing speaker or driver in there as well. Yeah. And you will hear in this interview, Giles and I went at each other about spatial audio and whether it's good or not. I think I have space to give. I think he's correct. When it's really good, it's really good. And I think the industry's position is like, it should all be like this. And I, somewhere in the middle is like, what is a good spatial mix? And the answer

is that it's much more restrained than what we're hearing from a lot of things right now. And that, that to me is, it's the big question mark with this entire approach. But like I said, in the room, the Air 300 sounded great. And I'm curious what it sounds like in lots of other kinds of rooms that are not small boxes with perfect walls. Other little notes before we drop into the interview, Chris, you also got a chance to spend some time talking to Patrick. Would you learn from that conversation? We talked about Bluetooth and Line In, because someone just to make fun of Bluetooth, actually.

They had ads where, like, the music would be, like, interrupted by phone calls and texts and stuff like that. Patrick was like, well, it's gotten better now. It's more reliable. And that combined with Line In, they just want to give people more choice. That also, like, adds to the long-term future proofing of these products because they had that S1 and S2 controversy. So they're saying these speakers and past stuff like the Play 1 and Play 5 still have years and years and years of life left in them.

So that's a relief for customers, I'm sure. Yeah, there should be more on the site as these products launch and more photos and all kinds of goodness. Yeah, we've got full coverage of the launch on the site as you listen to this. If you want, look at pictures or read more hands-on impressions. For now, though, we should jump into the conversation. Here is Sona CEO Patrick Spence and Senior Vice President of Sound Experience. And I should note, extremely famous record producer, Charles Martin. Patrick Spence for the CEO of Sonos,

Charles Martin, you're the senior vice president of sound experience in Sonos. Yeah, it's a short title. Yeah, it doesn't. It means everything and perhaps nothing. We're going to find out. Well, welcome to the show. You guys have new products, big new products for Sonos, big step forward in spatial audio. I want to talk about all of that.

Patrick, let's start with the products themselves, two new speakers, era 100, era 300. What are they? What do we need to know? Yeah, I mean, this is really the next. next generation of Sonos. So we're doing something very unique for us. You and I in the past have talked about all the changes we made to bring out at least two new products every single year. We've never brought out two products at the same time. And they're from the same family. And we really feel like with Era 300, we've set the standard for out loud spatial audio listening.

And this is something the team's been working on for three years, toiling away, you know, and kind of the industry has been developing along the way to have the content we need, to actually bring it all to life, and it's hitting it the perfect time. And then with Era 100, we've really taken our iconic Sonos 1 and done what I'm very proud of, which is rethink it completely new hardware, new software, all of it to create something that sounds significantly better and really matches the kind of visual ID you would expect out of Sonos in this day and age. And so it is a new era. We're signaling that with the names of the products as well. We're very excited for customers to be able to experience them. I really want to talk a lot about the era 300 and with spatial

audio, which is potentially revolutionized in the music industry in a variety of ways. But let's start with the era 100. I think we can kind of understand this product further quickly. It sounds great. I listened to it with Giles earlier today. It's a full-on replacement for the bonus one, as you're saying. Yes. What was the decision for you like to say, okay, this is a product that people like. We saw a lot of then we're going to just move on. Yeah, you know, it is, the thinking is really, if you're not cannibalizing yourself and trying to raise the bar on yourself, then you're not pushing hard enough. And we have these debates all the time in terms of what we're trying to do and are we pushing hard enough?

And it comes a time, you know, seven years that we had the Sonos one out where, you know, kind of you get to itchy at that five, six year mark where you're saying, okay, can we do something much better than this? And Giles and the team and Chris Davies on the audio side. And then our design team are looking at it saying, yeah, we think we can. We think we have something that we think we can do is much better that will raise the bar enough that it's something that we can be really proud of. And so we kind of take a leap of faith in that moment to say, okay, what are the things we need to do to make this product even better? Can we do those things?

Can we fit it in there? And do we think it's really going to stand for kind of that leap in innovation and quality? And we feel like we've delivered that with the Arrow 100. So the Air 100 is a stereo speaker in a single package, two tweeters at the top, I think a bigger woofer than before. Another one which is a mono speaker. This is a moving stereo. And listen, I love, and I still love the one. And it's interesting.

I can walk into a restaurant or a bar and tell where there's a one in the bar because it's a, you know, and in my other world of pro audio and creating content. One is used the reference by a lot of engineers and producers because it's a really honest speaker. Well, I mean, there isn't hype and I think. It's a very, very good scale-down version of what we try and do in a studio. So that's what one does, but in a mono format. That mono format is limiting because you lose things like reverb tales and voices, the reality of the things we don't listen to music in mono. So with Era 100, we tried to, we thought, okay, let's rethink this.

Then, okay, we need to add more weight behind it. We need more bass. We increase the woofer size by 25%. It was tough, though. It was a really tough challenge. It's like, you know, your children have to grow up. You know, that's the thing. And it's like, you know, I really feel like that when we were doing it.

One of the themes I see kind of across the big tech players in audio is they're adding an awful lot of computation to their speakers, especially the direct competitors to something like the Arrow 100. Arrow 100 does not seem like it's doing an awful lot of excessive computational tricks, right? There's a crossover for the two tweeters that create the stereo field. Correct. There's a mono woofer. And that's the game. You're not. It's key for us as a company that you listen to music and not.

technology. It's like one of those things where we try not to hype anything at all. We try to, and however dull it may sound as marketing speak, it's like having a clear window on the world of sound. You want to literally just switch on a light or switch on music in your home and it sounds great. And the strange thing about artifacts and crazy stuff that's done is after a while it wears really thin. And it becomes irritating when anything else. And someone says to me the other day when we were listening to the products, they went, they sound like son or speakers. And I was like, well, that's interesting. From my point of view, I don't try and give us a sound.

And they said, what does that mean? And he went, it sounds musical. I was like, great, okay, that's what it should be. And so, you know, we are doing a lot of stuff under the bonnet. And we really are. You know, it's a bit like fighter jets. They'd probably fall out of the air if it was the down of DSP we're using. But I don't want to, you know, you don't want people to hear that.

You don't want people to hear a song. A very subtly lit a trap for you about excessive processing. Because right, spatial audio is like a lot of processing to make that work. And so when you think about the Arrow 100, it does not have any spatial features. It doesn't have the height channels. But you're saying there is processing happening inside of it. Yeah, of course, because, you know, we're doing, for a start, we are, we're trying to create a bigger sound than the box is. We're trying to defy physics all of the time at SARS.

That's what we're trying to do. We're not doing any tricks with phase, but we are, you know, there are slight delay going on there to create a stereo spread at the higher frequencies. You have to do that. At the same time, the key thing for me in this, actually what we worked really hard on the 100 was, we could make the product a lot wider and more spatial than it is. But the detriment of that is voices, the human voice doesn't sound as good. Yeah. You know, because when, you know, your listeners listen to music, we mix music in stereo and equal left and right is mono.

And that's generally where the voice lies and that's the songs you love. If you pull that apart too much, it can sound phasia, it can sound weird. And so it's that argument processing over reality. Of course, there's processing, but the key thing is it has to sound natural. And that's done by human ear. You know, you can't measure natural, weirdly enough. Things can measure completely flat in a room and then sound strange. I feel like I'm so tempted to just immediately start talking about spatial audio.

But I want to finish talking about the Air 100. Yeah. Because to me, the argument with spatial audio is when it's done incorrectly or done poorly, you actually lose a lot of that impact. You spread everything out to too many channels. And the same if you play around with stereo too much. If you like, you know, we don't spatialize stereo because, again, it feels it's a bit like smashing some of the toffee hammer. Everything flies everywhere and you're left with no middle.

It's impact like just drums and vocals. And it's fine actually if it's a spatial audio track or it's ambient tracking to whatever. All bets are off. And sometimes with classical music, that helps. But generally, like most pop music or hip-hop or R&B is like it needs that, it needs that dry behind it. And it's really important to mention. We have this sort of team of checks and balances. We have this soundboard, which we run where, you know, like Mary Mariquin is just won three Grammy Awards.

He's one, he's now won 17 Grammy Awards. And so, you know, he mixes Lizzo. It's a similar to, we'll play Lizzo on an era 100. And if it doesn't sound right, our job isn't done. You know, it's that important thing. It's that scalability. You have to be honest. You have to be honest about what you're making.

You kind of like this Napoleon complex of a little speaker going, when a second, I'd have beat myself through walls. So you just have to make the best. You have to be honest. And then that becomes, that honesty translates into your home and you enjoy listening to it. But I think that honesty is a key. And it, you know, it sounds somewhat cliche. But I think to Jal's point about the soundboard and all the people that we have on it and all the people in Giles' network, we have them listen to these speakers and the mixes that they've done, you know, whether it's the 100 or 300 to say, like, does this sound as you intended it?

Right. And actually go through that. And I don't know another company that spends the amount of time we do going through. through that work on the way to actually launching a product. And it's so important to making sure that we're getting it right. Yeah. So the Arrow 100, direct replacement, you're getting itchy with the Sonus 1. Sonus 1 very popular.

Yeah. It has multiple configurations. Are you going to do an Arrow 100 SL without the microphones? You know, we're always considering, you know, what customers will want on that front. So we'll see, you know, what kind of feedback we get at this point. Are you leaving the 1S.S.O. in the lineup? We are. Okay, for now.

Yeah. And then I noticed we talked about Alexa a bunch of times today. Does it support Google Assistant as well? Google Assistant has changed the way that they're implementing it for third parties. And so that's changed. So at this point, it won't support Google Assistant. Our existing products that support Google Assistant will continue to, but $100 will not. Is that because Google made a change?

Or is that because there's ongoing litigation? No, it has nothing to do with the ongoing litigation. You know, as you and I've talked about before, they, you know, YouTube music, like all the different aspects, Google Assistant, the teams continue to work pretty constructively. But they did make a change in terms of how they do Google Assistant on third-party products. And it's a pretty big engineering lift for us. And the reality is right now, we'd like to see it back on the platform. But, you know, people are using voice for music, timers and weather, right? As they have for many years, as you know, and we're well covered with what we have with Sonos voice control and Alexa. So we feel

pretty good about where we are with these products. Did you assemble a task force to be like, all right, we need Bing to insult people directly from our speakers. Just let it go crazy. ChatGBT is the future. Just let people talk to the AI. We'll let you sort it all out. Okay. And then we'll figure out how we translate that into voice control.

I know, I know, I know. We will focus on creating great speakers that people can listen to amazing music on. DeSono's AI assistant that reads all of Tumblr and says your music tastes the shit is not coming. No. Because there are people that would buy that product specifically. Yeah. There was like, this song sucks. There's a better version of the song.

It's the original. You're late. Well, our friends at Spotify did introduce DJ today in AI DJ. I don't know if you saw that. This is the future. You start listening to an album and it's like, I like the second album better. I know my friends would be like, I just want someone to talk to me about music no matter what it says. I don't want to have my own opinion.

That's what they're saying. I want a computer have my opinion. Yeah, feed in all of pitchfork. And then pitchfork will tell you whatever you're listening to is six. Tell me what I really like. It's like we can go to a really deep conversation about art and anomalies and art about that. Yeah, and all of this conversations always kind of sound like you're having them with a moody computer anyway. Yes, that's right.

Big focus on sustainability with the 100 and the 300. Lots of recycled plastic. We saw some custom screws today. There's more screws instead of glue. 93. 93 screws in the 100. In the 300. In the 300.

You're CEO, when someone says we want to use screws instead of glue, also I need to make custom screws with hearts in them specific. Basically, that's more cost. How do you weigh that kind of decision? Yeah, we're building products for the decade, right? As we look at what we're trying to do, we think the biggest thing we can do for the environment for our customers is make sure these products last for a really long time. But we're always looking and pushing on what parts can be used from recycled. How do we do all of these things?

How do we improve repairability? That's been a huge issue. And so the screws come in big when we're thinking about being able to repair instead of using adhesives and being in situations where we have to throw away product because you just don't want to do that. So what I'm most proud of is we're getting better and better, not just on those fronts, but as well in terms of energy usage with each of the products. But I always feel like at the core, the most important thing is, are we building something that can reasonably last in someone's house for a decade? Right. And I think we do that better than anybody else out there.

And we will continue to push on what other parts can come from, you know, recycled materials and all of those things. How do we get better on repairability? We've made a huge leap with error, which is why we've decided like to call this a whole new line. I'm proud of that, and we're going to keep working on it. And it all makes sense when you're playing the long game from a cost and investment perspective, because I feel like you get more than that back over time in customer loyalty and everything else that we're trying to build. Speakers are one of those products that sit around people's houses for decades, if not more.

Obviously, Stonos has had a number of different approaches to upgrading products, trading products, in. This is something you can take apart. Do you have a thought? One day, maybe it will just replace the sort of computer elements of these speakers and leave the drivers alone. I have a real hope that one day that's a possibility. People call me crazy for doing it. Giles might, even right now. But I do, I do think that's a potential possibility in the future. And I'd love to see something like that. And I'd love to see us pushing on how to,

how to be that company. Yeah. From your perspective on the audio front, right, a great pair of vintage speakers and a stereo setup with an only, like, people worship at the altar. I'm one of these people. I'm just going to admit it. But they last forever and the sound there is lasting in a way. that some people would argue cannot be defeated. A small computer with a bunch of radios in it that happens to have a digital amplifier and a driver. Do you think that can be as long-lasting? It's based on the CPU and not...

I mean, I would argue that people blow old speakers all the time. And I've been in situations where I've been in very high-end audio places where they play back mix that I've done, and I've gone, your left channel's a bit weird, and they go, oh, valves just gone, sorry. So there's a lot of ways of looking at this. There really is. Yeah, I think that...

I think we proved, actually, you know, Rick Rubin had an old Play 5 outside his porch for 10 years, you know, in the rain. Yeah. And it lasted. And that's not even... I think the last time Patrick was here, I was like, why don't you make an outdoor speaker? And he was like, I know a famous producer who's trying to play 5. So thank you for outing him. Oh, yeah.

It's great. I'm not getting done. Actually, I did his podcast recently. I don't get done. It'll be okay. No, he's a good mate. So, yeah, I think that I think I love the idea. And the ethos of son of us, I mean, actually, it's one of those things that, you know, I got involved

and so on us nine years ago now, because they were the first coming that asked me what was wrong about the sound of the speaker as opposed to tell us how great we are. And then on top of that, I love the ethos of, we want these products to last. Because why not?

We're not asking you to replace them. We're asking to put more into your house. That's the thing. You know, it's expensive for us to do that. It's expensive for us for a number of different reasons for us to keep products in the marketplace. But it's the right thing to do. I think there'll always be a place for,

you know, you're, the, listen, I have a whole load of speakers, you know, I have a full studio, so I have Abbey Road to use. I think there's a place of things, but just as far as that ability to go think of a song and thinking of a song to listening to it, to wake you up with music or have music in your house or, or gathering your mates and listening to Sonas is just brilliant. And that's what everyone says to me. And from my own experience before, I got sent a play three and a play five. I met a guy, I was in the studios in LA and they sent it back, sent to my house and then, you know, my wife was happy for me to have these speakers in the home, which is very rare. Well, my dad, who was George Martin, famous rock producer,

we had no, we had no speakers in the, he's listening to mixes in the car. And suddenly we had music in our house. And that's the thing, is that there's two different ways. And I think everything is, there's no better or worse. It's like vinyl or digital, what's your choice? It's like, just enjoy music. Yeah. There's a big push towards Losless and I weren't talk about spatial, but lossless and spatial seem to have come along at the same time, at least for the major streaming services. Can you hear the difference between 192 and Losless on the Arrow 100? No. On Arrow 100, no. But it's not that type of unit. It's not like, you know, it's not a reference. We're not trying to build reference speakers. We're trying to build, again, it's like we're trying

to build the best possible scenarios so you can enjoy all the music in the home. And there's an interesting point about this because, you know, I have a quarter million dollar set up in my studios. and yes, and I work, I'm head of audio and sound for Universal Music Group, and I work, I consult with Apple and other stream of services over their quality of their codecs and all that stuff. Yes, I am that person. However, there's a point where, shouldn't you just enjoy a song? Do you know what I mean?

Yeah. And people talk about numbers all the time. What do you prefer, 192 or 96 or what the, it's like, wait a second, I'm involved in this. It's just, you know, and I can hear the difference between certain things, and we've done tests, And we've done tests with Sonos because we're really interested in this. This is super interesting because we have to make decisions based on this

with pros like mastering engineers and I have this brilliant guy, Greg McCarty, who works with me and he invented this system where we'd send pro tools sessions out with 9620, 964 files, Spotify streams, Apple streams, unnamed on

and people's songs they'd mixed and which ones do you prefer out of like completely blind listening and it's amazing how many people didn't want to do it. You know? There we are. So I think what we need to do is focus on the best possible experience for people. Farm to table, as you'd say, is the best possible experience. And it's how do we get to that without

transients and other objects, other effects going on? And being honest about it is key. Last question on the 100. There's no height channels. There's no spatial push with the 100. You can still use them as rears. But why no height channels, why know I know spatial on the 100? You know, we're in the early days of spatial, for sure. We wanted to really make sure that as we bring a product to the world that delivers the best, you know, experience and sets the bar, we wanted to start with the 300. And we think they're, you know, to Jal's point of like listening to music and people listening to music and that there's room for stereo speakers as well. So you'll see we keep the five in the portfolio as well for people that want to enjoy that. And we're in a, we're in a transition period to me that's similar to the mono to stereo.

period where there's a lot of emotional energy about that transition. It took actually decades, if you look back on it. And there was both for a while, mono and stereo and going through that. And so I think there's going to continue to be over this next period. And we want to be there for customers, no matter what they choose. Yeah. I think there's people who are wondering, okay, I want the full Aetmos setup from Sona's, particularly from movies, to get upfiring rears now as a $900 investment. Am I looking at a future where it will always be a $900 investment? Or are you, planning on building that out over time. Well, I mean, that's, what is that, $90 a year, you know, as you think about it, or like,

you know, we're talking $10,000, kind of thing as we go through it, $10, $20. So I think for the kind of experience that we deliver, I think there's value for money in that, for sure. From your perspective, as you think about the split between using these speakers for spatial audio, at most music, and then what's required for a great movie experience. Is there a trade-off that you've made? Is there a balancing that needs to be done? Or is it?

No, I mean, the first, it's funny, you know, when you're building a product, which has multi sort of use and orientations, you do prioritize. You do prioritize in a way of like, what's the wow factor? The wow factor, which I think is truly extraordinary

out of the 300 is the fact that it does spatial out of a single box. And it's really compelling. To me, it's like there's nothing else on the planet that does what this does. I'm saying as a creator and other creators as well. I mean, I say to people,

And I'm not really Mr. Joggan at all. I'm pretty honest. And I love music. I love sound. I love, you know, I'm passionate. And I said to people, I mean, I was at C.S. Abumpton's and produced engineers. I went, it really is amazing.

And they come to my suite and they go, oh my God, this really is amazing. The guitar's like over by, I had a bar area because that's the way I roll. It's over by the bar area. I'm going to, you know, that's where the guitars are. And it's like, I told you. And they went, yeah, but, you know, we didn't. So the single boxing was great. And then if there's two of them, it'll do stereo, pure stereo and Dobiatmos.

out of stereo. Interesting enough, the way we think about it doing stereo, stereo atmos, or two speakers creating an amos, is creating fun-firing height, sides, rears. And you've turned those around the other way, that's your home theatre setup. You're adding, you're adding it. So it's kind of the same problem, if you like it, an audio perspective, or the same solution. It's probably a better way of putting it.

So that's the way we work. And there is an additive and compelling drive behind doing this. It's, you'd be surprised. I mean, I started working in special audio. a long time ago and did I think the Beatles Sgtie Pepper's album was the first album done in special audio which I mixed. I then did kick by in excess

and they were both used for they played them back in theatres. When I did kick and they made the the Blu-ray because that's going back that far I went to Capital Studios and the rears were too loud. I went to Dolby and Wooten Bassett and the sub was too loud. I went to Dolby and Scyon Square

and the right-hand speaker was too loud. Quotting with discrete systems you can be in a situation where people don't set them up correctly. The elegance of having one-box multi-channel systems like arc plus two, 300s, is a pretty good chance with TruePlay. It's going to be an even balanced sound. It's to be rendering. And the dangerous thing about spatial audio, in fact, you get the channel mixed wrong.

It's worse than mono. But we have to make sure we get that right every time. The high channels are based on bouncing off the ceiling, right? Correct, yeah. Do you need to do TruePlay to get the Philatmos effect? No, you don't, but TruePlay does, will adjust delays and levels and EQ. You know, we do true play for a reason. Indeed, you might find that we might even reduce the height channel SBL because of true play.

All it does, it's matching levels. So, you know, it's not like your heights won't work if you don't use true play, but your balance will improve and your sound will improve if you do use it. We've got to take a quick break, but we'll be back with more of my conversation with Patrick Spence and Giles Martin. Support for this show comes from Shopify. Starting something new isn't just hard, it can be really scary too. So much work goes into this thing that you're not entirely sure will even work. But here's a better thought.

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acquired. You can visit upwork.com right now to post your job for free. That's upwork.com.com. to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's UPWRK.com. Upwork.com. All right, we're back. So the Air 100 is kind of a big step forward here. It's a big investment into spatial. We are looking around.

We are pretty sure this is the first standalone spatial audio speaker that is not connected inherently to a streaming service. Apple obviously makes the home pod, Amazon makes the Echo Studio. They would argue that there's some inherent connection there that makes everything work together better. What made you think it's, okay, we have to invest in this. This is the next great audio format. It was really hearing from Giles and Chris Davies and our audio team.

We had a ton of debates in the lossless period. And like high-res, HD, can you hear a difference? Should we invest in this? What should we support or not? And we landed in the, okay, there isn't a difference. We're not going to go, you know, just chase this next technology. And, you know, I mean, Sonos is known for taking our time to consider what's happening. And it was really an understanding of what was happening with the artists and were they beginning to embrace it.

And they were. And so we saw that three years ago and the label's starting to embrace it. And it seemed like there was actually momentum in the industry starting to happen. So it was a chance though at that point because it, you know, we didn't know that in 2022, you know, 85 of the top one on Billboard 100 artists would actually release at most tracks. But they did. And so that's a good thing. We feel like we're at an inflection point where more and more people are releasing in Atmos. which is great. But that was the bet that we basically made. And it was on the back of Giles and

Chris and the team basically saying, no, no, this is special. And this is one that mimics that jump from, you know, mono to stereo. And this is the next big one that artists are actually embracing. And so, you know, for us, then it's like, okay, we got to be there. And we've got to do this right. And so that took some time to go build as well and do it right. But, you know, if we're going to do it, we're going to try and really set the bar. And I feel like we have with this product. You're launching with support for a special from two services, Amazon Music, HD, Apple Music. They are not quite the same, right? There are some format differences between how the services deliver spatial audio.

That seems weird to me. What's going on there? It's not down to us. If it was, it wouldn't be the sound. It's not down to the music industry. It's bearing in mind that I have this weird position where I am, you know, head of audio and sound for both Universal and Sonos. So I'm at the beginning of the source. Yeah.

And at the end of the source, which is kind of useful and actually beneficial to, you know, when Universal approached me off to Sonos, Universal has been three years, four years. And I said, listen, I do. And I'm loyal to Sonos. I think we think it's a good thing. And, you know, we work together because, you know, I knew at the top of the source, the stream that there'll be atmos, the spatial audio was coming down the pipe. So I'm like going, we need to embrace this.

the way that Amazon or Apple deal with this is not down to us. It's not down to universally. It's down to them. And, you know, we just have to, we have to partner with people and we have to be Switzerland. You know, if that's a very old reference, as far as this is important to us that we provide an ecosystem. The music lover just, I want to use this service, so I should listen to it. But as a music lover, I know now when I'm listening to Apple, okay, there's an Atmos logo here. These often sound better than the generic spatial audio logo.

And this whole thing sounds different than what Amazon is doing. What are the differences there that you have to contend with? Okay. So I don't think, I'm not hearing ambassadors between Amazon Atmos and Apple Amos. There's also Sony 360 to bear in mind. Yeah, and Amazon Sports side as well. Yeah. And Amazon's supposed that.

So occasionally, and then there's the headphone thing as well. So if you listen to headphones, the way that Apple renders binoral is different than the way that Amazon renders is not binaural. So it becomes confusing. When you're listening to an era 300, it'll be the same. The Atmos makes me the same. So if you think about it, I always surprised. I created this love show in Vegas with 7,000 speakers in a room, which is essentially the template of Dolby Atmos.

We have obviously a lot of height channels because it's in the round. I never thought, and I made this 5.1 album, which I thought was going to be the future of audio, but then I could never listen to it on a system because, you know, people don't have 5-1 systems at that stage. I never thought the first steps in spatial audio would be headphones. Yeah. What's interesting in headphones, actually,

is that it has become exponentially better as an experience really, really quickly. I thought it was unlistable about three years ago, and now it's pretty good. However, the confusing thing for the consumer, which goes off top of Sonos, and it's something that, you know, that we care about because we care about sound experiences for everything, is that, you know, you can have a different experience

compared to different headphones spatially as well as spectrally, so EQ as well especially, and then on different streaming servers, whether it's Amazon or Apple. And within the Universal group itself, speaking about that, it's one of the things we're working with both Apple and Amazon and manufacturers on unifying that experience because it's bad for the artists, one of the other thing else. And it's the feedback we get from artists, whether it's like Mick Jagger or Lizzo or whatever, going, well, I'm not sure I want to do this because you lose control. It's like whack-a-mole. Suddenly, I've put in my music, I don't, and so you need that stability to the ecosystem to make it work. One of the things we're doing with Era 300, which is really groundbreaking and benefits to the artists as well as benefits to Sonos, is that we've developed a bunch of units for artists where they can mix directly through as a reference speaker.

So which gives the bonus, like, A, it reassures them that the mixes can sound good out of a single box. And B, they can give us feedback if they don't like anything we're doing and we can change it. So with the binary code act, that should happen as well. That should be a reference of what it should be. And that's where you get, that's where people get confused about the way it's rendered. So I would say that I thought headphone spatial audio was really where I heard the loss of impact, right? And it felt almost like, I know, you were going through a 90 CD player that had like the stadium button. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Spread everything out and sort of empty everything out. The demos I heard today, obviously you were there. He made sure they sounded good. No, but I, but you say that. But, you know, and you asked me this question. So, listeners, we're in a room. And pictures of us, pictures of the two of us in a room together. We're in a room with, like, where they drew the curtains on the windows.

Yeah, it was like, an 8x-by-8 box of the flat ceiling and a glass wall. I said, like, was this, is this spatial design so you can hear space? I was like, no, this is designed so you can't hit spatial audio. The speaker was in the corner of the room because we had an arc in front of a TV. If it was in the center, you had an even balance, all this kind of stuff. But I think that's cool. It's like, you know, I don't believe that that's the only time we can listen to the product. so it's okay.

Yeah. And it's so important. The impact is the most important thing. Emotional connectivity is much important. That's why mono is kind of cool. And lots of way here I talk about special audio on a new product. We've invested a million dollars in. That impact of, and it's funny, I listened.

I did it. I ring to me a Chemical Brothers track, two new tracks with them. And I listened to it in a Dolby Atmos room. And I had an ear of 300 on top of the set of speaker. And I was playing around with the first time I was playing around with the Dante, sorry, the interface way where we were. We were switching between the two. And actually, I kind of liked the central, like, that immediacy you get from 300,

the era 300. It's like, that's hitting me in the face, like you did today, where you're absolutely right. Sometimes with space audio, you get that feeling, it's like, what a second, have I hit the stadium button? Yeah, I'm a, am I waiting through audio of all of a sudden? It shouldn't be like that. And that's the tricky thing is that we have to, as artists, as record labels, and as manifest, of products, we have to work on experience. One of the, I would say, more cynical criticisms of spatial across the industry is, well,

you know why Spotify can't do it. It's because the rights to distribute spatial are more expensive, and Apple and Amazon are just paying the money. And spatial is a thing that you can hear. Right. You can't hear lossless. I think we've all talked around the idea of not being able to hear lossless. Most people can't hear lossless, especially on their AirPods.

Yep. But as a format shift, is it something you can charge higher rates for? is something you charge the consumer more spatial as hearable in a way that could lead to different rate structures. Has that been the background of your conversations out why to support this format? The industry is doing this because it represents a format shift from vinyl, the cassettes to CD onto the next thing. Or is it, there's actually something very meaningful here that improves the experience? It started from the experience from, you know, kind of where we are because, you know, for us, it's not, you know, we're not involved in any of that part of. it, right? And so, from our

perspective, yeah, partially, but that's not how he's paid. No, but yeah, he is, I mean, God I wish I was. Can you get? Well, I just wonder. If you can renegotiate my consultancy with the universe, I'd be delighted. No, but it's a valid. Call him up. We're supposed to say it. Yeah.

It's a really valid point, but I think, I base things. It's funny, when I way back seven years ago, I mixed Sgt. Pepper and Space Audio, there's been my David Arnold phoned me up and said, he went to a room listened to it and he went.

It was the single most emotional audio experience he'd had. I was like, wow, thanks David and I then paid him.

But the point is that you can really touch what's, you can travel through space and time and that sounds crazy. But like I did

this get back thing with Peter Jackson last year, his Get Back series and we did that in spatial. But then I mixed letter B

and I can put the room that Paul McCartney was in where he sang the piano on the walls of your house. Yeah. So he is in the room

with you. Now, You can talk about finance and ecosystems and thing. That's why I do it. I do it so I can sit with Phineas in Abbey Road. And he can talk to me about how he liked, you know, will I do this mix in Atmos? And I go, have you tried mixing amaz?

And he then delivers like a cracking. We listen to Delo. Like cracking mixes in Atmos. And like his engineer has an Aero 300, which he uses reference. And that's, that's the, it's fun. You know, we do it. Why do I do this stuff with Sonos? It's fun.

It's like super cool. it's fun. Now, Seleucian, who is, you know, I respect, you know, definitely respect. But it's like, that's not why I'd say with Patrick, go, listen, Patrick, we need to look at this because, and then, you know, Patrick, Alist, you sat in the room we were sitting in today and go, check this out. It's like, and with your daughter. It's like, check this out. It's like, this is, you're not listening to cash registers. You listen to music. Some people think they're listening to cash registers. Yeah, they're not my friends. It's weird that you can't.

You mentioned Blu-ray is a spatial distribution format. I would say that as not a mainstream distribution format. I'm very careful. I'm in room with you two and like a bunch of verge nerds. There's a lot of Blu-ray players in a small vicinity here. I will listen. The question I got today for someone quite angry, it's like, why do you not release Revolve-O in Amos on Blu-ray?

You have to understand. Like, our producers are wanting to, like, Andrew wants to know the answer question. There was no other question. Yes, we might do. It's not a mainstream for, except for this room. It's weird that you can't own a spatial audio track. You can't buy one from Apple. You can't buy one from Amazon.

It's all streaming all the time, right? Is that just the nature of consumer preferences? I think you can. Blu-rays are released. Okay, so Blu-ray is your answer. Yeah, yeah. I mean, how else would you like to own it? I would like to download a file.

There's something underneath all of this, right, which is like as part of a consumer experience shift, there's a business model shift. There is an ownership shift. There's an underlying bet on streaming. And to me, you know, like I like to have my music. I'm serious about it. And there's just a, there's a weirdness where it's like, I'm going to invest in this product from Sonos. And to get the most out of it, I have to pay Apple or Amazon for the rest of my life. in order to get the most value out of this product.

And that just seems, I don't think it's in your control, but it seems like it's part of the change here. I think you'd argue the same thing about television. Yeah. You know, in adolescence? Like, what if I want to watch that movie? Well, you're the one bringing up Blu-rays. You brought up Blu-ray first, Mr. Blue-ray guy.

No, I think there's, I mean, that is the nature of the beast. Now, of course, like, you know, it's not down to us. He says, now talking about half a son-offs, which I am. I really lured you in here to put you in like an existential crisis. Yeah, this is the welcome to my life. Luckily my family is standing by by this difficult time. No, it's not down to us. We deliver, you know, that analogy of like, you know, the window in the world of sound.

We deliver whatever's coming through. And it's almost a download. I think you can. And you can download HD tracks. I think maybe you, you know, I'm sure it's funny. I'm sure that there'll be a said you can download Atmos tracks. Yeah, I would think so too. But it is an interesting point to think about, right?

And I don't think that's a, I don't think that, listen, going back to the previous conversation, your honor, about financial services, I'm sure that if there's a, like, HG tracks, universal, you know, we, speaking as universal, would go, let's do a deal where we're providing downloadable Atlas files for a subscription fee and you can download them. That's not, I don't think that's a, that's not a conversation. and we've, then that we have to work at the ecosystem of storage. Well, I'd say it started as a literal client server model. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. There's a long history here.

And then we'd have to work at a system of, I mean, a can of worms for us, thank you, to ask the question, of like storage and then playing back from a library. So which actually we can do because we test files that way. But, yeah. From your perspective, Sonos runs a radio service. You've thought about recurring revenue models and different kinds of descriptions. Is this something that you would light up as well? Okay, we're going to have a special service or we need to invest.

in spatial versions of the radio service? Absolutely. I think we want to keep making sure that Sonos radio is there in terms of the best quality. We have the HD service today. So we want to make sure that we're there. And so that's something we're definitely focused on for the future. Do you think the Air 300 is a new product for Sonos is going to increase the number of spatial audio listeners? Or do you think it's going to capture a rising trend of people using spatial in their headphones?

I believe this is a moment where there's enough energy from the storage. streaming services from the labels, and then with this product that it's going to bring spatial to a whole new set of people. That's why we're doing it, because we feel like we want to introduce them to spatial in the right way, and this is the right way to do it. And so I do expect a whole bunch of people to experience spatial the first time with Air 300. And there's been an interesting shift, sorry, to bud in on age groups and listenership in spatial audio, which we see through the record industry of people, you know, leaning in and listening and a new generation of listeners listening to even old catalog. Like, there's been a huge boost in, and I think they're going to

want to know what it sounds like out loud. And the weird thing is that until now, I don't believe, you know, there are niche systems, but I think the 300, the area 300 does provide, you know, I know it does from working with careers in the critic's time, but it provides a very real way of experiencing it. And I've found personally that I've really enjoyed it. I've really enjoying, like, exploring music on it. You know, that's the thing. It's like, what a second. You know, it's Miles Davis.

It's like, this is cool. It's like he's in my room. I mean, you know, I'm not sure I wouldn't Miles Davis in my room, you know, for a long period time. It's kind of crazy, but it's like, this is great, you know. I'm excited for our headline to be, Charles Martin calls home pod, a niche system. That's going to be great. That was very clever.

It was evening. We're going to take one more break, and then I'm asking Patrick Spence about the future of Sonos and its products. Support for the show comes from LinkedIn. If you're a small business owner, you know that every hire counts, but time and resources are limited. Finding, connecting with, and screening the right candidates

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That's cloud.a.ai slash vergecast and check out Claude Pro, which includes access to all the features mentioned in today's episode. Claude.a.ai slash vergecast. Okay, I'm back with Patrick Spence and Dialogue. Martin. There have more niche systems in the home pod, so I just make soundbars, right? There is a lot of soundbar atmos in this world. There are ways to get atmos audio into soundbars. What do you think the difference is? If you've got a 514 soundbar set up at home or whatever, is this a meaningful upgrade over that? Is it going to be different because it's focused on music first? Well, listen, I mean, it's been great that arc has been used as a reference system in studios. I mean,

there's an arc in capital. There's not Arcan Abbey Road. There's an Ark in, you know, we have, we've been saying a lot of reference for at most music arc is the main has been the main reference amongst prose you know we start off when we're doing it when we're doing home theater we actually start off with music because music is much more fragile than home theater he says arrogantly being more but i actually mix film so i can sorry i can say that but you know you can there's much more of a fragility to music if a song goes wrong you hear more than a film soundtrack going wrong and arc has been used for that but it's not built for that it's a home theater system first. And by its fit and form, it has to be by it being a tube, if you like, to be frank.

So yeah, it's like, you know, would I listen to, well, I personally listen to an Atmos track on ARC, which has been used as a reference system for, or on Era 300, Air 300, without question. You know, but watching movies, Arc is great. But that is sort of the default, Atmos experience for most people right now, whether it's the arc or another sound hour. Is it worth saying I need to put an Air 300 in this room as well? Yeah, I think people are hearing it and they say, yes, it is. I think the way that, the way there are 300, and you heard it today, even in the curtain room where we asked what trickery we were up to, I think that the spatial aspect of the way it projects discrete audio, which it sounds very real. It's not blurred, like a guitar can be on your far right side, sounds like a guitar. It's kind of amazing. I think, yeah, I mean, I'd have one. I have one. And I think it's the simplicity, too, just like you know it's a speaker, you know what's there, you know what's for music in terms of what's there. There still is a, seems to be a mental barrier for many people in terms of listening to music in their home theater kind of set up, right? And so it's another room is it the kitchen, a living room, a sitting room, an office, wherever it's going to be. But there's something that screams music about the era 300. Yeah. This is the part where I just start asking you for new products directly, Patrick?

Where is my receiver with Sonas built in and True Play built in? Did you see artworks with Sona? with Sony that we did that works with Sonos work on their receiver. So there you go. But I still got to buy another thing. I want you to make it. I want you to be responsible for it. If I can get your updated list, I'm happy to take your updated list. I do feel like I need to end by sort of asking more expansively about Sonos.

Yep. Right. There's a big split now. I listened to your last earnings call before the Aero 300 isn't announced. Speaking of the HomePod, you were basically like, yeah, Big Tech stopped competing with us. There's like nothing on the market that competes with us. For a minute there, that seemed like an existential threat. The big tech players are coming.

They were locking the streaming services to various products. Why do you think that threat has passed? And do you see a sort of resurgent moment for Sonos right now? Absolutely see a resurgent moment. You only have to look at our holiday results. And if you look at what happened over that period, there just wasn't, as I said, a lot interesting happening in the space, right, from anyone, quite frankly, whether legacy or big tech side of it.

And so we've always been very focused on how we build this for the long term in a sustainable way. We didn't get caught up in some of the hype around, you know, voice is going to be, voice is going to be the next, you know, mobile operating system, all of these things, right? Exactly. And I think, I think we live in a day and age where very quickly people's attention turn to the new, new thing. We get all fired up about it. It dominates the headlines for three, six months. I mean, whether it's voice or whether it's crypto or whether it's Web 3 or whether it's now AI. Bitcoin's on the speakers. Right. And so when we don't, and we, we try to be, we try to think about what do these things mean for consumers as you think about a,

you know, a decade long period. And we continue to innovate in terms of what you see with the era 300 and the era 100, but products that are going to last for a long time. And it's never, it's never with an ulterior motive of trying to capture your data or sell you another service or all of these things. And so I think our, you know, clarity of what we do and why we do it, you know, has helped serve us well in competing with, you know, strong legacy audio brand. that we had to come from nowhere to, you know, be in the position we are today.

And then even when big tech jumped in and infringed all of our intellectual property, we could still keep innovating, keep competing, keep growing, and make sure that we would come out stronger. So I think it's a testament to our focus and our commitment to doing what we do really, really well. And I think it shows you that, you know, hopefully it gives hope to other companies that, you know, just because big tech's going to jump into your space doesn't mean you should, you know, follow what they're doing necessary. Like if we had built a, you know, $25 or $50 speaker, I think that would have been a huge mistake, right?

And you and I talked about that before. I don't think you respond in that way. You look at where your strengths are, what you need to do, and how do you compete uniquely in that situation and build on your strengths? And era 300 is a perfect example of building on our strengths and going after that. And so hopefully this is a bit of, you know, a inspiration to others that are building their companies and want to compete in an era where we know it's been very difficult with big tech coming in. you know, jumping into all these new categories. The last time I spoke to you, you did not have the head of sound experience. You had your lawyer.

You had your general counsel with you. And we talked about the big tech lawsuit. Thank good. It wasn't me as I can say. I think honestly, you guys should switch slots. Yeah, yeah. He's great on sound. Eddie is like he's way around.

What I did love. Yeah. How many speakers has the lawyer put up before? Is it 7,000? Yeah. But now, how is the Google lawsuit going? Are you closer to a resolution? We saw the antitrust bills in Congress sort of come to nothing.

Yeah. What's going on there? So the spring, we have the Northern District case, you know, happening. And so we'll see how that all plays out in the fall. We have the Southern District case, which is the federal circuit off the back of the ITC that we won very handily. So these things continue to progress through the courts. We're 10 for 10 against Google in terms of their frivolous actions against us to distract and make us spend, you know, money. So we feel good about where we stand today.

and we're going to keep fighting for our intellectual property. And, you know, if people infringe it, we're going to work with them first. But if they, you know, don't come to the table as Google didn't, then we will take it to the courts. And we, you know, are in a position, thankfully, because of a lot of hard work and everybody's efforts where we are in control of our own destiny and we can do that. And I feel that it's important for all the inventors at Sonos, but I also feel it's important for society that we stand up. in these situations and say, no, you can't go and infringe what somebody else does. And so I have faith that the courts will ultimately help us and will prevail. Across the spectrum of big tech, it's actually kind of inconsistent how they're supporting

this next standard. Apple and Amazon are doing it. Google is not doing it. Spotify, I think, most notably, is not supporting it yet for any number of reasons. They actually announced like, like, hi-fi two years ago today on the day that we're talking and it's come to nothing. Are those conversations you're having like, hey, we're going ahead with spatial audio. This is the future of music. Are you coming along for the ride or are they just missing out? We've definitely been out there talking to all of the streaming services, trying to rally everyone around this because we believe it will be the future. And people just work on, you know, they have their own roadmaps and timelines and strategic priorities and all of those things.

But make the mistake, we've been out there. Absolutely letting them know Air 300 is coming, trying to get their support, make sure we're all lined up. So, yeah, we'll keep doing that. And I think, again, experience and consumer reaction will decide as well. I mean, also, you know, automotive, which, you know, is becoming bigger in special audio. Did you see the Mercedes E-Class announced today with built-in spatial for Apple? Did you do the TikTok camera? I didn't do the TikTok camera.

So it has a selfie camera inside of it. You make TikToks while the car drives itself. This is the entire future of all media, is my feeling. This is becoming desperate. Yeah. The headline was like supports Atmos from Apple Music and the subheadline was selfie camera for TikToks. And I was like, we should flip those around. Yeah, we are not putting a selfie cameras with TikTok in any one product.

No, we are not. But you think it's coming to cars, right? I mean, every car has had sort of like a fake surround mixture. I think, again, the experience has to be good. You know, that's the thing about Spacials. You know, if it's done right, which I think we've done, then it's a really compelling. It's a really compelling experience. And I think companies will get it right, not just us.

And that will then shift the consumer experience. And therefore that will influence people like Spotify will then, you know, have to come to the table. Do you think there's going to be a wave of overly aggressive at most mixes in this period? Because that's what I'm, that's what I see. Aggressive atmos mix is like, you know, people throwing things at studio walls and stuff like that. Just like the guitars are over by the bar for no reason. Well, it's interesting because in lockdown, I was sort of overseeing, spatial audio and quality control

with a team of like 50 engineers that were, you know, it was like mixing, mixing, mixing, mixing, mixing. And yeah, I mean, there were times where it was just like, it's like early stereo. You know, early stereo was crazy. And absolutely, I think it settled down, you know, you know, I'm hearing people do mixes now,

which are just truly outstanding and not advanced as far as spatial goes. They just sound good, and that's the point. You know, okay, I mean, I know from experience, I mean, I've just done, you know, a whole load of big artists and Atmos. Something like the Stones or the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, you don't, Angie, you don't want things flying around your head. It's like acoustic guitar, strings and drums and bass. And vocal.

Chemical Brothers, you want things flying around your head and going through you and hitting you in the face and lots of stuff. So I think it's music dependent. And that's the great thing about building like an era 300 is that then you should then have that product that realizes that in your space. So, for instance, I can put Paul McCartney back in Abbey Road, singing in Abbey Road, and the walls are very where it comes to the walls of your home. That's super exciting. That's, like, really compelling. The Chemical Brothers, you're at Coachella or whatever.

So that's just one creator. There are people who are doing amazing things, Space Audio. And you talk to creators, we did a panel in Santa Barbara with a bunch of careers. It was really interesting. And like Mani Mariquin, who mixes just about everything now, he was like talking about how it freed him up, how Space Lord of frees them up to thinking about he's, you know, he has to put, you know, mixing Lizzo or something like that. He's having to put everything into speakers.

Now he can open it out. And we just have to represent that in the home. I was definitely complaining about spatial with somebody who knows. And they said, what are you doing? Listen to Tiesto. And listen to Tiesto. I thought this would be amazing if I was on drugs. And that's like the highlight.

It was not yet on drugs. Yeah. Yet. I want to end here. You are the expert trials. There's no way I could offer this instruction to our audience. I want to ask you for it. We're about to come into a wave.

of hype around spatial audio, right? This is, I would say the Air 100 is the tip of the iceberg in terms of product launches, in terms of hype around this stuff, in terms of listening at home on not a soundbar. What should people be listening for? How do you listen intelligently to a spatial mix to know if it's any good?

Because I think right now, everything is just like, what if it was all around you? And that doesn't seem like the right answer. Listen to your heart is what I would say. Yeah, we're done here. No, you know what? You can dismiss there. But like, you can sit there.

But honestly, and this is from someone who has to analyze sound and, like, I have all of this opinion. There's nothing better than someone putting on music and you being with a friend listening to it. And it's another question. So in spatial audio, you can close your eyes and you can

think about where everything is, and think about how your room, and this is why I love. Don't think about the speak you're listening to. Think about the song you're listening to. And technically, for a bunch of different reasons, we can achieve that in the space and the product space a lot better with special audio because

we can project sound and because we have channels of projection. You know, spatial audio is mild channel, stereo is two channel, mono is one channel. We have this channel camera where we can actually project color on the walls of your home and that's what you're listening to. But above

all, just see whether you enjoy it, see whether you dig it and that's the thing. And it's really interesting. Sometimes you listen to a track and you go, this isn't very spatial but I'm enjoying it. It doesn't It doesn't have to be wide for you to enjoy it. Yeah. And I answer great.

What's your favorite special track? The one I heard from Phineas today is, oh my gosh, was incredible. I don't know what the name of it is, but it's a new one that Phineas just did, and it is, oh, you've got to hear it because you feel it. I think that's the thing to me is you absolutely feel it. Concert five years from now. Concert five years from now. You feel it when you're there, and it feels like you're somewhere else, which, you know, I've been in tech long enough to be cynical about all these things. And I really do think Giles nailed it with, do you feel it fundamentally?

And when you close your eyes, what does that feel like? And, you know, for what we do, that's about as good as it gets. Yeah. Well, Patrick, Giles, thank you so much for trying to say. This is great. Thank you. You probably talk to you about special audio for another five hours. Well, I can come back later on.

Between the Beatles fans losing their minds and your comms, people losing their minds. It's time to go. I'll get the Blu-Rays done, guys. Okay. I'll make them for you. You can just have blue-rays. So now on. Amazing.

That was great. Thank you. That's it for the verge of today. Thank you for listening. There's a lot more from this conversation at theverge.com. There are links in the show notes, including lots of links to Chris Welch's coverage. These are only leading the charge on scooping these speakers. If you have thoughts, feedback, feelings, tips.

You can always email us at Vergecast at theverge.com, or you can call the hotline. It's 866, Verge 1-1. We may answer a question you have in a future episode. The Vergecast is produced by Andrew Marino and Liam James. Brooke Minters is our editorial director of audio. The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. We'll back on Friday with more of the Verge crew. talk about whatever is happening in tech this week.

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