Here's Which Streaming Platforms The Sonos Era 300 & 100 Support For Spatial Audio
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While 8K and OLED often grab headlines for premium visuals, premium audio gets less fanfare. Many music streaming platforms offer "HD" and higher-quality stereo tracks, but only a few offer studio-quality lossless audio. Even fewer streaming platforms offer true spatial audio. The term "spatial audio" was only coined in 2020, and the technology is not much older. Spatial audio is similar to surround-sound stereo, providing total 360-degree listening for tracks mixed with the technology. While spatial audio can often be found on headphones, Sonos is bringing the technology to its home speakers, starting with the Sonos Era 300.
Announced alongside the new Era 100, the Sonos Era 300 costs $449 and can fill a room with spatial audio. Sonos worked for around three years to design the hourglass-shaped speaker, specifically focusing on spatial audio as a primary feature. It uses Dolby Atmos technology and six drivers pointing in different directions to create a "three-dimensional soundstage, giving your music and movies a sense of height." By placing the speaker far enough from the wall and using Sonos' Trueplay system, a single Era 300 can fill a room with spatial audio, though only for tracks mixed that way — it won't upscale stereo tracks.
But where do you find spatial audio tracks to play? Your options are limited. Sonos only supports spatial audio on Apple Music and Amazon Music Unlimited. Tidal has spatial audio, but Sonos can't use it — at least so far.
Apple Music
Apple has long proven its Music app is not some afterthought to accompany its high-quality hardware. Besides offering hi-fi lossless audio, Apple Music is one of only two streaming platforms where you can play spatial audio on the Sonos Era 300, making the Era 300 the first third-party speaker to support Apple Music's spatial tracks. Apple has focused on spatial audio to help separate the brand from competitors. Its proprietary HomePod speaker is one of the few on the market besides the Era 300 that supports spatial audio. Apple has included spatial audio in its AirPods and Apple TV as well. The company has even brought spatial audio to the road as part of some Mercedes-Benz sound systems.
If you prefer Sonos hardware for your home audio, you can now take advantage of Apple Music's commitment to spatial audio with the Era 300. Apple Music has over 100 million tracks and 30,000 ad-free playlists in its library, many of which you can download to listen to offline, though only a portion is available in spatial audio. You can subscribe to Apple Music as part of its Apple One bundle or individually for $11 monthly, and a family plan is also available for $17 per month. Remember that the cheaper Apple Music Voice tier does not support spatial audio.
Amazon Music Unlimited
Besides Apple Music, the only other streaming platform to currently play spatial audio on the Sonos Era 300 is Amazon Music Unlimited, the premium tier of Amazon's music streaming service. Like Apple, Amazon has used spatial audio to stand out from other services, and its Echo Studio is one of the few home speakers besides the Era 300 capable of playing it.
Notably, Amazon Music allows you to play spatial audio tracks with any pair of headphones, not just specially-designed ones. Amazon Music can also cast spatial audio from Google Chromecast and Sony's Sony SRS-RA3000 and SRS-RA5000 speakers. The service offers 100 million songs and podcasts, though only a percentage are available in spatial audio.
Because the Sonos Era 300 has Alexa support, you can seamlessly make Amazon Music your default music streaming platform and control it with your voice. The subscription fees for Amazon Music were raised this year, and an Individual plan for Amazon Music Unlimited will cost you $11 per month, the same price as Apple Music. Students can get a discount with the Amazon Music Unlimited Student Plan, which costs $6 monthly.
Does the Sonos Era 100 support spatial audio?
In addition to the Era 300, Sonos also rolled out the Era 100, its follow-up smart speaker to the Sonos One. It offers high-quality audio with good stereo reproduction, but unlike the Era 300, it is not designed for spatial audio. So if you have Apple Music or Amazon Music Unlimited, you won't be able to play spatial audio tracks in full 360-degree sound on the bookshelf speaker.
However, the Era 100 does break Sonos' tradition of eschewing Bluetooth technology and offers Bluetooth 5 support, which is great if you or your guests want to stream something from your phones quickly. The Era 100 also provides USB-C line-in audio if you use an adapter. The smart speaker supports Sonos Voice Control and Amazon Alexa but not Google Assistant. It can also utilize Trueplay on Android and Apple devices to allow your speaker to adapt to the specific room you place it in and adjust its acoustics accordingly.
So while it does not offer spatial audio, the Era 100 can still provide good-quality stereo music to fill the room. In addition to Apple Music and Amazon Music, it supports Spotify, Pandora, Tidal, and iHeartRadio, among other streaming services. It can also stream audio from iOS devices using Apple's AirPlay. If you want to take advantage of Apple or Amazon's spatial audio, you'll need to upgrade to the Sonos Era 300.