In recent years, the importance of home cinema sound has risen rapidly from a gimmick or movie lover’s passion project to a must-have status symbol in any high-spec home.
Today, even some of the finest hotel suites make space for a fancy cinema setup. These impressive temples to Hollywood do everything possible to maximize both audio and video in creating the best viewing experience.
Once highly complicated, rife with jargon and requiring the aid of a professional installer to set up, home cinemas today feature a new currency of simplicity and intuitive design — and can be set up in minutes. The real trick is knowing what to watch next.
When it comes to these lavish home cinema systems, often visuals and projection can capture a lot of the limelight. In recent years, picture quality has improved a considerable amount. Often that leads consumers to neglect their audio offering, a mistake given sound plays such a crucial role in the home cinema experience. For those looking to upgrade their home cinema sound, Sonos and Bowers & Wilkins offer exceptional, albeit wildly different solutions.
Sonos
In the late 2000s, Sonos rose to prominence and became a major player in the audio space by understanding something few others did. The future of home audio was a network, a series of wirelessly linked speakers that, when connected to the internet, could stream music. Before Spotify’s 2011 arrival in the US, few understood what streaming was or how it was about to change the face of music. Even fewer understood how speakers could best utilize it.
Over a decade later and instead of having to regularly justify the vision to potential investors, Sonos is seen today as one of the most respected brands in home audio. Sonos expanded from standard bookshelf-size loudspeakers to TV soundbars, small smart speakers, wireless Bluetooth speakers and headphones.
A single Sonos device is impressive, and the brand is regularly touted for its class-leading audio and good looks — currently, several of the speakers in its lineup are Red Dot Award winners. However, Sonos’ niche has always been in multi-room, multi-speaker setups. Users looking to get quickly kitted out with a Sonos system should look at its ‘sets’: packages that include multiple speakers, offering a well-rounded setup.
Delivering the impressive sonic range needed for a home cinema system, the Premium Personal Entertainment Set with Arc Ultra features Sonos’ best soundbar, the Arc Ultra; a pair of Era 300 speakers; the brand-new Sub 4 woofer to enhance low-end frequencies; and a pair of Sonos Ace headphones.
For $2,985, this system delivers impressive sound across the spectrum, with the pair of Era 300s offering the potential for surround sound, while the Arc Ultra and Sub 4 handle the highs, mids and lows with ease. The inclusion of the Ace headphones is also of note. As the headphones are part of the Sonos network, listeners can instantly switch between the TV audio and the headphones. So, if someone’s prone to a mid-movie nap, you can slip on the headphones and continue watching without missing a beat.
Bowers & Wilkins
Cinema lovers looking to curate the ultimate home theater setup are essentially trying to excel in two areas: sight and sound. So, the way a motion picture looks — reproducing it at the highest resolution, with the best color accuracy — only represents half the puzzle. For a cinema experience to be truly memorable, audio quality must be given just as much thought.
When planning the visuals, prospective buyers are inundated with options. Do you go TV or projector? If you choose TV, then how big? LCD or OLED? The list goes on and on. When it comes to selecting sound, those hoping for a slightly simpler time will be sorely disappointed. The world of audio is vivid and complex, with prices that range from a few dollars to absolutely eye-watering — six figures and up.
For loudspeakers, few can match Bowers & Wilkins, which over the years has become the darling of the audiophile world. In today’s sonic landscape, statement speakers must not only sound incredible, but also bring the looks, with many going so far as to possess a quasi-sculptural quality.
The flagship Bowers & Wilkins 801 D4 consists of a single one-inch diamond dome tweeter for the high frequencies, a five-inch Continuum cone for the midrange and a pair of 10-inch Aerofoil cones for the lower end. The result is a reference speaker that represents the absolute pinnacle of what Bowers & Wilkins can produce after nearly 60 years of audio innovation. Priced at $42,000, we are in the realm of ultra-audio here, but for those prepared to pay to attain the best, there’s little that can compare.
For individuals looking for a somewhat more toned-down option, the 805 D4s include much of the same technology and arrive in a smaller package, albeit missing the iconic turbine head and bass-specific Aerofoil cones. However, at $13,500 for a pair, these would make a healthy addition to any home cinema setup.
