Sonos Beam: Second Generation with Dolby Atmos and DTS

Sonos has introduced a modified version of its compact Sonos Beam soundbar. It’s easy to differentiate the Beam Gen2’s exterior from its predecessor. Instead of a cloth covering, the housing is now made entirely of plastic. The surrounding loudspeaker grille with its fine sieve adapts to the new speakers in the Sonos range.

More computing power for more sound

Speaker setup in the new Beam has remained the same: 5 Class D amplifiers drive four elliptical woofers and mid-range speakers and centrally mounted tweeters. The actual hardware update happens in the more powerful processor. According to Sonos, the quad-core CPU (A-53) clocked at 1.4GHz should bring in about 40 percent more computing power than the first generation of the Sonos Beam. Sonos uses the extra power to integrate more audio formats into the system.

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The Beam Gen2 is said to be the second soundbar to support Dolby Atmos along with the top model Arc. Sonos uses psychoacoustic processes to simulate effects channels through phased speaker arrays into the rear areas and above the audience’s head. In addition, the Beam Gen2 supports all cinema sound formats in the Dolby range such as Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby TrueHD.

DTS at the end

Sonos also announced that this year it will bring long-awaited support for decoding DTS Digital Surround via the S2 platform on both generations of the Playbar, Playbase, Amp, as well as Beam and Arc. This means that even owners of older devices are promised a significant update. If using a home cinematic Blu-ray player as the player, the Sonos setup is often muted due to the DTS soundtrack being on the disc.

During this year, Sonos plans to support Amazon Music Ultra High Definition Audio in this country. Additionally, titles can be played in lossless audio up to 24bit/48kHz on the Beam Gen2. In addition, the device should be able to play Dolby Atmos music format, which promises an immersive audio experience. Dolby Atmos Music is currently available from streaming provider Tidal. In the conversation, Sonos has not been able to give any information about the support for 3D audio content announced by Apple so far.

(NS)