Sonos & Ikea - SYMFONISK speakers!

Daaaavvveee · 2 Aug 2019 at 10:25

Just had an email form Sonos that they have finally released their new speakers in partnership with Ikea

They have been priced pretty good, and the bookshelfs can be used as rears for surround sound.....

I might finally make the jump.

https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/news/-pu...paign=IKEA_GA_177776_1358586&et_rid=376184896

UberTiger · 2 Aug 2019 at 10:28

The lamps look terrible IMO. The bookshelf ones look better, still not 100% sure on their fabric choice for covering them though.

Daaaavvveee · 2 Aug 2019 at 10:30

UberTiger said:
The lamps look terrible IMO. The bookshelf ones look better, still not 100% sure on their fabric choice for covering them though.

I agree, I am only really interested in the bookshelfs, might bare the pain and visit Ikea this weekend

Psycho Sonny · 2 Aug 2019 at 10:35

Don't have enough power sockets. I'd rather run speaker wire in living room.

Already got a YSP 2700 which does everything from 1 bar for the bedroom where is what I'm assuming the lamps are for. Nice idea but I feel it needs to be refined much further.

Puzzled · 2 Aug 2019 at 16:52

How do they compare sound / feature wise to a Sonos Play1?

Flibster · 2 Aug 2019 at 22:25

MonkeyMan said:
How do they compare sound / feature wise to a Sonos Play1?

The bluetooth Ikea Eneby speakers seem pretty well received for their sound quality, especially for the price.
These are so new that I don't think anyone audio related has taken a look at them yet really. Will happen soon enough though. But those that have taken a look reckons the lamp sounds better than the bookshelf, and puts the lamp around the Sonus:1 level.

Prices do look very reasonable.

Wish they had a 3.5mm tbh, the ability to plug a cheap Amazon Echo Input into it would be nice.

dowie · 2 Aug 2019 at 22:41

Flibster said:
Wish they had a 3.5mm tbh, the ability to plug a cheap Amazon Echo Input into it would be nice.

I've still not got round to trying out amazon echo or the other equivalents yet... but if you were going to stick one or two of these in say the kitchen, can't they be used via the echo over wifi? Why do you need the 3.5mm connection?

Flibster · 2 Aug 2019 at 23:34

dowie said:
I've still not got round to trying out amazon echo or the other equivalents yet... but if you were going to stick one or two of these in say the kitchen, can't they be used via the echo over wifi? Why do you need the 3.5mm connection?

It can, but the Echo Input has no speaker built in (which is why it's occasionally dirt cheap... Prime day was £15) so it'd be a silent receiver which would be a touch annoying.
To be honest, not used a Sonos for probably 5 years so kind of out of the loop with them.

punky_munky · 8 Aug 2019 at 15:42

I bought a pair of the bookshelf speakers the other day and so far I’m fairly satisfied with them. I’m using them as a stereo pair for music and in a 2.0 setup for watching movies on a projector with an Apple TV.

To my ears, a single bookshelf speaker doesn’t sound as a good as a single Sonos One - there is a certain amount of clarity missing in the lower ranges - but as a pair they sound good enough for me to enjoy music without noticing any obvious deficiencies. I’m especially happy with their performance for movies as I found that dialogue is a lot clearer than on the Sonos One we were using, and the bass isn’t too overwhelming which is good for us as we live in a small terrace house. (I appreciate that the Sonos One wasn't really designed as a speaker for movie audio)

Physically, the speakers look nice enough but are a bit bigger than I thought from looking at the photos. The mounting system is good and the cable routing options are well thought out. Unfortunately the power cable itself is quite short and doesn’t reach the floor where I’ve mounted the speakers at shoulder height (admittedly, that's quite high up and I can imagine Ikea designing the power cable to not leave to much excess when mounted at a more usual height).

A small but useful thing is that if you have one of the Symfonisk bookshelf speakers wired to the router then it will create a mesh network for the other speakers (the same as "proper" Sonos speakers). I wasn't sure it would do this as I don't think I saw it mentioned it anywhere in the reviews, but I'm pleased that it works as my Wifi is a bit rubbish.

The lack of voice control isn’t really a big deal for me (and having Airplay 2 support is a big win), but if you really want Alexa then you can use an Echo Dot and set the bookshelf speakers as the default device for music playback.

BTW, I had previously tried the large Eneby Bluetooth speaker for the bedroom but I sent it back as it sounded really muddy and felt quite hard work to listen to. the Symfonisk bookshelf speakers are an entirely different proposition.

I think that's all I have to say on the matter... if anyone had any questions about the speakers then I will try to answer as best I can.

purplesky · 9 Aug 2019 at 12:21

Ewww, 1970's.

Flibster · 22 Aug 2019 at 03:05

Junglist · 22 Aug 2019 at 10:42

punky_munky said:
I bought a pair of the bookshelf speakers the other day and so far I’m fairly satisfied with them. I’m using them as a stereo pair for music and in a 2.0 setup for watching movies on a projector with an Apple TV.

Perfect! This was actually a bit of information I wanted! My friend has bought 2 to go with their Sonos soundbar and I was really impressed, even more impressed with the price. Recently just got an AppleTV and was considering a soundbar to beef up the TVs audio but I am tempted to get 2 of these for either side of the TV. Wasn't sure how it would work with no actual Sonos soundbar but I'm guessing it's fairly easy to select these as a source for the AppleTV to put audio through?

cheesyboy · 22 Aug 2019 at 10:44

Saw these the other day on store. The lamps look much worse in person than in pics. Bookshelf ones look pretty functional. Can't really comment on sound quality. Hopefully they expand the options: would be good to get some more stylish £100 ish Sonos compatible gear

punky_munky · 22 Aug 2019 at 11:17

JunglistE said:
Perfect! This was actually a bit of information I wanted! My friend has bought 2 to go with their Sonos soundbar and I was really impressed, even more impressed with the price. Recently just got an AppleTV and was considering a soundbar to beef up the TVs audio but I am tempted to get 2 of these for either side of the TV. Wasn't sure how it would work with no actual Sonos soundbar but I'm guessing it's fairly easy to select these as a source for the AppleTV to put audio through?

It’s easy enough but you do have to re-select the speakers if you’ve used them for something else (like playing music from your phone). To select the speakers you either hold down the play button on the home screen or you can swipe down when a video starts.

I went with the Sonos/AirPlay solution as it worked well for my situation - AppleTV+Projector and not wanting to have an AV Receiver nor wanting to run speaker wire across the room. If you use your TV for more than AppleTV then you might be better off with something more traditional like a soundbar.

I have one of the speakers connected by Ethernet to create a sonosnet as this provides a more stable connection, especially when using Airplay.

Junglist · 22 Aug 2019 at 11:27

punky_munky said:
It’s easy enough but you do have to re-select the speakers if you’ve used them for something else (like playing music from your phone). To select the speakers you either hold down the play button on the home screen or you can swipe down when a video starts.

I went with the Sonos/AirPlay solution as it worked well for my situation - AppleTV+Projector and not wanting to have an AV Receiver nor wanting to run speaker wire across the room. If you use your TV for more than AppleTV then you might be better off with something more traditional like a soundbar.

I have one of the speakers connected by Ethernet to create a sonosnet as this provides a more stable connection, especially when using Airplay.

TV will only be used with the AppleTV now. We may use them occasionally to play music but again that can be done through the AppleTV and if not it sounds like paring is a very easy thing to do anyway