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Sonos is a leading American audio technology company that is best known for pioneering wireless multiroom audio systems, which make it easy for listeners to stream music and other content throughout their homes. The company continues to innovate, creating wireless speakers, home theater systems, headphones, architectural components, and integrated home audio solutions that revolutionize how people listen and connect to sound.

Global Head of Editorial

While the Emmy-winning score Ludwig Göransson composed for 

 is meant to evoke the lone man’s journey, his own path has been enriched by long-term friendships (Ryan Coogler, Donald Glover), fruitful collaborations (Jon Favreau, Christopher Nolan), and an eagerness to incorporate an international array of musical cultures, styles, and expressions into his life and work. From embracing organic, tactile instruments he learned to play as a child to collaborating with Sonos’s engineering team to tune Arc, Göransson is passionate about all aspects of sound. His new station on Sonos Radio, Things That Stuck, debuts today. In this interview, he shares what inspired his station, how he knew he was going to win the Academy Award moments before his name was called, and why he’s so excited for Season 2 of 

The moment he finally heard the orchestra play the score he’d written for the first season of 

 was a special one for Ludwig Göransson. “With the orchestra, it’s the first time that it comes to life,” he said. “You have 70 or 80 of the best musicians in the world playing together, breathing together, putting their efforts into their instruments. And that’s when it starts to feel human.” Up until that moment, he’d cultivated the music mostly on his own, tending to it like a caregiver. In the case of 

, he worked on the score for seven months before sessions with the orchestra began. There were lofty expectations. The music for the first live-action 

 series needed to complement Jon Favreau’s unique vision for the show, while also standing alongside John Williams’s revered score for the original films. So the moment when it all came together with an orchestra was significant. “I think it's the closest I will get to delivering a baby,” he said.

Like much of Göransson’s career, what happened next is more collaborative. “One of the most fun parts of the process is being in the room with the orchestra and shaping it into something you didn't know existed, something you didn't think it could sound like,” he said. “You can take an idea and—if you work with a great orchestra—you can give them the story and tell them what the music is supposed to mean and then you hear it shape their performance.”

 universe has defined “the future” since Göransson was a kid. But when it came time for him to score for 

, he intentionally chose a more organic approach. “I wanted to connect with the feeling I had as a kid when I watched 

 for the first time,” he said. “The only way to come back to that feeling was to step away from the computer and use real instruments, instruments I could touch.” Göransson started with one familiar to many who took a music class in school—the bass woodwind recorder. “It had this really unique sound that I was instantly drawn to,” he said. “So I started improvising on that for a day and those are the very first notes you hear in 

Based on his initial conversations with Favreau, Göransson knew the series should sound evocative of a lone journeyer. So, Göransson went on a journey himself, spending hours alone in a studio filled with instruments. “I wanted the music to be very direct and intimate. And I wanted it to feel small in the beginning. After arriving at the recorder riff, I got the idea to put a heartbeat under it. So I went to the drum and added a heartbeat sound. Next I went to the piano and wrote the bassline. Then I went to my electric guitar and wrote the first melody with some distortion. I basically was closed off in my studio for a month, jumping from instrument to instrument.”

While music is integral to any property in the 

 universe, it’s even more critical in context of 

. “The score is the facial expressions of the Mandalorian,” Göransson said. “You never see his face because he's always covered with a helmet. You only hear his voice and see his body language. So the score is extremely important in telling the story of what he's feeling.”

To ensure that his score blended seamlessly with the high-tech look and feel of the series, Göransson worked closely with the sound team. “To me, sound and music go hand in hand,” he said. “With today’s technology, we can manipulate sounds. We can take something that everyone's familiar with, like the clanking of the Mandalorian’s boots, for example, and we can turn that into a music element. There's so many ways to use new technology with sound and turn sounds into music, which gives the listeners and audience a new and different experience, something they’ve never heard before.”

Göransson’s own excitement for the second season of the series is palpable. “We’re going to go to so many more places,” he said. “We're going to meet so many new characters and see things we've never seen or experienced before. So you know you’re about to go on a really fun ride.”

One of Göransson’s first big jobs in Hollywood was scoring the NBC series 

. While working on the show, he became close with Donald Glover, one of the stars of the series. Glover was impressed by Göransson’s classical and jazz background and they started working together on music for Glover’s alter ego, Childish Gambino. The collaboration would go on to net four Grammys for the song “This Is America” and its accompanying music video.

Besides winning him awards, the breadth of Göransson’s oeuvre has also had a major influence on his unique film scores. “I bring insights from everything I do into scoring. There are ideas in producing a record, for example, that I can bring with me into films. I like how you can blend worlds together and make it feel new.”

The partnership that would eventually result in Göransson’s Academy Award began even earlier than his collaboration with Glover. While attending USC’s screen scoring program, Göransson connected with director and fellow USC student Ryan Coogler over a game of pool at a party. The two hit it off while discussing their favorite Swedish hip-hop artists and Coogler asked Göransson to score his student film 

. Göransson would go on to score two more Coogler films that were more high-profile: 2013’s 

. Göransson said, “I've been fortunate that every project I work on, I get to learn so many new things. I’m inspired by something new each time. For example, on 

, I didn't only learn new music, but I also learned about the meaning of music in relationship to African culture. I made lifelong friends with a lot of the performers that played on the score that I'm still talking to every week, learning what music means to them. Music has brought me so many new friendships and opened up my world in ways I never could have expected.”

 earned him his first Oscar. Although completely surprised by the honor, he had the tiniest inkling that the statuette would be his moments before his name was called. “The people giving out the award were Tessa Thompson and Michael B. Jordan, who I'd worked with on 

,” he said, referring to the 2015 film he scored. “I actually remember I saw their reaction when they opened the envelope so I had a hint that I won. It was surreal.”

“The station is, in a way, the amalgamation of the musical experiences that have led me to this moment in my journey as an artist,” Göransson said, referring to his new station on 

, Things That Stuck. Göransson’s wide-ranging taste in music made him a perfect fit to curate a station for Sonos Radio. “What’s been so important to me is that I've been introduced to so many different genres, styles, and kinds of music from all different parts of the world,” he said. “And I think I was open to that because I met people that I created a bond with, and when you create a bond with someone, you listen to what they have to say in a different way. I listened to their music and it helped shape me into the composer I am and the person I’ve become.” He continues, “So there's all different genres of music on Things That Stuck and it's a bit all over the place. And I guess that tells you something about the music that I'm writing, too. I’m trying to cross genres and combine different instruments you’re not particularly used to. I love experimenting with that.”

Things That Stuck offers up a blend of the music that has influenced Göransson’s work, artists he’s produced, and the songs that have inspired him personally. The station ranges from classical, jazz, and film scores to indie and hard rock. “It's the sounds and songs and melodies that are stuck in my hippocampus,” he said. “It's part of my language. It's things that, from the beginning, were passed to me through my father because that's how I got introduced to music. Also, songs and artists from social experiences, like meeting friends, having a band, or sitting with my best friend, playing music for each other in the living room or the car because that’s where the good sound system was.” Upon its wider release, the second season soundtrack from 

 will debut on Things That Stuck, alongside exclusive behind-the-scenes commentary from Göransson.

Göransson’s long-standing relationship with Sonos is rooted in his appreciation for sound. “So much of the experience when you watch a film is in the sound, obviously,” he said. “I learned that through a lot of the directors I work with, how important the sound is to them. And that's really been affecting my career too.” While near the final stages of tuning 

, Sonos invited Göransson to offer his feedback on how our newest soundbar was handling his Oscar-winning score for 

. Göransson wanted to first hone in on one particular scene—the fight scene at the waterfall between T’Challa and Killmonger. “It was one of the most complicated scenes I remember mixing at the dub station,” he said. “You have a thunderous, bass-heavy waterfall going on throughout the whole fight, hundreds of people in the audience, the score, and sound effects throughout the whole scene. So how can you make all those sounds distinct? [While testing out Arc], we played that scene over and over again and it was interesting how the Sonos engineers could make adjustments to Arc on the spot. In the end, it felt to me like there was a real waterfall behind the TV and the music was out in front. It came together in a way I haven't heard before on a TV.”

In addition to hearing Göransson’s score throughout the second season of 

, you can also hear his music in Christopher Nolan’s 

. Like many of his collaborations before, Göransson established a common language and trust with the celebrated director through music. “With 

, I read the script and then I had a meeting with Chris [Nolan] where I got to ask him a bunch of stuff,” he said. “One of the things that we did in our first meeting was to play music for each other—he played music that had inspired him and I played music that inspired me throughout my life. Having that conversation and playing music was extremely helpful in getting to know each other. And that became the foundation of our collaboration.”

While he doesn’t have an orchestra at his disposal when he’s at home, music infuses his personal life as well. “There's always music in our house. My wife Serena is a violinist and she's always playing or we're playing songs for our one-year-old,” he said. “Music is constantly talked about and around us all the time.”

Experience the vivid musical landscape inside Ludwig Göransson’s head by listening to Things That Stuck, now available on Sonos Radio. And watch the new season of 

Things That Stuck: The Mandalorian’s Composer on the Second Season and His New Sonos Radio Station

Today, we introduce a new color for Move: Lunar White. The hue represents months of research, formulating, and testing. It also exemplifies a key tenant of the Sonos experience—that all our products work together as part of a system not only technically but also aesthetically. It was up to Kitty Suidman, Sonos’s Design Director of Color, Material, Finish, and her team of experts to find a lighter tone that would allow 

 to seamlessly transition between the indoors and outdoors, while still harmonizing with the rest of the Sonos system. Find out how her international upbringing and life-long obsession with color prepared her to identify the perfect shade.

Choosing the color of our speakers is anything but elementary. So Kitty Suidman approaches the challenge with equal amounts of inspiration and technical expertise. Born in the Netherlands, Suidman spent 20 years in Asia before returning to her native country to attend industrial design school. During her studies, she realized that she was more drawn to colors and materials than industrial design. Daring to follow a divergent path, she graduated with a unique portfolio that equipped her to construct a rich and varied career spanning Philips Design, Motorola, and T-Mobile. Since joining Sonos seven years ago, she’s developed a rigorous yet thoughtful approach to color, rooted in deep technical knowledge that extends into chemistry and manufacturing processes. Her nuanced description of how her team landed on Move’s new shade illuminates how Sonos’s custom colors enable our speakers to seamlessly blend into your home—both indoors and out.

How would you describe Sonos’s approach to product color?

Our approach to color starts with our approach to design. And design is about finding solutions to problems. Let’s take Move as an example. As our first portable product, our problem was finding a color that allowed Move to blend in with a variety of different environments. More generally though, it’s important that we deliver color that feels timeless and versatile, something that will last for a long time. We make products that endure, and color is a part of that equation.

When I first joined, our products incorporated metallic finishes in addition to color. For example, both the black and white versions of the Play:1 have a silver grille. Starting with the second-generation Play:5, we set out to create clean, simple aesthetics by finishing the product in a single color. We want our speakers to feel less like technology in your home and more like simple, beautiful objects.

How does Sonos decide which colors to use?

It’s really a simple strategic choice. Our goal is to find color solutions that blend into their environments. White has a history in the home. Black has a history in audio. Our vision was to create a simplified color language that is relevant to the way our owners live.

So if you were to put a white Sonos One and Beam next to each other, are they the exact same color?

No, that’s where my job gets interesting. Most Sonos speakers are a custom shade of black and white that we call Sonos Black and Sonos White. Sonos One, for example, is available in Sonos Black and Sonos White. However, we occasionally need to deviate from those two colors. The first time we did so was with 

. With Beam, we had the challenge of working with a fabric grille. White fabric felt cheap, so we landed on a light grey color. However, a key aspect of our design philosophy is that each product should appear monolithic, meaning that regardless of the different materials used, the entire product should look like it’s one seamless object. To match the light grey fabric, we had to tweak the white used on the rest of Beam so that it didn’t contrast as much with the fabric. We call this variation Cloud White. When we developed Cloud White, we made sure it didn’t stand out as a different white against the rest of our products. When you view all of our light colored speakers together, you shouldn’t notice a difference. If we have to tweak a color, the entire portfolio still needs to feel cohesive.

But Move doesn’t have a fabric grille, so why couldn’t you use Sonos White?

We could have. When we tested Move in Sonos White outside, it proved to be very durable. But Sonos White was specifically developed for inside the home. It’s a warmer shade that feels domestic, especially in contrast to the cooler, bluer tones used in many consumer electronics. But if you see something with that same tone outside, it feels harsh and artificial. Bright white is not a “natural color,” so taking it outdoors doesn’t feel appropriate. It stands out too much. And that’s what led us to Lunar White. Since Move was designed to be used both indoors and outdoors, we needed a color that could seamlessly transition between the two environments. It needed to feel at home in both an indoor and an outdoor space. Color should complement its surroundings.

Did you take the same approach to the black version of Move?

Yes. The darker shade of Move is not the same as Sonos Black. It’s actually called Shadow Black. It’s a custom color we created for the same reasons that we created Lunar White.

What was the most difficult part of developing Lunar White?

There is a translation that needs to happen when you apply a color to different materials and surfaces, whether that’s plastic, paint, silicone, or anodized metal. With Move, there were 20 different parts that needed color matching. All our color development is done in collaboration with our production suppliers, so we create production recipes. Chemistry is a big part of what we do! There’s also a good amount of work that goes into fine-tuning the way a color appears on various materials so that we can create that monolithic look for the product. For example, when we were applying Lunar White to Move, the power cord appeared more pink than the rest of the speaker. We had to tweak the recipe so that it all looked cohesive. We also put all of our recipes to the test through hardware verification testing, ensuring that the color is durable in terms of things like scratch resistance, chemical resistance, and UV exposure.

So it sounds like the “material” and “finish” parts of your title are just as important as “color”?

Absolutely. Most of my team’s contribution to material development is done in collaboration with the mechanical engineering team. We work closely with them to make sure we end up using materials that enable us to deliver on the right color and finish for a product. And by “finish” I mean texture and gloss level, how shiny or matte a product looks. With 

, our challenge was its curved grille. We actually had to reduce the gloss level on that product because the curvature of the grille made the finish look too shiny. Our products typically have a gloss level between 7 and 15 gloss. For the black version of Arc, it’s 4 gloss.

I have a four-person team with two different kinds of roles on the team. Half the team is based out of Santa Barbara and really focused on strategy. They partner with our industrial design team to identify the color material finish (CMF) point of view for each product, but also how it fits in with the entire portfolio. They work with a lot of technical cross-functional teams outside of design, including the mechanical engineering, tooling, and acoustics teams. Then the other half of my team sits in China, and they are CMF developers, working on site with the suppliers to oversee the recipe development of the colors. They also track the CMF of a product from prototype to a finished product.

What qualifications does one need to join your team? Asking for a friend.

There is no CMF university! Really, the main prerequisite is having an affinity for colors, materials, and finishes. I never hire the same person or skill set twice. Most of the members of my team transitioned into CMF from a different background because it spoke to them. We have a material chemist, a graphic designer, an industrial designer, and an engineer on the team. I look for diverse skills, which brings different perspectives and a much more thorough discussion to the table. The one thing we all share is a keen eye on getting the details right when it comes to color acuity.

What’s the biggest challenge of your job?

Color specifically is a very subjective topic. So the challenge is, how do you remove the subjectivity in a space where there is no right or wrong answer? One way of doing that is with trend forecasting. It’s important to understand what colors are going to be relevant going forward and where these color trends are coming from. But you’re not just taking fashion trends and blindly applying them to your products. You have to put them through a brand filter. You have to determine how these color trends apply to your products. Another way is to be thoughtful about the story you want to tell with your colors. It’s important that you develop colors while keeping in mind how that product will launch and what the story will be behind it.

When did you first realize that you had a passion for colors and materials?

I discovered this during my university days. The school I was attending was really focused on industrial design, but I started to discover during my studies that I was more interested in colors, materials, and finishes. I studied under a woman named Lidewij Edelkoort, who is well known for trend forecasting and looking into the future. I leaned into having her as my mentor and ultimately graduated under her direction. During my final year, I had to create a project to graduate with and I did something very different than the other students at the time, which was to design materials and colors for window blinds. Rather than taking on a typical industrial design project, I chose to do something that I felt more interested in and passionate about.

How has your international upbringing influenced your work with color?

When I was five, my family moved from the Netherlands to Japan, so I spent about 20 years of my life growing up in Asia. Design is a big part of the Japanese culture. And Japan is well known for design, especially graphic design and fabric design. It’s a culture that pays attention to detail when it comes to anything that is made. So I think that growing up there and being exposed to a culture with an eye for detail and design was really influential on my appreciation and fascination with colors and materials.

The result of Suidman and her team’s work, the 

, is available now on sonos.com. With a neutral tone that appears softer in outdoor environments, it complements natural surroundings while fitting in with Sonos’s larger system of speakers when indoors. Suidman is already hard at work on her next project, defining the color of a new Sonos product. “Color is such a big part of my life. It’s just a part of who I am,” said Suidman. “Color makes me happy.”

Lunar White Move: A Conversation with Sonos's Design Director of Color, Material, Finish

Our Global Head of Editorial, Steven Saftig, managed to get his hands on the new Sonos Arc right before we closed our offices. He couldn’t stop talking about our newest soundbar, so we finally told him to just write a blog post about it. From setup to Dolby Atmos, he shares what it’s like to have an Arc in your home when you’re spending the entire day there. He also talked with sound engineer Chris Jenkins about his Oscar-winning sound mixing for Mad Max: Fury Road and what it’s like to hear it in Dolby Atmos, the gold standard for home theater audio.

I was on a train, coming back to Santa Barbara after visiting my family when I got the email from our head of HR: “All employees, please work from home.” We were a little under two months away from announcing 

 to the world and I hadn’t even heard what it sounded like yet. Whenever I write about our products for the blog, I immerse myself in the experience because I want to be able to share what it’s like to actually live with them. How was I going to write about our new home theater speaker without ever having heard it? And, to be honest, I still didn’t fully understand what Dolby Atmos was—one of Arc’s most exciting features. So when I received that email, asking us to get everything we needed out of the office by the end of the day, I panicked. So I started texting. Desperately.

Hey, does anyone have one of our new, top secret speakers lying around? Just, you know, waiting to be picked up? Like, right now?

Fast-forward through a cinematic montage of secret closets, product handoffs, and I finally had an Arc in my hands—an hour before our offices shut down.

Unboxing Arc: A shape-defying design. And 76,000 individually-drilled holes.

Back at home, I began one of my favorite parts of setting up a new Sonos product—the unboxing. The experience with Arc is as exciting and dramatic as I had hoped. More importantly though, we’ve continued to look for ways to minimize the environmental impact of our products. As Michelle Enright, Senior Design Manager, Packaging Experience describes, “For Arc, we had a clean slate opportunity to design packaging from the ground up. We created a 96.1% paper-based construction—moving away from foam-based cushions, which would have been the easier and more cost effective path.”

I peeled back the final layer of protective packaging and there it was. Now, by that point I’d seen a ton of photos of Arc, but because of the subtlety of its design, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when I finally saw it in person. I carefully carried it over to my media console, placed it in front of my TV, and stood back. (You can also mount Arc to the wall.) Here’s the thing about the design of Arc: It’s actually quite difficult to describe its shape. It’s not a box. It’s not a rectangle. It’s not even a cylinder. It almost appears like it’s in motion, as if undulating. The overall effect is that Arc doesn’t feel like it’s trying to compete or stand out from the rest of your home theater setup. As Kitty Suidman, Director, Color Material and Finish says, “[Arc’s] design is purposeful, delivering a seamless, soft familiar profile. It feels like a piece of furniture in your home.”

I started to circle around Arc. And with each angle from which I observed, a new dimension of the design was revealed. There are no harsh edges, clunky protrusions, or jarring cavities. In short, it’s stunning. Turns out, this is all very intentional. “We take a 360-degree approach,” says Philippe Vossel, Industrial Designer at Sonos. “It doesn’t matter where you first look at the product—it all matters. If you look at it from the side first, that’s where it matters. If you mount it to the wall and look at it from the bottom first, that’s where it matters.” Vossel and the Industrial Design team were also thoughtful about how your eye travels along the product. “We want to make sure you don’t get hung up or distracted by unrefined details,” he said. “And in the end, it’s how these details all tie together that allows us to create a visual story about sound.”

There’s one more thing you should know about the design of Arc. Every Sonos product is the result of a creative, collaborative balance between what the hardware and software teams want to put inside the speaker and how the industrial design team wants it to look. There is a lot of technology packed into Arc. (More on that in a moment.) And the grille is the bridge that brings these two interests together—the piece that encases all of this incredible technology, while allowing the product to look as seamless and beautiful as you expect from all Sonos products. Building on the success of technological advances we made with the grilles on Play:5 and Playbase, Arc’s grille is a single seamless sheet, carefully molded and drilled with more than 76,000 holes to ensure exceptional sound and wireless performance. “It’s the latest version of something we’ve been working on for years,” says Dana Krieger, Senior Director of Design, Product.

I set up Arc in the middle of a work day, so I couldn’t immediately sit down to watch a full movie. But I was so anxious to hear what it sounded like that I decided I had to at least listen to a song. And, as anxious as I was, I still used Trueplay™ to tune Arc to my living room, which is not a uniform shape. (Trueplay is, by far, my favorite Sonos feature. Not using Trueplay is like riding around in a new car without adjusting the seat and setting your favorite radio stations. You’ll still enjoy the ride, but you’re missing out on an experience that’s customized just for you.)

I queued up my test song. (You have a test song, right? I play the same song whenever I test out a new speaker: “Rhiannon” by Fleetwood Mac. I’ve been listening to that song since I was a baby, so I know every corner of it. If you don’t have a test song, check out this playlist of tracks we created to show off your system at its best.) I then sat down on my couch and listened the way that Greg McAllister, Sound Experience Manager at Sonos taught me how to listen.

Two things were immediately obvious to me—spaciousness and clarity. What do I mean by “spaciousness”? I don’t just mean that the sound fills the room, which it does. But imagine that you were given a one inch by one inch piece of paper, 6 colors of paint, and then told to paint a picture of your house using all of the colors. With a steady hand, you might be able to create a crude depiction. But there wouldn’t be much definition to the front door. You wouldn’t be able to draw the flowers in the window boxes. And some of the colors would blend into a pool of muddy brown. Now, imagine that you were asked to do the same thing, but with a five foot by five foot piece of paper. This is the type of spaciousness that Arc gives to music. For me, it meant hearing additional layers to “Rhiannon” that I’d never heard before. And alongside that spaciousness is remarkable clarity. The vocals, guitars, keyboards, bass, and drums all sound crisp, clean, and pure. In short, the song sounded glorious.

TV shows with Arc: Sound from a galaxy far, far away

For my first TV show with Arc, I chose The Mandalorian, streaming on Disney+. Sound is integral to the Star Wars universe, so I decided that this would be a good place to start. I wasn’t disappointed.

To hear the roar of the Razor Crest’s engines and the coos of The Child with the same spaciousness and clarity that I’d heard with “Rhiannon,” was electrifying. Even without rear surround speakers, the immediate feeling of listening to Arc is one of total immersion. And that’s because, as Chris Davies, Senior Director, Audio Engineering, explains, “Arc creates an ultra wide soundstage by using highly optimized beam-forming rays. These rays bounce sound off the wall in your room to create a truly immersive sound experience.” In other words, Arc doesn’t just send sound towards you. It uses sophisticated technology (and the information you provide about the size and acoustics of your room with Trueplay) to bounce sound off the walls in order to truly envelope you in the show’s soundscape. The magic, of course, being that the sound reaches your ears at the exact same time, completely in sync.

Later, when I turned down the lights, something subtle but amazing happened. The status light on Arc dimmed automatically. Arc has an ambient light sensor that adjusts the status light based on how bright the room is—another small example of how Arc is made to seamlessly blend into your home.

One final note on Star Wars. You can stream everything in the galaxy on Disney+, including a just-released eight-episode documentary called Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian, which delves into the making of the series, including the iconic score.

As you can tell, I was beyond thrilled with my experience of Arc, completely on its own. Without Sub. Without rear surrounds. Without Dolby Atmos. But Arc was designed to evolve along with the rapid advances in home theater technology. And that means playing Dolby Atmos, the new gold standard of home theater audio. I had to see what Arc could do with a full Atmos setup.

But first, what is Atmos? While there are lots of videos and explanations on the internet describing this technology, I’ll describe it in my own words here. Prior to Atmos, elements of sound from a film or show had to be assigned to a particular channel (left, center, right, rear left, rear right, etc.) With Atmos though, sounds are treated as objects—and all of the channels work together to project those sounds into different parts of the room. Here’s where it gets cool—Atmos also adds height to the equation. (Arc achieves this by utilizing upward-firing drivers that bounce sound off the ceiling.) This allows those projected sounds to be heard—not just along a horizontal plane—but anywhere in the entire three-dimensional space of your room. What does that mean for your listening experience? I was hoping you’d ask.

Movies with Arc: The Dolby Atmos Experience

I paired Sub and two Sonos One SL rears to Arc. I used Trueplay to tune my system again (to account for the addition of the rear speakers). I popped popcorn. And then I sat down to watch Mad Max: Fury Road. From the very first scene, it was immediately obvious to me why Atmos is the new standard in home theater sound. In the opening sequence, a flood of voices and ambient sounds swirled around me. It’s surprising and thrilling and has made me completely rethink the way I’ve used the word “immersive” in the past. Over the next two hours, I felt completely a part of what was happening in the film. The sound design of the movie is bold and vibrant—and watching it in Atmos adds so many layers to the experience. At the same time, I could hear every word of dialogue perfectly—even amidst a thunderous score and barrage of epic sound effects. As Chris Jenkins, Oscar-winning sound engineer and Sonos Soundboard member would later tell me, dialogue is the backbone of every movie. Even without Speech Enhancement turned on, Arc delivered the dialogue with detailed clarity. And then there are the quiet moments in the film—serenely beautiful scenes that offer delicate sounds and whispers. With the sonic precision of Arc, I found these scenes just as engaging as the action sequences.

But perhaps the most interesting and respectable aspect of the Atmos experience is that nothing comes across as gimmicky. While sounds do occur around you, nothing feels out of place or like a trick. You’re not suddenly pulled away from what’s happening on screen because of a random noise behind you. It all feels seamless and, ultimately, allows you to become all the more immersed in the world on your TV screen.

After watching Mad Max: Fury Road, I wanted to go deeper. Specifically, I wanted to see under the hood, but from a creator’s perspective. I also knew that the re-recording mixer for the film, Chris Jenkins, who won an Oscar for his work on Mad Max: Fury Road, is on the Sonos Soundboard. He helped tune Arc—which means that the way I experienced the movie with Arc was as he intended it to sound. I wanted to learn more.

So we met for a conversation over Zoom. The first thing I learned is that while working on the film, he would meet with the director, George Miller, and the rest of the team for six-hour sessions, during which they would discuss 15 minute chunks of the film. Fifteen minutes of film. Six hour sessions. That’s how integral sound is to the movie. Needless to say, Jenkins remembered every minute aspect of the film I threw at him.

Early in our conversation, Jenkins helped explain why listening to Dolby Atmos on Arc doesn’t feel gimmicky. “There are certain rules that you make—and sometimes break—with sound in movies,” he said. “If you move a human voice too far outside of the screen, it breaks the concentration of the listener. There are certain sounds you can place anywhere—music and nature sounds, for example. But the more specific a sound gets, the more we expect it to be heard from where it’s coming from visually.”

With Mad Max: Fury Road, he chose to break that rule in the very first scene of the film. “At the beginning of the movie, you hear all those little sounds swirling around you,” he said. “For example, the little girl’s voice whispering ‘Max,’ which then echoes over and over. On a lot of the release prints [before Dolby Atmos], you never got that attention to detail. And then all of a sudden you hear the Atmos version on Arc, and you’re like, ‘Oh, cool,’ because those sounds are not trying to compete for the same three speaker drivers. If you have all this space to put all the sounds into, your ear can say, ‘Yeah, that voice is here. And I hear that sound over there.’” He then went on to explain why he broke the rules of where voices should come from. “You can direct the listener’s ear to where you want to prioritize information for them. In the case of Mad Max, the girl’s voice is extremely important because she’s a pivotal character in Max’s life. Ultimately, you want the purest playback system to hear all those details that the filmmakers have put into it. And the opening of Mad Max is a great example to me of really being conscious of space, and of sounds not cluttering each other.”

Eventually, we got onto the subject of what it’s like for him, as a sound engineer, to be able to mix a film’s sound for Atmos. “There’s just so much space,” he said. “You can create separation between the sound design and music, while still keeping the dialogue protected. So you could have a very quiet whispering performance from an actor, but instead of lowering all of the music to make sure it’s heard, you can just create more space around the whisper. With Atmos, you can sculpt the soundtrack around different elements in a way that you couldn’t with just a left, center, right mix. It’s like racking focus, sonically.”

As our conversation wound down, Jenkins pulled back from all of the technical talk to focus on what really matters in the home theater experience. “It’s all about storytelling,” he said, “We want the shortest distance between the creator or the writer or the performer and the listener’s ear. So we cut out whatever we can from the middle, the clutter. And then, whether it’s dialogue from a 1939 movie, or the most current piece of content today, it’s still a matter of finding the most transparent form of getting that storytelling across.”

As this post goes to publish, we’re still working from home. And over the past several weeks, I’ve been listening to a lot more vinyl and rewatching movies I love—which feels really comforting. But hearing them with Arc has made revisiting favorites feel fresh and inspiring. Make sure you visit 

 to learn about all of the incredible technology that powered the experience I shared above. If you already have Arc and want to make sure you’re getting Dolby Atmos sound, check out 

*Sonos may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our affiliate partnerships.

I Got a Sonos Arc and Then Didn’t Leave My Home for Weeks. Here’s What Happened.

In celebration of global Pride, we’ve launched a new station on Sonos Radio called Full Spectrum. The limited-edition station, initiated by a group of LGBTQ+ employees at Sonos, includes songs from artists in the LGBTQ+ community, as well as music considered integral to the LGBTQ+ experience. Along with personal liner notes recorded by Sonos employees, the station features exclusive interviews by Rita Houston with beloved LGBTQ+ artists, including Brandi Carlile and Laura Jane Grace. Below we tell how the station came to fruition and why it may sound different from what you’re used to hearing during Pride season.

Our personal stories are what bond us together. Even in the workplace, it’s the human connections we create with colleagues that make it possible to get the job done. Built by sharing stories of our weekend activities, family life, and hopes for the future, these bonds reinforce trust, provide outlets for stress, and help us dig deep when it’s midnight and we’re trying to get a project over the finish line. Now imagine trying to build those relationships while hiding major aspects of your life. It’s next to impossible to really get to know someone if they can’t tell you about their struggles, the songs that make them want to get up and dance, or the person they’ve chosen to spend their life with.

While the LGBTQ+ movement has made increasing strides in the past decade, for many in the community, the workplace is still a challenging place to be their most open, authentic selves. With that in mind, a small group of employees at Sonos joined together in early 2018 to establish an employee resource group (ERG) to help the entire company work towards creating a more welcoming, supportive atmosphere for all LGBTQ+ employees.

Named Pride@Sonos (but often referred to by its shortened moniker “Pride@”) the group joined other ERGs at Sonos including Black@ and Women@. (Since then, employees have founded Latinx@, Veterans@, and more.) One of the early decisions the planning committee needed to make was whether Pride@ would only be for members of the LGBTQ+ community—in order to provide a safe space to talk about challenges the members may be having—or whether it would be open to everyone at Sonos, including allies. Ultimately, the group felt that the LGBTQ+ community has always been about being open and that the ERG should reflect that. This decision also ensured that those who were questioning their sexuality or gender identity could receive the support of the group without calling attention to themselves simply by being a member.

From the outset, the group found support from Sonos leadership. Dmitri Siegel, VP Global Brand, extended his support into an official capacity, becoming Pride@’s official executive sponsor. “I am so grateful to have the opportunity to be an ally in the Pride@ group,” he said. “As a straight white male, it’s common to feel intimidated or uncomfortable engaging on LGBTQ+ issues because you feel like you are going to say the wrong thing or be offensive in some way. Being a part of Pride@ has given me the opportunity to do my work—listen and learn. Getting over insecurity and discomfort unlocks all these amazing people and a whole aspect of the human experience that I would otherwise miss out on.”

Pride@ has continued to grow its size and impact at Sonos. Since its founding, the group has brought in presenters to increase awareness of LGBTQ+ issues, donated to local and national charities, organized employee participation in local Pride events, and hosted a LGBTQ+ youth group in Santa Barbara for a lab tour and Q&A session with Sonos employees.

As Pride@ began preparing for Pride season this year, it became increasingly clear that an in-person activation or event was unlikely. “When we started discussing ideas, we weren’t even sure that anyone would be back in the office by June,” said Shelby Branam, Pride@’s current chairperson and a software engineer at Sonos. “So we started to think, how could we do a really meaningful activation in a way that felt inclusive, even if we weren’t together in the office.”

At the same time, excitement was growing within the company for the launch of Sonos Radio. From its inception, Sonos Radio was designed as a way for Sonos to provide owners with an incredible radio experience, while at the same time, sharing more about who we are as a company. Members of Pride@ realized that doing something on Sonos Radio would enable them to support Sonos employees as well as the community at large. So they reached out to the Sonos Radio team to see what was possible.

“Now that we had this amazing platform of Sonos Radio, doing something with Pride@ felt like a perfect fit,” said Saidah Blount, producer on the Sonos Radio team and curator of Sonos Sound System. “And it started out very simply—let’s get a whole bunch of tracks together and have this be a representative station. But Pride@ is a crazy talented, cross-organizational group of people, with diverse interests outside of what they do at work. We realized that this could be an incredible discovery moment for Sonos Radio, while at the same time, tapping into the emotions of what global Pride is all about.”

A defining element of the Sonos Radio experience is hearing from artists themselves—from entire stations curated by music industry icons including Thom Yorke, Brittany Howard, and David Byrne, to Radio Hours on Sonos Sound System with Nancy Whang, JPEGMAFIA, and Phoebe Bridgers. As Pride@ began gathering song recommendations and recording stories from its members, Blount and the Sonos Radio team got to work adding the voices of artists from the LGBTQ+ community. But first, Blount wanted to find the right person to do the interviews. At the top of her list was Rita Houston, Program Director at WFUV in New York City and the host of The Whole Wide World with Rita Houston. “Rita is known within the radio community as one of the best interviewers in the business,” Blount said. “She has a rapport with artists that makes it feel more like a conversation than a promotion. Additionally, she’s been out and very vocal about being a member of the LGBTQ+ community.”

With Houston on board, the station began to fall into place. “We reached out to some of the team’s favorite LGBTQ+ artists and invited them to pick the songs that meant ‘Pride’ to them and share about their experience as a member of the community,” said Rita Houston. “They responded as enthusiastically as we could have hoped.” Throughout the three month-long global Pride season, listeners will hear from Brandi Carlile, Laura Jane Grace, and other celebrated artists in a format similar to Radio Hours on Sonos Sound System. Siegel added, “I think that the tremendous response from artists speaks to the strength of our brand and the Sonos Radio team, but mainly, I think artists responded to the authentic nature of this effort.”

But the heart of the station are the songs and stories shared by Sonos employees. Listeners can expect to hear about the full spectrum of the LGBTQ+ experience—from the hidden struggles to the triumphant highs. “You’ll hear the celebratory songs of our community, of course, but also songs about rage, confusion, hopelessness, and protest,” said Eric Bowers, member of Pride@ and an attorney on the Sonos legal team. “Whether it be a trans artist struggling to be heard, a disco song that celebrated our community, or a modern country singer expressing his support for inclusion, we have it. We wanted the station to be true to life, not a corporate approximation of our community.”

Unsurprisingly, collaboration on Full Spectrum has had a huge impact on everyone who participated. “As an ally, working on this station has been transformative for me,” said Blount. “To hear about the process of coming out and actualizing oneself is deeply moving. It’s been such a privilege to work on this station in collaboration with Pride@.”

From Bowers’s perspective, the feeling is mutual. “This has been a real partnership between the Sonos Radio team and the Pride@ ERG. The Radio team listened to all of our comments and suggestions and responded to each with compassion and understanding. Our ERG members were included as seminal participants in the creation of the station from the very beginning all the way through to the final finishing touches,” he said.

Starting today, you can listen to Full Spectrum on Sonos Radio in the app under Sonos Presents. And if you’re interested in starting your own LGBTQ+ employee resource group at your company, you can learn more 

. “I think ERGs are important because they give a platform to the needs of different communities at Sonos,” said Branam. “And when a company supports them, it’s a step above saying that it cares about its employees—it shows that it’s willing to celebrate the differences of its employees as well.” Happy Pride!

Full Spectrum on Sonos Radio: The Story Behind the Station

 brings movies, shows, and games to life with crystal clear dialogue and an immersive Dolby Atmos experience, you might expect music to have been an afterthought. Far from it. Arc’s advanced internal components ensure that the listening experience when you step away from the screen is as dynamic and engaging as when you’re in front of it. To illustrate this with our new brand campaign for Arc, Sonos’s advertising team chose a movie with a soundtrack that is an essential extension of the film itself: 

 the perfect film and soundtrack to showcase how Arc surrounds you in the story.

Music has been an integral element of movies since live orchestras used to accompany silent films at the dawn of the artform. Since then, filmmakers have continued to push the ways songs and score can further a story, deepen the emotional impact, or add intellectual subtext to what’s playing out visually on the screen. When done right, that music can serve as a vehicle to extend the experience beyond the theater and into everyday life. Great soundtracks allow the audience to infuse their lives with the feelings that movies so powerfully generate—confidence, passion, exhilaration, love, joy.

With both movie and music lovers behind the scenes at Sonos, Arc was designed to offer depth, clarity, and richness for everything you want to play. “Although Arc is a soundbar, it’s designed to be able to play back music incredibly well as part of the Sonos system,” said Chris Davies, Senior Director, Audio Engineering. “We’ve used the arrays that we’ve created for home theater to maximize the music listening experience,” he continued, referring to the array of speakers within Arc that precisely direct sound throughout the room. “The center array creates a nice center image while the left and right arrays create an incredibly wide soundstage.” The result being a soundbar that seamlessly transitions between providing brilliant sound for what you’re listening to on screen and off.

It fell to Sonos’s advertising team to communicate this in a way that was visually exciting. Luckily, Lorrin Pascoe, Sonos’s Senior Director, Global Advertising was already intimately familiar with the interdependent relationship between movies and their music. “How many times have you watched an epic movie, loved the music, and then immediately started playing the soundtrack or score on repeat?” he said. “It can work the other way too—the music can remind you of a particular scene and then you’re streaming the movie later that night. That was the story we wanted to tell with Arc.” But first, Pascoe and his team had to find the right movie for the project: a film with a soundtrack that didn’t just serve a supporting role, but stood on its own.

When director Ryan Coogler reached out to Kendrick Lamar about his in-development film, Black Panther, he reportedly only asked for a few songs. As the story goes, after Lamar saw a large portion of the movie, he was inspired to deliver a full 50-minute album. And, although the rapper is only credited on five songs, his voice can be heard on almost all of the tracks. Black Panther The Album, like most of Lamar’s lauded catalogue, is a cohesive, inspired work of art. So when Pascoe met with colleagues Jamaal Layne and 

 to license a movie and music for the spot, they quickly agreed that Black Panther was the ideal choice.

“Sonos isn’t about a single product—

. And our advertising reflects that,” Pascoe said. “While you might expect to see hardware as the hero in a spot like this, we wanted sound to be the main character.” In order to stay true to the film and the world of Black Panther, Pascoe and his team used the purple shockwaves from the film and the necklace pieces from the soundtrack’s album cover to represent the two different sources of sound. The result is a spot that visually depicts how Arc and other Sonos products immerse you in the world of your favorite movies and their music. Check it out.

Films are meant to entertain, challenge, or comfort us. And while great movies only need to do one, it’s often the films that masterfully do all three that can have the biggest impact on our lives. These are the films we revisit again and again. These are the films we want to carry with us. These are the films that earn our attention and continued exploration. With 

, you can enjoy these experiences with the brilliant sound they deserve.

Arc’s Stealth Superpower

All our products are designed to look timeless, blending into the unique style of your home. But while aesthetics may endure, technology is constantly moving forward. With this in mind, we wanted to introduce you to the new Sonos Sub and Sonos Five in the architecturally significant Elliot House. Designed by R.M. Schindler, protégé of Frank Lloyd Wright, the Los Angeles home exemplifies how to bring modern advantages to a timeless classic.

After Rudolph Schindler arrived in Los Angeles in the early 1920s—at the request of Frank Lloyd Wright, who asked him to supervise the construction of the revered architect’s celebrated Hollyhock House—Schindler and his wife quickly found themselves at the epicenter of the city’s progressive, bohemian counter culture. Emboldened by the nonconformist atmosphere, Schindler bucked the popular Spanish Colonial Revival trend when he designed his own home. Often cited as the first modernist home in America, the Schindler House was created for four adults, including the builder of the home and his wife, as well as the Schindlers. The house reflects Schindler’s unique approach to architecture, with a mix of private and communal spaces and blurred boundaries between indoor and outdoor living spaces. Schindler’s willingness to prioritize the actual living experience within his creations is beautifully evident in the home he later designed for his insurance agent, the Elliot House.

Built in 1930, the house fell prey to short-sighted updates like a prefab kitchen and the removal of a built-in wooden desk and cabinetry before current owners Cameron Silver and Jeffrey Snyder bought the home in 2001. Silver and Snyder worked with Leo Marmol and Ron Radziner to restore the historic home, intent on preserving Schindler’s unique approach to space, lighting, and atmosphere. And, like Schindler did in his time, they took full advantage of the most current construction methods and material options, like new kitchen appliances and a contemporary color palette. It’s this approach—preserving the original artistry of a design while modernizing it for the world of today—that made the Elliot House the perfect setting to introduce the new 

The most powerful Sonos speaker for music, the new Sonos Five delivers vividly clear, room-filling sound. Internal updates include increased memory and processing power while the 3.5 mm line-in port allows you to connect your turntable, CD player, or other device directly to Five and play to your entire system. Five blends into the unique aesthetics of your home with an enduring design that has been updated in all black and—for the first time—all white.

Sonos Five: The high-fidelity speaker for superior sound

You can feel and hear the difference when you connect Sub to any Sonos system. While all Sonos speakers are designed for great bass, adding Sub allows those speakers to focus more on midranges, resulting in richer sound. And, like Five, the new Sonos Sub has increased memory and processing power ensuring the best possible performance while preparing Sub for future updates. Two force-canceling drivers at the center of Sub eliminate vibration and rattle so you get powerful bass without any distortion. Its award-winning and versatile design features a slim, sculptural shape and high-gloss finish. And, you can position it to be noticed or hide it away because Sub can be placed upright or laid on its side.

Sonos Sub: The wireless subwoofer for deep bass

As the sun sets each day, it casts golden light through a west-facing window and illuminates the richly-toned wood along the kitchen wall. This is Silver and Snyder’s favorite time of day. Even after owning the home for more than 20 years, they still appreciate the thoughtful details Rudolph Schindler weaved into the house (even if the milk box has long been removed). To learn more about the new Sonos Five, 

Sub and Five: Modern Interpretations. Original Artistry.

While sound is integral to everything we do at Sonos, there has never been a specific sound associated with our brand. Until today. Coinciding with the launch of Sonos Radio, we are thrilled to reveal our new sonic branding. Composed by Philip Glass, iconic master of contemporary classical music, listeners can hear his original composition when tuning in to Sonos Radio. Here’s the story behind the sound.

In the months leading up to the launch of 

, Dmitri Siegel, Sonos VP of Global Brand, discovered that a major piece of the listening experience was missing. “We realized that Sonos didn’t really have a sonic brand identity,” said Siegel. “We’re obsessed with sound—it’s what we think about all day—and yet we didn’t have a sound that meant Sonos. When we made a dream list of who might compose that sound for us, Philip Glass was always at the top.”

Glass’s decades-long exploration of repetition and modularity made him a natural choice to build upon the Sonos name and visual identity, which are rooted in symmetry and simplicity. Luckily, he was known to have Sonos in his home and even 

, thanks to a long-standing relationship with 

Sonos’s Global Head of Music, Brian Beck

. Siegel added, “Philip Glass is the perfect fit for Sonos because of the combination of formal structure and exuberance, humanity and technical rigor in his music.”

Once Glass agreed to the project, Siegel’s brief to him was simple:

Sonos is a made-up word that means sound.

Now we need to make up a sound that means Sonos.

And, as one of the most influential American composers of the last century, he delivered. Describing the result, Glass noted, “The composition reflects two opposing ends of a spectrum: the organic and the electronic. The organic, represented by the acoustic instrumentation, speaks to the act of listening as both communal and personal. The electronic, which can be heard in the synthesized elements, is a nod to Sonos products as breakthrough technology, both in sound reproduction and connectivity.”

To learn about the sound profile of Sonos speakers, Glass worked with Giles Martin, award-winning composer, producer, and Sound Experience Leader at Sonos. “We wanted to be sure that the tone and range of the composition demonstrated the capabilities of the speakers and that the composition addressed those moments in the user experience where sound is used explicitly,” said Martin.

Things That Stuck: The Mandalorian’s Composer on the Second Season and His New Sonos Radio Station

Lunar White Move: A Conversation with Sonos's Design Director of Color, Material, Finish

I Got a Sonos Arc and Then Didn’t Leave My Home for Weeks. Here’s What Happened.

Full Spectrum on Sonos Radio: The Story Behind the Station

Arc’s Stealth Superpower

Sub and Five: Modern Interpretations. Original Artistry.

What Sound Means “Sonos”? Philip Glass Had the Answer.

Home Office Help: Using Sonos to Get Motivated, Stay Focused, and Be Productive

What We Mean by Brilliant Sound

A letter from our CEO

Secrets of Nostalgia: Simple Ways to Warm Up Your Holidays

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Full Spectrum on Sonos Radio: The Story Behind the Station