Sonos TruePlay automatically tunes speakers for the room they’re in

New software from Sonos, announced alongside its new speaker today, automatically optimizes your speakers’ EQ for the room it’s sitting in.

Called TruePlay, the software uses your iPhone or iPad’s microphone to gauge the size and acoustics of your room, then uses that data to configure the speakers for the best sound.

You should only need to set up with TruePlay once per room. When you update, you’ll see an option to run tuning, which is optional.

In tuning mode, your Sonos emits an inaudible sound while you walk around the room slowly moving your device up and down to give it a sense of the space it’s in. That data is automatically processed and gives you an even better sound.

When I tried it during a visit to Sonos’ demonstration home in Amsterdam, it felt dorky to wave my iPhone around and get it set up, but the result was impressive — the speaker sounded well-tuned for the room after the setup and muffled beforehand.

The effect is particularly pronounced for speakers sitting in weird spots, like a corner under the roof.

Amusingly, Sonos told me that during the development and private beta testing it found that the initial tone used for tuning could be heard by dogs — so was changed for the release.

Trueplay will only work with iPhone and iPad devices and isn’t expected to come to Android anytime soon, as Sonos found that device microphones on the platform varied too much to be reliable.

TruePlay will be available as part of a system update for Play:1, Play:3 and Play:5 owners later this year.