Sonos ready to open their first store featuring a giant speaker wall
After dominating the wireless, multi-room speaker market Sonos are ready to launch their very first walk-in store in New York City.
Sonos’ first ever store is ready to open to the public next week. The 3,000 square foot shop in SoHo will feature listening rooms, a speaker wall known as ‘The Wall of Sound’, and many more unique features.
The shops most noticeable feature is it’s 7 soundproof rooms where you can go in and try out the range of Sonos speakers for yourself. Each room is also supposed to represent a room in your home so you can find out which speaker suits the room you want to fill with music with simulated studies, living rooms, and kitchens.
Sonos’ vice president of global brand and executive creative director, Dmitri Siegel says: “It’s a very unusual experience. We’ve devoted almost all of the floor plan to these listening rooms. You’ll be able to go in there with whoever you come in with, and we’re going to leave you alone and let you listen to music.”
The rooms aren’t just as simple as room emulators however, Sonos have hired professional sound engineers to optimise the design of the rooms for the best sound quality. As an example of the attention to detail, some of the books in the rooms are placed with the spine facing the wall to “squeeze every last drop of potential sound quality from the rooms.”
Next up to dazzle you is Sonos’ 17 x 24 foot Wall of Sound which is pretty self-explanatory. If you can’t remember what it is from the first sentence, it’s a giant wall made up of Sonos speakers. Unfortunately only eight of the 300 speakers are active but if they all were I don’t think the soundproof rooms would be so soundproof anymore.
The spectacles don’t end there, in fact the first thing you see when you enter the store is a portrait of legendary producer Rick Rubin. There’s also a collection of mixtapes by Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth presented on a canvas of cassettes and to top it all off a bronze turntable.
The whole store is filled with interesting and unique sights and sounds. But it’s not just there for display, like Samsung’s recently opened “technology playground” just down the road. Sonos’ store will actually allow you to browse and purchase any of Sonos’ current models.
The store opens up next week on July 19th, so if you’re in Manhattan’s SoHo after then you should go in for a listening experience.