An interesting note that I cut from the video for time, but still worth sharing: The Play:1 doesn't support AirPlay, but Symfonisk does. If they share the same internal components, why is this? It all comes down to that FCC filing for the Play:1 -- the PowerPC CPU originally used isn't powerful enough, but the ARM chip that Sonos switched to is dramatically faster. Sonos *could* technically offer a firmware update for newer Play:1 models to add AirPlay support, but likely won't as it would confuse owners of older, PPC-based Play:1s ("why does my speaker not get the update, but other people's do?"). I'd love to see someone with embedded systems experience figure out how to dump the contents of Syfonisk's boot media and write it to a Play:1, preferably over the network (partially because I really want AirPlay on the Play:1 I bought to tear down for this episode).
T00LF00L the Play:1 (no airplay) and the Play One (airplay + alexa) are not the se product. It wasn't clear which This Does Not Compute has frrom the video, but the FCC filing he showed was for the Play:1
Channels like these are performing a real service. Keeping the Big Co's transparent and the public informed one teardown at a time. ;) Thank you for all your hard work!
@@GlacialLake I agree, review was amazing, title not. There is nothing secretly bad about this as the title suggests. @mob1235 I don't think they are that bad. Don't get me wrong, of course there exist better ones but the design seems to be of good (build) quality (Except those CapXon caps). The audio quality won't be the best, but decent enough for the average consumer. The only thing I can't understand is why people in General want those mono "intelligent" speakers at home. Even a rather cheap stereo/5.1 system sounds a lot better if set up correctly in the room.
It's presented well but riddled with technical errors and incorrect assumptions. The conclusions are completely wrong. Enjoy the pictures, ignore the commentary.
One of the best tech strip downs that I have watched in a long time. You know your stuff, and you are excellent at bringing it down to the level of the average joe, who just wants to know whether it's the ticket or if it's a dud. Keep up the good work.
Wadding will generally reduce bass level but increase extension while smoothing midrange response. However, it's unlikely that the amount in the non-Sonos speaker was enough to affect sound, especially not for the target audience
Yeah. Also easily explains the price drop. When one is buying on the Ikea scale for their global store network, one gets to tend bulk discounts even Sonos sized company never could dream off. Sonos was big in USA with retail deals.... Ikea is big Everywhere. It brings whole different scale. Plus Sonos previously mostly sold to audio interested people ordering online or specifically going to electronics/audio stores..... The Symphonisks..... next to the lamps in Ikea on the corridor everyone has to walk past to get to check out. Ikea masters of the "you are in our buying maze and don't walk out without something in shopping cart." Plus well Ikea is privately owned and plays the long game. So they can run smaller but still decent margin, since there is no investors and shareholder to please with high margins to keep the stock price high. While paying royalties etc. to Sonos.... Who do have to keep the stock market happy and the speakers where their only business, so those must have pretty healthy margins. The Kamprad family has been wealthy beyond their ability to spend all that money due to Ikea for decades.... So they have no need to start suddenly trying to make a quick big buck. As long as the Ikea corp stays healthily profitable overall, the Kamprad don't care. These private family companies operate in completely different mindset compared to public stock companies. Kamprads and Ikea, Meyers of Meyer Werft so on and so on. They play the long game. The now past Ingvar Kamprad was also known to live very frugally and be cost conscious. So not only they had money beyond to spend, they spend pretty much none of it. Don't know if the tune has changed since Ingvar passed. Probably not, if he raised his children to same frugality mentality.
@@aritakalo8011 and there is one other thing.. Symfonisk is cheap, but you will never see this thing in sale.. Ikea can push their price more aggressiv because they always know their profit
@@germedia4369 depends on your Ikea. Here there is an "As-is" section where they sell customer returns and I've seen these speakers like-new and heavily discounted.
@@mamba109 That has to do with warranty, IKEA cannot repackage and sell as new once opened. Most of them are only opened boxes and in brand new condition too!
I would imagine this is becoming more common for manufacturers to share components rather than each design and manufacture from scratch.... it's been a common practice in automotive for some years now. Thanks for the video, always interesting to see what's inside.
Anyone remember Quadrasonic Systems ? They were hot during the seventies, they even had Quadrasonic vinyl albums. It was like a double stereo system and required 4 speakers, ah the good old days !
Using those designed-to-fail CapXon capacitors is actually quite interesting seeing that in IKEA's home Scandinavian market we have a minimum 5-year warranty on all non-moving electronics parts, i.e. we have a Supreme Court ruling in Norway stating that a TV remote control has to last at least that long, unless it is the buttons that fail, in which case normal 2-3 year warranties apply. I've just verified that Symfonisk is in fact available in my local Oslo IKEA stores, so this means that they are most likely just taking a chance, since I don't believe it would make sense to have a different version here.
Thank on the insight, didn't know this so It sure seem is a gamble but then again on the other side we have plenty of idiots in the world who will buy this and either forget and lose the papers when they bought it or don't even care just buy another garbage in a row ... Think the people who will file for warranty will be a minimal number of people for whom the replacement or striking another deal or credit in shop will be a easier way out and overall not that much of a big problem anyway. Pay us X amount of money and you will get a new ''better'' model. The customer gets another device and they still made some money on it even with a discount. Since these are dirt cheap to produce anyway. They make money on these no matter what.
Even more surprising is the fact that they didn't use MDF for the enclosure, given it's literally what they do best. I have the feeling that IKEA only gave a price point to SONOS and that was it. It's a bit disappointing, as IKEA has all the power and process to sell a much higher quality speaker system at sensible prices.
I actually have two of these and tried putting them in an "ideal listening position" for stereo. The sound stage was quite impressive! Stereo separation and immersiveness were amazing for 100$ speakers that don't have audiophile aspirations. If you do have an apartment, do not hesitate to give tyem a try. You might end up amazed. I am trying to save for buying a Sonos Arc for that atmos. Coupled with the Symfonisks I believe I would get a pretty nice cinematic experience in my small 17^2 meters (180ft) living room. Give the Symfonisks a try, they are beefier than they look 😂
Totally agree with what you say, and what you have in mind, mean by it... I also gave it a try. Firstly out of curiousity and practicality. As its purpose makes it a sensible choice to use it in a layout most common in appartments of 30-55m2. I added a second unit to try the pair of them and so on. I realy did not expect the result and I simply cannot being amazed enough!
1st of all this doesn't cost 100$ 2nd of all for two you will need almost 300 Euros. For that money I can buy a proper stereo sound system with speakers included that have much more functions and life in it then this garbage ... Even if this would cost 100$ for two is too much money for what it is.
I forgot to thank you. Thanks to you now I have 5.1 with Sonos. I was putting off buying 2 back channel speakers but with this bargain, they were perfect.
As always I really enjoy this teardowns, even if are products that I probably never going to buy it. The research on every chip, every component to really understand how everything works is very interesting and the production is very good, that's why I take a moment this time to leave a comment, thank you and keep with the good work.
Usually companies like these are not holding the pieces of a device in their warehouses. They are manufactured to order, so the GGEC, which is known in audio manufacturing world, produces the parts, orders some parts from third tier suppliers and assembles it all for Sonos or other brand, according to their specs and design. Unless Sonos chose to go with pre-designed audio stacking, and relies more on software to tune the sound to their signature. That would explain the similarities. It's perfectly normal in industry to rely on readymade ( so called off-the-shelf) solutions that are tested and provide good enough quality.
I work at Ikea and I can tell you that these speakers and those in the shape of a lamp are intended to output mono sound when there is only one, which makes sense but there is a function that allows you to connect two together and at this time the sound will go to stereo and not dual mono.
I added these to my Sonos Beam Gen 1 to add surrounds in the master bedroom. Sound soooo much better and I can watch TV at a lower volume AND have a fuller/richer sound.
not having AUX input in the lamp shade speakers is such a missed opportunity. I would have loved to use them as "dumb" speakers on either side of the couch in my 7.1.2 Atmos setup
Would love it if you could tear down the Gen 2 version of the Symfonisk Bookshelf and comment on the quality of the parts as compared to those in the Gen 1 version. Thanks!
Great review, I had a chance to listen to them at the store and they sound great. Reason I didn't but them was Sonos uses a closed system where everything runs thru WiFi and their app only. There is no bluetooth nor optical inputs to connect to a TV.
Jose C so I bought two the other day. One in my room and one in the living room. Connects to my google home and can be used with it as well. Now the no connection to tv made me question, but the quality of music to me is just what I wanted while I’m starting my smart home
Such a waste that anyone would build things without a line in. Maybe its so they can see their $700 line in adapter. What a joke although seems to have heaps of 5 star reviews from people with more dollars than sense
Bill of materials + China labor + factory manager + supply chain + design royalties (pay Sonos?) + shipping + IKEA store overhead... and then to stay in business, your margins need to be like 4x the cost of manufacture. As the narrator to this video says, this speaker probably has an unusually low margin in the hopes that customers buy accessories and other IKEA products. Almost a “doorbuster” product.
Great job on the teardown -you do a fine job identifying all the hardware, it's origin, and the implications on performance and quality. You seem to be a little fuzzy on branding, pricing, and other BS -like you never worked at a company that makes these things. The short explanation for all your questions is that engineers DON'T run these companies. For every value proposition they create there is pile of business and marketing executives that justify their high salaries by raising price, changing names, cutting cost, and generally making customers pay as much as possible for as little as possible. Ikea is a major "channel" and brand -thus negotiate a lower price for essentially the same product. Sonos obviously could charge less for it's speaker, but will not because that would "dilute the brand". Still don't see the logic? Well, that's why you (and the 99%) don't make the big bucks executives do! Here is the only logic there is -a bunch of executives at Sonos will justify being paid more by doing this deal with Ikea. They "expanded the ecosystem" while not "diluting the brand" they "raised margins" and "increased tax efficiency". WTF does that mean? The production of the ikea speaker is invisible to Sonos's financial reporting. Only "licensing" payments will be paid by Ikea to the "intellectual property holder" of Sonos in an offshore tax haven. The brilliant management of Sonos has eliminated all payments to anyone that designed, built delivered or protected the world in which this good could be delivered and made it into a refined pure profit that they can use to justify payment to... THEMSELVES! But if Ikea is selling the same speaker for 50% less, won't the expensive Sonos speakers lose sales? YES! and that "share loss" will be used to justify cutting the pay or limiting the pay of engineers, and all the producers of Sonos speakers! Another win for brilliant management!
The price of this speaker does NOT AT ALL warrant low quality caps. Its only a decision against the consumer to produce a limited lifetime product. Nobody should ever use cheap caps.
nutzeeer Of cause there are products that use cheap caps just to keep the price down. But what most people miss is these two points: - The original bad caps plague was some factories using a bad electrolyte mix that died much earlier than planned. This was fixed many years ago and you'll have to search old stock on eBay etc. to find new caps with this problem. - Every big brand offers cap models with different planned lifetime. The current "short lifetime Panasonic" probably dies before the current "long lifetime CapXon", though I haven't any hard data.
@@johnfrancisdoe1563 - well said. Personally, I consider CapXon is about the right quality level for what is, basically, a shitty cheap Ikea product. It's absolutely ridiculous to expect Nichicon, Panasonic or any other "name brand" caps in a GENERIC brand appliance.
Cap brand choices aside - the price difference between a cheap cap and its better variant in relation to the product´s price is more or less negligible, in a device like that it´s most likely less than a dollar.Many manufacturers use 85C caps in consumer products, these caps often start to fail after 2 or 3 years, conveniently not too long after the warranty runs out (planned obsolescence). The 105C variant runs much longer (if it fails at all within the reasonable maximum usage time), as its max temperature rating offers a much larger margin to the usual operating temperatures (around 40 to 60° celsius).The price difference between the temp rating is somewhere around 10%. The speaker´s equipped with 105s, so even with the cheaper brand caps, it´s reasonable to expect them to last about as long as top brand 85s.
Physical obsolescence isn't even needed with this type of device, it's enough to have one of the next generations of "smart" phones to just not support the standards those operate on anymore. It's an opportunity for us DIYers to hack an analog input (with op-amp line lvl crossovers) into them though, or even turn them into passive speakers altogether, which run with any small amplifier or trusty receiver (from the 80s that still works perfectly of course :) ...) The drivers themselves look pretty good actually.
I've never seen a more detailed tear down of an electronic product until this video, subscribing 👍. By the way this video popped up on my recommended videos 😅, I guess because I'm subscribed to LGR.
The only things sonos have stopped Supporting are their Controllers that were getting useless and dying anyway. All speakers and connects /ZP units are still supported
@@hillie47 Hi. Can you please tell me about some cheaper alternative? I'm looking for some cheap multi-room wifi audio system and I was not able to find anything cheaper then sonos one. Thanks a lot.
@@JurajMarkoSK for the connected stuff the Sonos play one is probably the cheapest option, but there are some budget not connected speakers you could use. Sonos is premium in the sense that prices go up rapidly from the play one. And to be honest $150 is a lot of money for a simple box with a cheap little amp and speaker. But that seems to be the starting price. Too high is you ask me.
While stereo mixes have less separation and panning, 5.1 surround mixes have extreme ch. assignments w/ all dialog on center ch., sometimes little or no LFE sub, not much action in the rears. Sounds better when dialog is panned for location & supplimented on other ch.
Wow. Nobody seems to know about the absolute ;-) . They sound awesome I have the zeros too. Just so you know if you ever blow the tweeters the mission m71 m72 m73 tweeters are the same ferrofluid ones you just have to separate the plastic bit at front. Extreme feedback blew one of mine it was so loud it gave me an instant headache. Great speakers I run mine of an old Sony fe440 was running of QSC ex1250 when blew tweeter.
Alex Tirrell I remember my TinyPC had a 833mhz pentium 3 or something and 128mb of ram. This has a dual core cpu with the main processor running 1GHz and has double the ram! I know it’s not comparable to a slower x86 cpu, but the numbers make for funny comparison.
Thanks for the great video, finally someone who really shows what the electronics are really capable of. I am a bit disappointed this does not have any direct audio output so that I could use it also as a speaker for laptop, phone, tv or whatever. That's why I am not going to buy this - it has quite limited usage.
My guess is that they used the same board from the sonos play 1, since it was already being manufactured and didn't cost any startup costs on sonos' part, and the drivers on the smaller eneby matched perfectly with the sonos boards capabilities.
Most audio in this world is Mono. Live Concerts, bluetooth speakers, Auditoriums, Grocery Stores, DMX streaming audio, bluetooth speakers. You know this, being an audio technician. Most professional audio is mixed in mono and then has stereo effects to give it depth and other reasons to work best in multiple environments. It would be cool if you could link 2 of them and have a stereo image.
Years ago I went to see friend in the US . And was blown away with the Bose system.. But wrestling with non discreet wiring.everywhere. Big spaces complete challenges. That's why I went to video peresentation.. Far easier but some complete geniuses in audio presentation. My Bose 101s have served me well for 30 years
For years we got crappy stereo rather than one good mono speaker and expensive stereo systems with speakers set less than two or one feet apart. Calling it mono is often more realistic.
@@adamslawson I'm not sure where you got this idea. Quite the opposite is true, multi-channel 3D surround is taking over. See Dolby Atmos for home. See L'Acoustics for live concert. You are right about announcements in auditoriums and PA in a Grocery store, but not the others. What is DMX streaming audio? (DMX is a lighting control protocol) Zero live concerts are presented in mono.
So the SYMFONISK has airplay 2 support, but the play:1 doesn’t. Given that we have seen the hardware is the same, I wonder if you can hack the SYMFONISK firmware onto the play:1 in order to get support.
Gerrit Yes you could use the willem to read the winbond then just clone it. Those ic's have been used for many many years now the most common use was bios on computer mother boards, now they are in everything car ecu's, cable boxes, roku boxes, Xbox's. I'm surprised they use the tsop version rather than the more modern solder ball mounted package. lol it's a hackers first port of call, many examples exist for instance the first Xbox exploit.
Tom Skarabis Only one real way to find out .. From this video I was under the impression the main pcb was practically the same, if thats the case they probably just left some components off the cheaper version. I don't own either of these speaker units can't say as I ever would. Was just passing on some hobbyist suggestions.
Tom Skarabis Ikea speaker is beigng compared to a Play:1 not a One (there is no such thing as a Play One) The new Sonos One SL is the replacement for the Play:1 and probably shares most components with the Sonos One, while the SYMPHONISK seems to share all the electronics from the Play:1
But the whole point of Sonos speakers and their app is that you can pair up multiple for stereo or up to 4.1 surround. So, you would ideally buy two of these, kinda like buying two active speakers with a wireless system and software that can play them in sync (stereo, surround, or multi-room mono).
@Mr Brightside But Ponk 80 was commenting on a video (the Original original post, if you will) about a series of speakers meant to be part of a modular system? Again, you can buy individual bookshelf speakers (think Polk, Pioneer, Sony, Yamaha, etc) as parts to build up a system, and this Symphonisk is the same idea except wireless. Could I buy just one Klipsch speaker, instead of connecting it as a piece of a system? Sure, but that doesn't mean consumers as a whole are going all mono.
Mr Brightside • I’m not missing what Ponk 80 said. He has the perception that modern speaker systems are mono (implying that Mono is in the majority), and asked “what’s the deal,” as in why is this happening. And to expand some more on my reply to him: A.) Some mono-only speakers exist, but I don’t think they’re taking over the market. While there are a few speakers designed for mono audio use out there (B&O, Tivoli radios, and other tiny Bluetooth speakers that might as well be mono), Stereo Hi-Fi is alive and well, and my perception (especially after having just returned from RMAF) is that there are more models and brands that are truly Stereo rather than Mono. B.) In fact, this wireless IKEA speaker is sold individually, but like all Sonos products it is a modular part that can be used alone (mono) or paired up as part of a multi-channel system if you buy two or more. C.) If you’re going to point to Ponk 80’s post, then I also am going to point out he didn’t specify wireless speakers. But even then, I’ll point out that the Sonos, Bose Soundlink, Apple HomePod, Beats Pill+, Ultimate Ears Megaboom and Wonderboom, Creative Labs, Devialet Phantom, and many more wireless speakers are modular parts of speaker systems designed to be used in mono or multichannel systems, so you can add or remove speakers as desired (or able to afford). If you haven’t heard of these speaker systems at all pricepoints, I’d recommend looking them up. I believe you have your own RUclips channel (usually how-to’s) which I have enjoyed in the past, maybe you could research a video on how to DIY a modular speaker system?
@Mr Brightside My apologies, the RUclips channel I was thinking about is just "Bright Side," and they make "did you know?" videos with the mission to help people (like this one about the signs you're not drinking enough water: ruclips.net/video/WIAWUW1R9_Y/видео.html). I didn't mean to bring a combative tone, but rather offer some theories that might expand on perception. I do indeed see many mono-audio devices on the market (and listed quite a few before), generally designed as entry-level products to get people started with audio at a low price. Logically, they would sell well too, and not everyone values audio enough to upgrade or just buy better gear in the first place. However, Stereo "Hi-Fi" and surround is definitely not going away, in fact I think the WHOLE market (including mono and multi-speakers) is growing! If I can include headphones as stereo devices, more people individually experience stereo sound than ever before, the cost of better systems is becoming more affordable all the time, and I think it's really cool that a product like this Symfonisk exists at an a fairly affordable price range, and a person can buy one and add to it later to make it stereo (or more). I might not be able to afford buying my mom a pair of ELAC Debut speakers and an amp (though those are still a great value), but maybe I could buy her a Symfonisk for her birthday, and then next year another one. Anyway, read this reply or not, I hope your weekend was a good one for you.
After a couple years when they do die, take it apart to check the capacitor values, order higher quality replacement capacitors with correct capacitance values and same or higher voltage rating from digikey, than bust out the soldering station and replace them.
Ageve Nisse floor sweepings... those types of capacitors are generally the first thing that blows in any expensive electronics circuit including computer motherboards. I’ve been able to replace some but without Radio Shack being down the street anymore it’s harder to find the parts. There is a Mouser out in El Cajon somewhere I think they have mail order too.
Great tear down. Highly technical. Way over my head. I was waiting for a “don’t buy this because it’s crap” (I’m a simple man) recommendation but it never came. I get the feeling it’s crap (and SONOS as well?) but am left scratching my head 🤔.
I was hoping same but you're right. This video is a bit too technical for the general public. Having said that, I have a Sono AMP and it is good. Not surround sound but very powerful.
Great video... Thank you. Have you considered doing a Play5 Gen1 tear down to explore possibility of using Symfonisk components to hack Play5 Gen1 obsoletion? Similar to Symfonisk hacks to drive passive speaker and/or adding powered sub to Sonos ecosystem? The Sonos user community would go nuts for this.
I think what happened was that the speaker portion comes from whoever did Eneby, while the circuit board comes from Sonos. Sonos may have tweaked the DSP a bit to optimize the sound quality of the speakers used. And finally, the enclosure is IKEA.
Polyfill "batting" isn't for bass response, it's to slow down the rear wave of the driver making it behave is if it was in a larger enclosure. With a tiny 3" driver it more than likely isn't needed since that driver won't have very much xmax.
The woofer is clearly different and the materials on the play1 are better. Other than that the costumers experience on the web are all saying that the sound is not the same of the play1, very similar but not the same
Also looks like the Play: 1 has just been discontinued and replaced by a Play One without speech recognition. So a definite win to keep using the now retired product as an entry point to Sonos.
Sonos One. They are not Sonos Play One, the “Play” and “Connect” monicker’s are going/gone. Once they make a new Play:5, Playbar and Playbase nothing will be left with either Play or Connect.
My guess on the lack of batting is that the back volume of symfonisk is large enough to reach their desired enclosure resonance without it. There's a limit to how much bass response you can squeeze out of a small loudspeaker.
@@westelaudio943 It does both. Batting decreases the effective sound speed in the enclosure (isothermal vs adiabatic sound speed), thus increasing the effective volume and the lowering the bass cutoff. It also increases losses in the enclosure, reducing the Q of any standing waves, like you say. Both of these effects exist and are measurable, and an engineer designing the enclosure ought to be taking both into account when deciding if they want batting or not.
@@TheRationalPi True, however, it also absorbs the system resonance at the tuning frequency. That's why in a ported design you only put a thin damping material near the walls, so only the shorter wavelengths are absorbed, and in a ported subwoofer you rarely find any of it because the midrange frequencies are already LPF'd out to the degree of being negligible. This midbass enclosure would have greatly benefitted from it though.
damping material in a vented enclosure does NOT improve the bass, in fact it makes the transient response worse, in a vented enclosure damping mops-up some of the internal back wave energy re-radiating & frequency modulating or acoustically feeding through the cone. In a sealed enclosure damping would increase the apparent volume ( thus improves the bass ) as well as dampen back-wave energy. A lot of engineering @ this price but DOUGH those cheap ass capacitors :-(
@@BogdanWeiss I thought damping material was in there to get rid of standing waves caused by the acoustic room inside the speaker ? So to make sure you can`t hear the speaker itself as such.
After a few hours of google searching ive found the Sub... Its a: 3inch 84mm woofer, bass mid speaker 6ohm, 15W. Built in mid range woofer. Size： Outer diameter 83mm Diagonal screw hole 90mm Height 55mm . Couldnt find any information in the tweeter, sorry
Will stick with my old Mission speakers, connected to an old amp. Everything connected via analogue stereo RCA leads, thanks very much. The Ikea speaker looks very good though, as an item to have in the kitchen or garden.
If you REALLY want to make a statement, check out Harman Kardon's ALL GLASS 2.1 system! It has 4 drivers in each satellite with the sub and electronics in a center piece, ALL visible thru the glass! Mind blowing!!
Excellent level of quick, informative detail to your tear-downs. I’ve always passed up your videos because most of them seem to be on silly consumer “toy” gadgets (which is still in opinion). However, I am quite pleased by your clean & informative approach to your videos & will be very open to viewing them in the future. Perhaps maybe even a subscribe...? Also, big up for the GGEC mention! Details like that go a long way for those whom need to know. Cheers
2019, when 256MB of RAM is referred to as 'not a lot' in the context of a speaker... I'm glad that costs are so low that such decisions can be made, but this still sets me off as being incredibly wasteful.
@Gonçalo Amaro that has been the case for a loooong time. Back in the day, peripherals were often as powerful as the host machines they were attached to.
The NXP requires DDR3 RAM, on mouser a single chip for 1Gbit (128MB) is like $7.65 (NZD), and a 2Gbit (256MB) chip is $8.05, there's also questions of what is compatible based on pins etc, with the NXP. Nothing smaller from Micron, and the smaller chips from ISSI are more expensive.
PCs used to be able to run a multitasking OS with a GUI *and* business applications with 1 MB of RAM (or even less). Generally speaking, nowhere near that much RAM is required to implement all of the necessary functions for this speaker, although a lot of unnecessary things may be taking up most of the otherwise luxurious 256 MB of RAM it has. Even today, people are doing cool things with microcontrollers that only have 2 *KB* (that's KB!) of RAM on board (e.g. Atmel ATmega328P on the Arduino), though, so not everyone is being so wasteful.
@@microcolonel True, albeit back in the day it was barely enough power to get the job done, whereas today it is way more power than is strictly necessary. They're just doing what's easy and still cost-effective due to technological advances. The two situations end up seeming similar at face value, but underneath they are quite different. While more is expected of peripherals these days (e.g. networking), processing power and memory have far outpaced this--the only thing that has kept pace is bloat. :)
Another question is if there is any difference in sound quality to Wilson Audio Alexx? www.stereophile.com/content/wilson-audio-specialties-alexx-loudspeaker
Since they use 2 different sized enclosures, there should be some difference in sound. Heres the truth though, it has a little shit tweeter and a little shit sub, they're not going to sound great.
Yet another speaker analysis video, those speaker products are interesting, but in my current living conditions, using non headphone audio is not possible except when my family watches youtube on the TV.
well, dump the bootrom, rewrite large sections of the os and the gpu driver, implement an user interface and install the gpu driver and you should be good to go... some of those steps might take a couple of hours though and aren't as straightforward...
lol that GuaGuang part reminded me of those old BASF commercials... "BASF, we don't make the products you use. We make them better". :D Well, except GGEC actually does make the products. Or at least parts of them.
As I recall, you criticized the IKEA speaker in your original review for having sound-quality issues... does the Play then also suffer the same? I'm wondering if the price difference is mitigated in any way by a difference in audio output/quality...?
@@guguru Is this based on your own a/b testing of both devices? Or someone elses? (please link me up if so) The internals are identical, apparently, with obvious housing differences and perhaps/likely firmware as well.
@@guguru Not necessarily true Julian, because the electronics in both are IDENTICAL! At 10:10 he puts the 2 PCB’s side by side....and the are exactly the same, with exactly the same components - I paused the video and took a forensic look.
I don't know what is the price point of these speaker nor how bad or okay they sound. I'm a demanding guy regarding audio stuff. I love hi fi equipment. I'm not the kind who would spend 50,000$ in a system (if I had the money) but for me, you can have a very decent system for a few thousands. That said, that only concerns myself. A majority of people like to "hear" music on Sundays while preparing the dinner and talking to the family and that's what Ikea speakers are aiming at. Nothing more, nothing less. I respect that. I respect also the people for whom music isn't a necessity.
Interesting. Remember that play 1 is a sealed product for bathroom and kitchen and partly outdoors as well. What about the high tone drivers? Also Sonos now has the Sonos one and therefore play one is old tech
Good tear down and analysis. The tape around the front panel is not primarily for sealing, it is for preventing rattles. Sealing is a secondary issue. Your missing the point there is a giant air vented port at the bottom of the front panel. You mention your self how all the wiring is foam taped and hotmelt held down. Again anti rattle techniques. We used to do this at the Australian Magnavox Speaker factory.
An interesting note that I cut from the video for time, but still worth sharing: The Play:1 doesn't support AirPlay, but Symfonisk does. If they share the same internal components, why is this? It all comes down to that FCC filing for the Play:1 -- the PowerPC CPU originally used isn't powerful enough, but the ARM chip that Sonos switched to is dramatically faster. Sonos *could* technically offer a firmware update for newer Play:1 models to add AirPlay support, but likely won't as it would confuse owners of older, PPC-based Play:1s ("why does my speaker not get the update, but other people's do?"). I'd love to see someone with embedded systems experience figure out how to dump the contents of Syfonisk's boot media and write it to a Play:1, preferably over the network (partially because I really want AirPlay on the Play:1 I bought to tear down for this episode).
This Does Not Compute Poly Fill is used in an enclosure when the woofer is in an enclosure that isn't large enough.
The new Play One does support AirPlay
are you sure it's connected via pcie and not usb?
Great video 👍
T00LF00L the Play:1 (no airplay) and the Play One (airplay + alexa) are not the se product. It wasn't clear which This Does Not Compute has frrom the video, but the FCC filing he showed was for the Play:1
I work for an Ikea CDC and they gave all the employees a symfonisk speaker for Christmas. I love it.
Channels like these are performing a real service.
Keeping the Big Co's transparent and the public informed one teardown at a time. ;)
Thank you for all your hard work!
real service? or just entertainment?
what items you have opened, all gear in house?
@@lucasrem
He wants him to cover vibrators next. 👍
"Keeping companies transparent" .. Wow... That's what you got from this you WOKE toolbag?
Another reason why soon almost everything will be glued shut and it will have the worst parts possible.
Such a high quality video and teardown
for such low quality speakers
with such a clickbait title.
@@GlacialLake I agree, review was amazing, title not. There is nothing secretly bad about this as the title suggests.
@mob1235 I don't think they are that bad. Don't get me wrong, of course there exist better ones but the design seems to be of good (build) quality (Except those CapXon caps). The audio quality won't be the best, but decent enough for the average consumer.
The only thing I can't understand is why people in General want those mono "intelligent" speakers at home. Even a rather cheap stereo/5.1 system sounds a lot better if set up correctly in the room.
It's presented well but riddled with technical errors and incorrect assumptions. The conclusions are completely wrong. Enjoy the pictures, ignore the commentary.
Beware. Outside beautiful. Inside rotten
One of the best tech strip downs that I have watched in a long time. You know your stuff, and you are excellent at bringing it down to the level of the average joe, who just wants to know whether it's the ticket or if it's a dud. Keep up the good work.
I wish every product review was like this
Me too !!!
I’m really like the lamp/speaker idea, especially for people who don’t have lots of space for conventional speakers. Great video
Wadding will generally reduce bass level but increase extension while smoothing midrange response. However, it's unlikely that the amount in the non-Sonos speaker was enough to affect sound, especially not for the target audience
Ikea sales volumes and distribution is something sonos would have never achieved alone
Yeah. Also easily explains the price drop. When one is buying on the Ikea scale for their global store network, one gets to tend bulk discounts even Sonos sized company never could dream off.
Sonos was big in USA with retail deals.... Ikea is big Everywhere. It brings whole different scale. Plus Sonos previously mostly sold to audio interested people ordering online or specifically going to electronics/audio stores..... The Symphonisks..... next to the lamps in Ikea on the corridor everyone has to walk past to get to check out. Ikea masters of the "you are in our buying maze and don't walk out without something in shopping cart."
Plus well Ikea is privately owned and plays the long game. So they can run smaller but still decent margin, since there is no investors and shareholder to please with high margins to keep the stock price high. While paying royalties etc. to Sonos.... Who do have to keep the stock market happy and the speakers where their only business, so those must have pretty healthy margins.
The Kamprad family has been wealthy beyond their ability to spend all that money due to Ikea for decades.... So they have no need to start suddenly trying to make a quick big buck. As long as the Ikea corp stays healthily profitable overall, the Kamprad don't care. These private family companies operate in completely different mindset compared to public stock companies. Kamprads and Ikea, Meyers of Meyer Werft so on and so on. They play the long game. The now past Ingvar Kamprad was also known to live very frugally and be cost conscious. So not only they had money beyond to spend, they spend pretty much none of it. Don't know if the tune has changed since Ingvar passed. Probably not, if he raised his children to same frugality mentality.
@@aritakalo8011 and there is one other thing.. Symfonisk is cheap, but you will never see this thing in sale.. Ikea can push their price more aggressiv because they always know their profit
@@germedia4369 depends on your Ikea. Here there is an "As-is" section where they sell customer returns and I've seen these speakers like-new and heavily discounted.
@@mamba109 That has to do with warranty, IKEA cannot repackage and sell as new once opened. Most of them are only opened boxes and in brand new condition too!
I would imagine this is becoming more common for manufacturers to share components rather than each design and manufacture from scratch.... it's been a common practice in automotive for some years now.
Thanks for the video, always interesting to see what's inside.
Anyone remember Quadrasonic Systems ? They were hot during the seventies, they even had Quadrasonic vinyl albums. It was like a double stereo system and required 4 speakers, ah the good old days !
Bigger magnets than I thought.. That's a pluss👍
The damping material don't help with bass response but helps to remove resonance in the box👍
Using those designed-to-fail CapXon capacitors is actually quite interesting seeing that in IKEA's home Scandinavian market we have a minimum 5-year warranty on all non-moving electronics parts, i.e. we have a Supreme Court ruling in Norway stating that a TV remote control has to last at least that long, unless it is the buttons that fail, in which case normal 2-3 year warranties apply.
I've just verified that Symfonisk is in fact available in my local Oslo IKEA stores, so this means that they are most likely just taking a chance, since I don't believe it would make sense to have a different version here.
Thank on the insight, didn't know this so It sure seem is a gamble but then again on the other side we have plenty of idiots in the world who will buy this and either forget and lose the papers when they bought it or don't even care just buy another garbage in a row ... Think the people who will file for warranty will be a minimal number of people for whom the replacement or striking another deal or credit in shop will be a easier way out and overall not that much of a big problem anyway.
Pay us X amount of money and you will get a new ''better'' model. The customer gets another device and they still made some money on it even with a discount. Since these are dirt cheap to produce anyway. They make money on these no matter what.
Even more surprising is the fact that they didn't use MDF for the enclosure, given it's literally what they do best. I have the feeling that IKEA only gave a price point to SONOS and that was it. It's a bit disappointing, as IKEA has all the power and process to sell a much higher quality speaker system at sensible prices.
Probably the best review and teardown of the Symfonisk (ahem Sonos) (AHEM GGEC) on RUclips. Nicely done.
I actually have two of these and tried putting them in an "ideal listening position" for stereo. The sound stage was quite impressive! Stereo separation and immersiveness were amazing for 100$ speakers that don't have audiophile aspirations.
If you do have an apartment, do not hesitate to give tyem a try. You might end up amazed.
I am trying to save for buying a Sonos Arc for that atmos. Coupled with the Symfonisks I believe I would get a pretty nice cinematic experience in my small 17^2 meters (180ft) living room.
Give the Symfonisks a try, they are beefier than they look 😂
Totally agree with what you say, and what you have in mind, mean by it...
I also gave it a try. Firstly out of curiousity and practicality. As its purpose makes it a sensible choice to use it in a layout most common in appartments of 30-55m2.
I added a second unit to try the pair of them and so on.
I realy did not expect the result and I simply cannot being amazed enough!
1st of all this doesn't cost 100$ 2nd of all for two you will need almost 300 Euros. For that money I can buy a proper stereo sound system with speakers included that have much more functions and life in it then this garbage ... Even if this would cost 100$ for two is too much money for what it is.
@@minmogrovingstrongandhealthyactually in the US the speakers are 99 each
I like the sound of the big eneby alot more than that of the sonos/ikea collab! That bigger enclosure really gives the speaker much more to work with.
What strikes me the most, regardless of the discussion at hand, is how people now conceives mono sound as something absolutely normal.
Another reason to go with headphones over a speaker.
yes weird shit
@@jackwilson5542 that’s not a reason to go headphones over speakers. Its a reason to buy decent stereo speakers.
Marketing at its purest, same hardware, different labels, different pricings
For those wondering about the BB symbol on the PCM5101A, that's the logo for Burr-Brown, which is a Texas Instruments subsidiary.
I forgot to thank you. Thanks to you now I have 5.1 with Sonos. I was putting off buying 2 back channel speakers but with this bargain, they were perfect.
Hard to not click with that title
Killer job dude. Well put together and attention to detail was great!
Kind of reminds me of Scotty Kilmer's click bait, DON'T..............then shows a picture of a new Toyota!
As always I really enjoy this teardowns, even if are products that I probably never going to buy it. The research on every chip, every component to really understand how everything works is very interesting and the production is very good, that's why I take a moment this time to leave a comment, thank you and keep with the good work.
Good way for Sonos to get rid of old stock parts clogging their warehouses.
True
Usually companies like these are not holding the pieces of a device in their warehouses. They are manufactured to order, so the GGEC, which is known in audio manufacturing world, produces the parts, orders some parts from third tier suppliers and assembles it all for Sonos or other brand, according to their specs and design. Unless Sonos chose to go with pre-designed audio stacking, and relies more on software to tune the sound to their signature. That would explain the similarities. It's perfectly normal in industry to rely on readymade ( so called off-the-shelf) solutions that are tested and provide good enough quality.
No way. IKEAs sales volume is way higher than what Sonos could have ever achieved
I work at Ikea and I can tell you that these speakers and those in the shape of a lamp are intended to output mono sound when there is only one, which makes sense but there is a function that allows you to connect two together and at this time the sound will go to stereo and not dual mono.
Not sure how I've never heard of this channel. This was a brilliant video - Definitely earned my subscription! :)
I added these to my Sonos Beam Gen 1 to add surrounds in the master bedroom. Sound soooo much better and I can watch TV at a lower volume AND have a fuller/richer sound.
not having AUX input in the lamp shade speakers is such a missed opportunity. I would have loved to use them as "dumb" speakers on either side of the couch in my 7.1.2 Atmos setup
Fantastic teardown video with detailed review of components, I think you have set benchmarks of how teardowns should be done!
The PCB comparison Symfonisk and Play1 is quite the revelation.
They even use the same cheap caps.
Would love it if you could tear down the Gen 2 version of the Symfonisk Bookshelf and comment on the quality of the parts as compared to those in the Gen 1 version. Thanks!
Such a calming and pleasing to watch video.
Thanks!
Wow! What a great review, the best I've ever seen, great depth and camera work, and proving every point. Brilliant. I doff my hat sir.
Who made this RAM chip?
- Nanya Business.
🤪
(Sorry)
I chucked and had to look it up myself...😂
Nanya means South Asia in its original Mandarin.
I thought it was Speed Ltd. 😁
I thought he said 'Narnia' not 'Nanya'....I was quite disappointed, I always wanted to have tea with Mr Tumnus.
“Comedy gold”
Bishka100 you can have roast lamb with him, aka ram 🐏
Great review, I had a chance to listen to them at the store and they sound great. Reason I didn't but them was Sonos uses a closed system where everything runs thru WiFi and their app only. There is no bluetooth nor optical inputs to connect to a TV.
Jose C so I bought two the other day. One in my room and one in the living room. Connects to my google home and can be used with it as well. Now the no connection to tv made me question, but the quality of music to me is just what I wanted while I’m starting my smart home
Such a waste that anyone would build things without a line in. Maybe its so they can see their $700 line in adapter. What a joke although seems to have heaps of 5 star reviews from people with more dollars than sense
When you look at the dirt cheap bill of materials and simple construction, it amazes me this costs as much as £99.
Bill of materials + China labor + factory manager + supply chain + design royalties (pay Sonos?) + shipping + IKEA store overhead... and then to stay in business, your margins need to be like 4x the cost of manufacture. As the narrator to this video says, this speaker probably has an unusually low margin in the hopes that customers buy accessories and other IKEA products. Almost a “doorbuster” product.
Also the design looks like it's a mass produced prototype, mini PCIe in a Speaker to support Wifi, are you kidding me?
@@JonasWilms but it's ~swedish~ and ~scandinavian~
@@dirtfriend BUT, built in China! Where else?
Great job on the teardown -you do a fine job identifying all the hardware, it's origin, and the implications on performance and quality.
You seem to be a little fuzzy on branding, pricing, and other BS -like you never worked at a company that makes these things. The short explanation for all your questions is that engineers DON'T run these companies. For every value proposition they create there is pile of business and marketing executives that justify their high salaries by raising price, changing names, cutting cost, and generally making customers pay as much as possible for as little as possible. Ikea is a major "channel" and brand -thus negotiate a lower price for essentially the same product. Sonos obviously could charge less for it's speaker, but will not because that would "dilute the brand". Still don't see the logic? Well, that's why you (and the 99%) don't make the big bucks executives do! Here is the only logic there is -a bunch of executives at Sonos will justify being paid more by doing this deal with Ikea. They "expanded the ecosystem" while not "diluting the brand" they "raised margins" and "increased tax efficiency". WTF does that mean? The production of the ikea speaker is invisible to Sonos's financial reporting. Only "licensing" payments will be paid by Ikea to the "intellectual property holder" of Sonos in an offshore tax haven. The brilliant management of Sonos has eliminated all payments to anyone that designed, built delivered or protected the world in which this good could be delivered and made it into a refined pure profit that they can use to justify payment to... THEMSELVES!
But if Ikea is selling the same speaker for 50% less, won't the expensive Sonos speakers lose sales? YES! and that "share loss" will be used to justify cutting the pay or limiting the pay of engineers, and all the producers of Sonos speakers! Another win for brilliant management!
you nailed it. plus: i don't think,that ikea pqys "extra". they simply buy these things in 1000s what lowers the price per unit.
They are called the "bean counters", call ALL the shots!
I think its fun that IKEA have kept our swedish words for their products🙂
The price of this speaker does NOT AT ALL warrant low quality caps. Its only a decision against the consumer to produce a limited lifetime product. Nobody should ever use cheap caps.
nutzeeer Of cause there are products that use cheap caps just to keep the price down. But what most people miss is these two points:
- The original bad caps plague was some factories using a bad electrolyte mix that died much earlier than planned. This was fixed many years ago and you'll have to search old stock on eBay etc. to find new caps with this problem.
- Every big brand offers cap models with different planned lifetime. The current "short lifetime Panasonic" probably dies before the current "long lifetime CapXon", though I haven't any hard data.
nutzeeer everything is cut down in price. Look at Mercedes 😂
@@johnfrancisdoe1563 panasonic is the definition of long life. No product of them we own has ever died. Even our VCR still works.
@@johnfrancisdoe1563 - well said. Personally, I consider CapXon is about the right quality level for what is, basically, a shitty cheap Ikea product.
It's absolutely ridiculous to expect Nichicon, Panasonic or any other "name brand" caps in a GENERIC brand appliance.
Cap brand choices aside - the price difference between a cheap cap and its better variant in relation to the product´s price is more or less negligible, in a device like that it´s most likely less than a dollar.Many manufacturers use 85C caps in consumer products, these caps often start to fail after 2 or 3 years, conveniently not too long after the warranty runs out (planned obsolescence). The 105C variant runs much longer (if it fails at all within the reasonable maximum usage time), as its max temperature rating offers a much larger margin to the usual operating temperatures (around 40 to 60° celsius).The price difference between the temp rating is somewhere around 10%.
The speaker´s equipped with 105s, so even with the cheaper brand caps, it´s reasonable to expect them to last about as long as top brand 85s.
Capxon and Samwha last way more than just a few years for me. I use them often to reanimate old electronics.
The capacitors are not just cost cutting but also likely part of the measures taken for planned obsolescence
Cost #1!
Physical obsolescence isn't even needed with this type of device, it's enough to have one of the next generations of "smart" phones to just not support the standards those operate on anymore.
It's an opportunity for us DIYers to hack an analog input (with op-amp line lvl crossovers) into them though, or even turn them into passive speakers altogether, which run with any small amplifier or trusty receiver (from the 80s that still works perfectly of course :) ...)
The drivers themselves look pretty good actually.
I've never seen a more detailed tear down of an electronic product until this video, subscribing 👍. By the way this video popped up on my recommended videos 😅, I guess because I'm subscribed to LGR.
Which will fail first? The capacitors or Sonos deciding to no longer support the product that has no AUX in or Bluetooth.
ErRor! ThIs pRoducT is No suppoRt lOnGEr! PlEase Go t0 shOp aND bUY neW t0 supPorT oUr EcOnoMy!
-sincerely, Xi Jinpin
I have Sonos products that are close to 10 years old now and Sonos still supports them so no need to really worry about Sonos support
The only things sonos have stopped Supporting are their Controllers that were getting useless and dying anyway.
All speakers and connects /ZP units are still supported
Excellent teardown and analysis. You're a true credit to the RUclips community.
What's really disappointing is the fact that Sonos, the so-called "premium" connected speaker manufacturer, is also using crap caps.
Yes I thought that as well... But is 150$ really premium??
@@0ace0hitta0 compared to the cheap alternatives, yes.
@@hillie47 Hi. Can you please tell me about some cheaper alternative? I'm looking for some cheap multi-room wifi audio system and I was not able to find anything cheaper then sonos one. Thanks a lot.
@@JurajMarkoSK for the connected stuff the Sonos play one is probably the cheapest option, but there are some budget not connected speakers you could use. Sonos is premium in the sense that prices go up rapidly from the play one. And to be honest $150 is a lot of money for a simple box with a cheap little amp and speaker. But that seems to be the starting price. Too high is you ask me.
the only premium in sonos is the price ;)
Always to see proper teardowns and analysis of what is inside. Would love to see some Sony teardowns in the future.
I’ve got something like that in the works, but not quite so in-depth on the specific components.
So it's not Ikea to blame cutting the costs down but Sonos, as they are also using CapXon caps in their "premium" products.
I saw that, the Sonos Play:1 is also using the CapXon capacitors.
They were equally involved in the creation process, with Ikea likely having the final say
@@JoshWitte , but Ikea weren't involved when Sonos layed out the Play1. They already used CapXon on their own products, that's what I say.
@@volvoracinggermany ah, gotcha. Well that's unfortunate 😕
Nope, it's always Trump's fault...
While stereo mixes have less separation and panning, 5.1 surround mixes have extreme ch. assignments w/ all dialog on center ch., sometimes little or no LFE sub, not much action in the rears.
Sounds better when dialog is panned for location & supplimented on other ch.
I accidentally agreed with myself
Is that a LAMP SPEAKER?! Holy crap. I'm going to need some lamp subwoofers to go with it!
@@Trialnerror agreed
How about a bed subwoofer with 2 x 15s 🤣
The ladies live it (click)
@@elissitdesign That sounds like the beds from Max Payne.
I just imagined a lamp rattling and jumping frantically until it drops itself from the table onto the floor.
I love lamp
I keep loving my Soundcraft spirit absolute zero's studio monitors with wires and a amp and hifi stuff my good old Revox speakers
Wow. Nobody seems to know about the absolute ;-) . They sound awesome I have the zeros too. Just so you know if you ever blow the tweeters the mission m71 m72 m73 tweeters are the same ferrofluid ones you just have to separate the plastic bit at front. Extreme feedback blew one of mine it was so loud it gave me an instant headache. Great speakers I run mine of an old Sony fe440 was running of QSC ex1250 when blew tweeter.
At one point I thought this review was going to reveal my social security number. The amount of research done here is insane.
All for something that's going to find it's way to Goodwill's Electronics aisle in about 3years!
Do you also solve cold cases? I mean jeez - this was the most enjoyable forensic tear down I’ve ever watched.
"this doesn't sound like a whole lot of RAM" - Yea it sounds massive!
So I go back and look and see that 256MB of ram was standard for our desktops around 2001, but then I realize that was almost 20 years ago. 😮
Alex Tirrell I remember my TinyPC had a 833mhz pentium 3 or something and 128mb of ram. This has a dual core cpu with the main processor running 1GHz and has double the ram! I know it’s not comparable to a slower x86 cpu, but the numbers make for funny comparison.
My first work computer had a whopping 12Mb of RAM. And that was after it was upgraded.
Thanks for the great video, finally someone who really shows what the electronics are really capable of.
I am a bit disappointed this does not have any direct audio output so that I could use it also as a speaker for laptop, phone, tv or whatever. That's why I am not going to buy this - it has quite limited usage.
Input perhaps?
The lamp version is a Sonos one with a lamp. I live next to IKEA and have checked them all out.
You live next to an IKEA, man I feel bad for you bro...
@@abelincoln7473 Why?
WiFi Only Speakers are just... Computers.
I've heard Ikea/Sonos Speakers and WOW, THEY SOUND AMAZING! I touched the Volume on one.
My guess is that they used the same board from the sonos play 1, since it was already being manufactured and didn't cost any startup costs on sonos' part, and the drivers on the smaller eneby matched perfectly with the sonos boards capabilities.
Without any doubt , your explaining is amazing and this is exactly what i want to watch thank you for the information you provided in this video.
I am a bit troubled over this conception that mono is good. And loud Just easier to sell. As a retired audio technician. Sad to see this
Most audio in this world is Mono. Live Concerts, bluetooth speakers, Auditoriums, Grocery Stores, DMX streaming audio, bluetooth speakers. You know this, being an audio technician. Most professional audio is mixed in mono and then has stereo effects to give it depth and other reasons to work best in multiple environments. It would be cool if you could link 2 of them and have a stereo image.
Years ago I went to see friend in the US . And was blown away with the Bose system.. But wrestling with non discreet wiring.everywhere. Big spaces complete challenges. That's why I went to video peresentation.. Far easier but some complete geniuses in audio presentation. My Bose 101s have served me well for 30 years
For years we got crappy stereo rather than one good mono speaker and expensive stereo systems with speakers set less than two or one feet apart. Calling it mono is often more realistic.
Adamast perhaps you maybe right. But I'll keep my Bose 101s. 30 years old and still going strong .i have tried to replace them
@@adamslawson I'm not sure where you got this idea. Quite the opposite is true, multi-channel 3D surround is taking over. See Dolby Atmos for home. See L'Acoustics for live concert. You are right about announcements in auditoriums and PA in a Grocery store, but not the others. What is DMX streaming audio? (DMX is a lighting control protocol) Zero live concerts are presented in mono.
This was a *fantastic* teardown. Excellent job from a new subscriber.
So the SYMFONISK has airplay 2 support, but the play:1 doesn’t. Given that we have seen the hardware is the same, I wonder if you can hack the SYMFONISK firmware onto the play:1 in order to get support.
Gerrit
You could use a willem programmer with tsop adaptor to flash that winbond chip that stores the firmware.
Gerrit
Yes you could use the willem to read the winbond then just clone it. Those ic's have been used for many many years now the most common use was bios on computer mother boards, now they are in everything car ecu's, cable boxes, roku boxes, Xbox's. I'm surprised they use the tsop version rather than the more modern solder ball mounted package. lol it's a hackers first port of call, many examples exist for instance the first Xbox exploit.
Buy symphonisk pull apart, remove board, fit into Play:1 , fit play:1 board back into symphonisk, return to ikea.
Tom Skarabis
Only one real way to find out .. From this video I was under the impression the main pcb was practically the same, if thats the case they probably just left some components off the cheaper version. I don't own either of these speaker units can't say as I ever would. Was just passing on some hobbyist suggestions.
Tom Skarabis Ikea speaker is beigng compared to a Play:1 not a One (there is no such thing as a Play One)
The new Sonos One SL is the replacement for the Play:1 and probably shares most components with the Sonos One, while the SYMPHONISK seems to share all the electronics from the Play:1
Interesting, nothing beats the sound of my old Grammy's Robert's radio.
Why have modern speaker system gone back to mono? What’s the deal with mono speakers?
But the whole point of Sonos speakers and their app is that you can pair up multiple for stereo or up to 4.1 surround. So, you would ideally buy two of these, kinda like buying two active speakers with a wireless system and software that can play them in sync (stereo, surround, or multi-room mono).
@Mr Brightside But Ponk 80 was commenting on a video (the Original original post, if you will) about a series of speakers meant to be part of a modular system? Again, you can buy individual bookshelf speakers (think Polk, Pioneer, Sony, Yamaha, etc) as parts to build up a system, and this Symphonisk is the same idea except wireless.
Could I buy just one Klipsch speaker, instead of connecting it as a piece of a system? Sure, but that doesn't mean consumers as a whole are going all mono.
Mr Brightside • I’m not missing what Ponk 80 said. He has the perception that modern speaker systems are mono (implying that Mono is in the majority), and asked “what’s the deal,” as in why is this happening.
And to expand some more on my reply to him:
A.) Some mono-only speakers exist, but I don’t think they’re taking over the market. While there are a few speakers designed for mono audio use out there (B&O, Tivoli radios, and other tiny Bluetooth speakers that might as well be mono), Stereo Hi-Fi is alive and well, and my perception (especially after having just returned from RMAF) is that there are more models and brands that are truly Stereo rather than Mono.
B.) In fact, this wireless IKEA speaker is sold individually, but like all Sonos products it is a modular part that can be used alone (mono) or paired up as part of a multi-channel system if you buy two or more.
C.) If you’re going to point to Ponk 80’s post, then I also am going to point out he didn’t specify wireless speakers. But even then, I’ll point out that the Sonos, Bose Soundlink, Apple HomePod, Beats Pill+, Ultimate Ears Megaboom and Wonderboom, Creative Labs, Devialet Phantom, and many more wireless speakers are modular parts of speaker systems designed to be used in mono or multichannel systems, so you can add or remove speakers as desired (or able to afford).
If you haven’t heard of these speaker systems at all pricepoints, I’d recommend looking them up. I believe you have your own RUclips channel (usually how-to’s) which I have enjoyed in the past, maybe you could research a video on how to DIY a modular speaker system?
@Mr Brightside My apologies, the RUclips channel I was thinking about is just "Bright Side," and they make "did you know?" videos with the mission to help people (like this one about the signs you're not drinking enough water: ruclips.net/video/WIAWUW1R9_Y/видео.html).
I didn't mean to bring a combative tone, but rather offer some theories that might expand on perception. I do indeed see many mono-audio devices on the market (and listed quite a few before), generally designed as entry-level products to get people started with audio at a low price. Logically, they would sell well too, and not everyone values audio enough to upgrade or just buy better gear in the first place.
However, Stereo "Hi-Fi" and surround is definitely not going away, in fact I think the WHOLE market (including mono and multi-speakers) is growing! If I can include headphones as stereo devices, more people individually experience stereo sound than ever before, the cost of better systems is becoming more affordable all the time, and I think it's really cool that a product like this Symfonisk exists at an a fairly affordable price range, and a person can buy one and add to it later to make it stereo (or more). I might not be able to afford buying my mom a pair of ELAC Debut speakers and an amp (though those are still a great value), but maybe I could buy her a Symfonisk for her birthday, and then next year another one.
Anyway, read this reply or not, I hope your weekend was a good one for you.
Most speaker's are mono xD you have to buy to
One of the best explainer video. Amazing and descent
I use a couple of these as rears for my Sonos soundbar as I think the Sonos 1’s are a bit overkill. They do the job admirably
I like Creative audio systems, beautiful sound good quality and payable
Using CapXon capacitors is probably a way to make sure it doesn't last more than 2-3 years...
Ageve Nisse damn, straight to the point
After a couple years when they do die, take it apart to check the capacitor values, order higher quality replacement capacitors with correct capacitance values and same or higher voltage rating from digikey, than bust out the soldering station and replace them.
@@davidperry4013 You know that 99.9999% of people will buy another. Planned obsolescence is disgusting.
Ageve Nisse floor sweepings... those types of capacitors are generally the first thing that blows in any expensive electronics circuit including computer motherboards. I’ve been able to replace some but without Radio Shack being down the street anymore it’s harder to find the parts. There is a Mouser out in El Cajon somewhere I think they have mail order too.
still running here after 6 years of everyday use, so nah, keep your accusements to yourself.
watching TV is gone... Have not seen TV in 12 years or more..
Subscribed; bell activated.
Ok
Great tear down. Highly technical. Way over my head. I was waiting for a “don’t buy this because it’s crap” (I’m a simple man) recommendation but it never came. I get the feeling it’s crap (and SONOS as well?) but am left scratching my head 🤔.
I was hoping same but you're right. This video is a bit too technical for the general public. Having said that, I have a Sono AMP and it is good. Not surround sound but very powerful.
Don't buy because it has CRAP-on caps!
So Great Info. In your opinion this IKEA speaker is only going to work for 2 years or so ? Thanks
If course the best advice would be to buy neither to not support throwaway electronics. Thanks for discovering that.
good luck finding any manufacturer that doesn't support TaE. everythings built to a pricepoint noawadaysw not to give end users longevity
Great video... Thank you. Have you considered doing a Play5 Gen1 tear down to explore possibility of using Symfonisk components to hack Play5 Gen1 obsoletion? Similar to Symfonisk hacks to drive passive speaker and/or adding powered sub to Sonos ecosystem? The Sonos user community would go nuts for this.
They don't sell this seperate for you to put together?
soldering iron sold separately lol
Play the video in reverse
No, it’s pre-assembled. Isn’t that such a bonus !!
I think what happened was that the speaker portion comes from whoever did Eneby, while the circuit board comes from Sonos. Sonos may have tweaked the DSP a bit to optimize the sound quality of the speakers used. And finally, the enclosure is IKEA.
Very Well Done Tare Down Review! You know your stuff!
Polyfill "batting" isn't for bass response, it's to slow down the rear wave of the driver making it behave is if it was in a larger enclosure. With a tiny 3" driver it more than likely isn't needed since that driver won't have very much xmax.
Where’s AVE review of this?
The woofer is clearly different and the materials on the play1 are better. Other than that the costumers experience on the web are all saying that the sound is not the same of the play1, very similar but not the same
Also looks like the Play: 1 has just been discontinued and replaced by a Play One without speech recognition. So a definite win to keep using the now retired product as an entry point to Sonos.
Sonos One.
They are not Sonos Play One, the “Play” and “Connect” monicker’s are going/gone. Once they make a new Play:5, Playbar and Playbase nothing will be left with either Play or Connect.
My guess on the lack of batting is that the back volume of symfonisk is large enough to reach their desired enclosure resonance without it. There's a limit to how much bass response you can squeeze out of a small loudspeaker.
The damping material in a ported box is to remove midrange resonances exiting through the vent. It has little to do with the bass itself.
@@westelaudio943 It does both. Batting decreases the effective sound speed in the enclosure (isothermal vs adiabatic sound speed), thus increasing the effective volume and the lowering the bass cutoff. It also increases losses in the enclosure, reducing the Q of any standing waves, like you say.
Both of these effects exist and are measurable, and an engineer designing the enclosure ought to be taking both into account when deciding if they want batting or not.
@@TheRationalPi
True, however, it also absorbs the system resonance at the tuning frequency. That's why in a ported design you only put a thin damping material near the walls, so only the shorter wavelengths are absorbed, and in a ported subwoofer you rarely find any of it because the midrange frequencies are already LPF'd out to the degree of being negligible.
This midbass enclosure would have greatly benefitted from it though.
The worlds largest supplier of damping material saves money on damping material. :X
damping material in a vented enclosure does NOT improve the bass, in fact it makes the transient response worse, in a vented enclosure damping mops-up some of the internal back wave energy re-radiating & frequency modulating or acoustically feeding through the cone. In a sealed enclosure damping would increase the apparent volume ( thus improves the bass ) as well as dampen back-wave energy. A lot of engineering @ this price but DOUGH those cheap ass capacitors :-(
@@BogdanWeiss I thought damping material was in there to get rid of standing waves caused by the acoustic room inside the speaker ?
So to make sure you can`t hear the speaker itself as such.
A single speaker, a must for listening to stereo music.
This speaker has better cable management than my PC.
It basicly has a pc inside lol
I like the Cyberpunk aesthetic, so of course that's why my PC is a mess of cables, tubes, and LEDs inside totally not because I'm lazy
After a few hours of google searching ive found the Sub...
Its a:
3inch 84mm woofer, bass mid speaker 6ohm, 15W.
Built in mid range woofer.
Size：
Outer diameter 83mm
Diagonal screw hole 90mm
Height 55mm .
Couldnt find any information in the tweeter, sorry
This was an awesome review, I love details and tear downs, thanks
One HUGE benefit on Symfonisk comapred to the play:1 (not the "one") is AirPlay btw!!
A PowerPC CPU?!?! Sweet
it can be your secret web server :-)
Will stick with my old Mission speakers, connected to an old amp. Everything connected via analogue stereo RCA leads, thanks very much. The Ikea speaker looks very good though, as an item to have in the kitchen or garden.
If you REALLY want to make a statement, check out Harman Kardon's ALL GLASS 2.1 system! It has 4 drivers in each satellite with the sub and electronics in a center piece, ALL visible thru the glass! Mind blowing!!
Excellent level of quick, informative detail to your tear-downs. I’ve always passed up your videos because most of them seem to be on silly consumer “toy” gadgets (which is still in opinion). However, I am quite pleased by your clean & informative approach to your videos & will be very open to viewing them in the future. Perhaps maybe even a subscribe...? Also, big up for the GGEC mention! Details like that go a long way for those whom need to know.
Cheers
2019, when 256MB of RAM is referred to as 'not a lot' in the context of a speaker... I'm glad that costs are so low that such decisions can be made, but this still sets me off as being incredibly wasteful.
@Gonçalo Amaro that has been the case for a loooong time. Back in the day, peripherals were often as powerful as the host machines they were attached to.
The NXP requires DDR3 RAM, on mouser a single chip for 1Gbit (128MB) is like $7.65 (NZD), and a 2Gbit (256MB) chip is $8.05, there's also questions of what is compatible based on pins etc, with the NXP.
Nothing smaller from Micron, and the smaller chips from ISSI are more expensive.
PCs used to be able to run a multitasking OS with a GUI *and* business applications with 1 MB of RAM (or even less). Generally speaking, nowhere near that much RAM is required to implement all of the necessary functions for this speaker, although a lot of unnecessary things may be taking up most of the otherwise luxurious 256 MB of RAM it has. Even today, people are doing cool things with microcontrollers that only have 2 *KB* (that's KB!) of RAM on board (e.g. Atmel ATmega328P on the Arduino), though, so not everyone is being so wasteful.
@@microcolonel True, albeit back in the day it was barely enough power to get the job done, whereas today it is way more power than is strictly necessary. They're just doing what's easy and still cost-effective due to technological advances. The two situations end up seeming similar at face value, but underneath they are quite different. While more is expected of peripherals these days (e.g. networking), processing power and memory have far outpaced this--the only thing that has kept pace is bloat. :)
@@woobilicious. generally when you g o smaller, you get the DRAM embedded in the package.
Thanks a lot. This is a REALLY THOROUGH video!!! Lots of explanations, and my technical geekness is entirely satisfied.
The question now is, is there a difference in sound between the Ikea speaker or the Sonos one.
Another question is if there is any difference in sound quality to Wilson Audio Alexx? www.stereophile.com/content/wilson-audio-specialties-alexx-loudspeaker
serasane hmmm... that’s a really pandora box u opened there
@@serasane Having heard neither, I can say with 101% confidence the difference is night and day.
he literally said at the end...if you don't mind the form factor then go for the symfonisk..did you even listen ?
Since they use 2 different sized enclosures, there should be some difference in sound. Heres the truth though, it has a little shit tweeter and a little shit sub, they're not going to sound great.
Yet another speaker analysis video, those speaker products are interesting, but in my current living conditions, using non headphone audio is not possible except when my family watches youtube on the TV.
2:36 Is that an mPCIE WiFi card ?
If so, then try to connect a graphics card to it using an exp gdc
Because I make good ideas
well, dump the bootrom, rewrite large sections of the os and the gpu driver, implement an user interface and install the gpu driver and you should be good to go... some of those steps might take a couple of hours though and aren't as straightforward...
lol that GuaGuang part reminded me of those old BASF commercials... "BASF, we don't make the products you use. We make them better". :D Well, except GGEC actually does make the products. Or at least parts of them.
As I recall, you criticized the IKEA speaker in your original review for having sound-quality issues... does the Play then also suffer the same? I'm wondering if the price difference is mitigated in any way by a difference in audio output/quality...?
@@guguru Is this based on your own a/b testing of both devices? Or someone elses? (please link me up if so) The internals are identical, apparently, with obvious housing differences and perhaps/likely firmware as well.
@@guguru I appreciate the info. :)
@@guguru Not necessarily true Julian, because the electronics in both are IDENTICAL! At 10:10 he puts the 2 PCB’s side by side....and the are exactly the same, with exactly the same components - I paused the video and took a forensic look.
I don't know what is the price point of these speaker nor how bad or okay they sound. I'm a demanding guy regarding audio stuff. I love hi fi equipment. I'm not the kind who would spend 50,000$ in a system (if I had the money) but for me, you can have a very decent system for a few thousands. That said, that only concerns myself. A majority of people like to "hear" music on Sundays while preparing the dinner and talking to the family and that's what Ikea speakers are aiming at. Nothing more, nothing less. I respect that. I respect also the people for whom music isn't a necessity.
Oh god CapXon... So many bad memories dealing with them..
Interesting. Remember that play 1 is a sealed product for bathroom and kitchen and partly outdoors as well. What about the high tone drivers? Also Sonos now has the Sonos one and therefore play one is old tech
Do you know if the Sonos Play:1 and Sonos One use the same low quality CapXon capacity or if they use something a little higher grade?
Good tear down and analysis.
The tape around the front panel is not primarily for sealing, it is for preventing rattles. Sealing is a secondary issue. Your missing the point there is a giant air vented port at the bottom of the front panel.
You mention your self how all the wiring is foam taped and hotmelt held down. Again anti rattle techniques. We used to do this at the Australian Magnavox Speaker factory.