What is Quick Tune? The Sonos Trueplay feature explained

You may have seen by now that Sonos has introduced its new era of speakers in the Era 100 and Era 300, but what you might have been as aware about is that there’s a tweaked version of the company’s Trueplay that’s also inbound.

This new version, or variant, of Trueplay is set to expand the number of devices that can assist in getting the Era speakers up to speed in your home. Here is an explanation of Sonos’ Quick Tune Trueplay feature.

What is Sonos’ Quick Tune Trueplay?

First things first, this isn’t a new version of Trueplay that will replace what comes before. Secondly, this version launches with the Era speakers when they go on sale.

Quick Tune is a version of Trueplay that doesn’t require an iPhone to begin the process. It uses the microphones inside the speaker to measure the spaces around it, calibrating the sound to what it can detect. This process is not automatically carried every time the speaker is turned on or moved, it has to be initiated manually through the Sonos app.

And the big advantage of Quick Tune is that, because the calibration is done onboard the speaker, all that’s required from the user is a tap in the app to set it up, and after 15-20 seconds the process will have completed. Because it doesn’t need an iPhone (which Sonos prefers to other smartphone OEMs because of its accuracy and consistency), this Quick Tune version of Trueplay can now be performed on Android devices, bringing the feature to more users.

What other versions of Trueplay are there?

Think of Trueplay as now coming in different tiers to suit different speakers and it’ll make more sense. There is the standard, classic Trueplay that involves a “room dance” or what Sonos refers to as its microphone spatial average.

Using an iPhone (and only an iPhone), it’ll listen to sounds emitted from the speaker as you wave the smartphone around the room, calibrating its performance to the acoustic surfaces around it. All of Sonos’ wireless speakers and soundbars up until now have supported this version, such as the Sonos One speaker, Arc and Beam Gen 2 soundbars.

Then there’s Auto Trueplay, and this is only available on the portable speakers Sonos offers, such as the Roam and the Move. With its built-in microphones, Auto Trueplay automatically sense the orientation and placement of the speaker, and optimises its performance accordingly in real-time.

You can read more about Sonos Trueplay in our main explainer.