Peter's First Impression on Sonos Ace
It does everything well but with one big caveat.
Let me start by addressing the elephant in the room. The internet seems to be hating on the Sonos Ace hard as it seems to have disappointed many Sonos owners. Rightfully so. Sonos is known for its Wi-Fi enabled speakers. Being able to hot swap what you were playing on your soundbar to your headphones is a huge part of the experience. Don’t get me wrong—I was also hoping for a Wi-Fi enabled headphone from Sonos that let you stream directly from the web, bypassing any sort of Bluetooth handshake or compression.
Alas, that’s not what we got. While it’s much too early to review the product, I think it’s only right to give you my initial thoughts on the product as it’s a new product category from Sonos. Are the Ace enough to differentiate itself from the countless other high-end ANC headphones? Let’s check them out together.
Here are my first impressions of the Sonos Ace headphones, the company’s first foray into headphones of any kind.
Unboxing and Setting Up the Headphones
I don’t usually talk about unboxing experiences but would like to note that the Sonos Ace offers a pleasant unboxing experience. All of the packaging is using what I assume is recycled materials.
I will say, however, that the carrying case is terrible. It looks and feels nice. But the zipper gets stuck within the case more times than not. And as a big head headphone person, having to fully retract the headband every time I need to put the Ace back in the case is an epic fail. I’ll continue to use my Waterfield headphone case, which were originally designed for Apple’s AirPods Max, but have been carrying my Focal Bathys for the better part of a year.
Okay. Moving on to setup. It wouldn’t be 2024 if it didn’t mean unboxing a set of headphones, pairing them to your phone, opening a companion app, and then getting immediately hit with a firmware update. So that’s what I spent doing for the first 15-20 minutes after unboxing. Sitting there waiting for a firmware update.
There have been a plethora of opinions written on the internet about the revamped Sonos app, so I won’t bore you here. Yes, it’s that bad. Yes, Sonos is aware of the issues. And yes, it shouldn’t have shipped in its current shape.
After the update was complete, I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by how flexible the settings are. You can toggle Noise Control, Head Tracking, and Wear Detection. With that last one, you can even toggle on a feature that automatically picks up a phone call when you put the Ace on and connect over Bluetooth. Neat.
One toggle I wish more Bluetooth headphone manufacturers would add is Multipoint. By default, it’s off but you can turn it on and have the headphones connect to more than one device at a time. I personally prefer to have this feature and have near-instant switching between devices. And the Ace does just that. Go into your device’s Bluetooth settings, tap connect, and it’ll instantly pair to it and disconnect from the other device.
Initial Sound Impressions
But of course, I’m an audio blog so my main focus is sound quality. That also means that since these are a Bluetooth headphone with optional USB audio, I went straight to USB audio.
Disappointingly, the first thing I noticed was how low the USB audio volume was. I plugged the Ace into my Mac via USB-C and fired up Roon. I’m at 68% for my comfortable listening volume. I tried the headphones briefly over Bluetooth and got much better volume there (around 45-50%). Hopefully, Sonos can fix this with a firmware update.
Likewise, the USB audio feature seems like a complete afterthought from Sonos. No matter if I was plugged into my iPhone or Mac, the Ace seems to only play at one sample rate and bit-depth—16-bit, 48 kHz. If you’re technically minded, you know that almost nothing is recorded in that combination. Typically anything above CD quality (16-bit, 44.1 kHz) is 24-bit. While that’s mildly frustrating (I was hoping to get 16- and 24-bit, up to 48k. Not only 16-bit, 48k), the Ace still sounds a step better in wired mode. The soundstage opens up a smidge and detail retrieval takes a leap.
But outside of those two nitpicks, my initial subjective opinion is that the Sonos Ace has a warm sound signature. The bass is detailed, fast, and punchy (though, I’d much prefer bass with more slam than punch). The midrange is pretty good here as well. Guitars and male vocals come through clear and balanced. Though, there’s a dip probably around the 1-2K range, burying things like female vocals at times. The treble is a bit messy with some peaks. In my subjective opinion, there’s probably a peak around 6-8k, making some hi-hats sound super metallic-y, S’s and T’s sound super sharp, and some snare drums come through above the mix. This will be noticeable if you’re a detail oriented listener and may be a dealbreaker for some.
That peak makes sense as Sonos is traditionally a home theater brand. A peak in those ranges on a soundbar or home theater setup gives you a sense of spaciousness and height. But when the speaker—so to speak—is inches from your ear, it presents some issues.
The Sonos app’s EQ leaves a lot to be desired with only a bass, treble, and balance slider. This setup is fine if the headphones have a flat frequency across the board, even if the bass and treble are elevated. I’ll have to spend some time tweaking these settings and see if that is the case. A 5-band EQ would be nice, but these EQ settings are carried over from the company’s soundbars so that’s unlikely. But if you’re like me and use Roon, you should be able to EQ these issues away pretty easily. (And EQ is fine since the Sonos Ace has an onboard DAC/amp regardless of what mode you’re in.)
Tonality aside, the Ace’s dynamic range is abysmal, but that’s to be expected with noise cancelling headphones. You can’t (at least not yet) have great dynamic range while also pumping heaps of anti-noise to accommodate active noise cancellation. It’s to hard discern the quietest instruments from the loudest. Despite that, the detail retrieval is great with the Ace. It has a pretty decent soundstage as well, but not as wide as my Focal Bathys. The Ace’s stage remains mostly in your head, but that’s to be expected for a closed-back headphone.
In my testing, there’s no notable sound leakage. Even at higher volumes and in quiet environments I wasn’t able to get the headphones to leak unless I turned the volume up to unreasonable levels. That’s great, especially for travel. The last thing you want to do is crank the volume on the plane and the next three passengers are able to hear what you’re listening to.
The headlining feature of the Sonos Ace is its ability to quickly connect to your Sonos Arc soundbar and play its audio through your headphones. This feature works great. Although, I’d say the press and hold to connect is slightly too long. Every single time I’ve initiated the feature, I feel like I’m pressing the content key one second too long, questioning if the feature is going to actually work.
But beyond that, it works as expected. As other reviewers have noted the latency is imperceptible and is very low. I never had an issue with it at all. I played an episode of After Midnight and a few episodes of Castle Rock on my Apple TV and it worked great. Whenever I hit pause on the remote, the audio paused instantly. Then I started playing Splatoon 3 on my Nintendo Switch, docked to the TV. Same experience here. No perceptible lag. The Ace played it like a champ.
If this is something you desire, Sonos is practically the only company that makes the integration this seamless. It works with any audio coming through your Sonos Arc.
While you should never purchase a product based on future promises, Sonos says that the Audio Swap feature will be coming to the company’s other soundbars in a future software update.
Lastly, Atmos content with head tracking. I’ve always thought head tracking was a gimmicky feature but it works as well as you’d expect here—if you’re into that type of thing. The tracking works great and there’s no perceptible lag when turning your head.
Without head tracking, Atmos content plays super well here. I played the Atmos mix of Down Bad by Taylor Swift and Espresso by Sabrina Carpenter on Tidal and could instantly hear the soundstage get wider compared to the standard stereo mix. I also played the latest episode of Acapulco and the Atmos experience was solid. It’s not as good as playing Atmos content over a home theater setup, obviously, but for a headphone experience, it’s right up there with most other headphones that offer it.
Active Noise Cancelling & Awareness Mode
While the Sonos Ace is the company’s first entry into not only headphones, but Bluetooth noise cancelling headphones, the ANC and awareness (I’ll call it transparency mode from this point forward) is excellent and competes with the top players.
With no audio playing, the Sonos Ace does an excellent job blocking out bass and lower midrange frequencies. I genuinely can’t hear a thing. Voices are very suppressed but do come in, albeit very quietly.
With audio playing, you won’t hear a thing. Even at low volumes, it’s hard to hear pretty much anything. I haven’t been able to travel with these yet, but have tested the scenario by blasting airplane engine noises through my home speakers and the amount of noise reduced is right up there with the Sony WH-1000XM5, Bose QuietComfort Ultra, and Apple AirPods Max. All of these headphones are neck-on-neck in terms of ANC performance.
Awareness/transparency mode is a sore spot for me. Practically anything other than AirPods (any generation and model) aren’t worth talking about. With anything but—I’d rather remove my headphones to hear the outside world.
I wouldn’t say the Sonos Ace are on AirPods level, but it’s very close. There are still some issues with how it handles higher pitched noises such as fans or air conditioners as those have a small amount of digital artifacting (and may be related to the treble peak around 6-8k). Otherwise, it’s spot on.
Things that are far away sound far away and things that are nearby are placed correctly. I’m able to hear my own voice and others at normal speaking volumes.
Hardware
I love almost everything about the hardware. The telescoping yoke, physical buttons. and the USB-C charging port being on the correct side of the headphones (left). My favorite hardware feature? Physical media controls. It’s no secret that I absolutely hate touch controls for headphones (mostly looking at you Sony!).
I’ve found Sonos’ content key to be really intuitive. Flick up for volume up, flick down for volume down, and the standard click gestures for play/pause/skip/reverse. It’s not flimsy like most other headphones that have physical buttons and is super tactile and responsive. I love that the content key, noise cancellation button, and power buttons are all different shapes and sizes. It makes it easy to feel for the correct button. Although, I would swap the power and ANC/transparency mode buttons. I’m still getting tripped up on which one is which.
Another point for the Ace is that the volume is smooth. Outside of AirPods, almost every other pair of Bluetooth headphones adjusts volume in steps. So 41-45 is one step, and 46-50 is another step, for example. Not with Sonos Ace, at least from what I can tell. Micro adjustments actually make a difference here. Also, holding the content key up or down continuously raises or lowers the volume respectively. No more needing to spam the volume up or down buttons (or in some cases, swipe until your finger falls off to get to the right volume).
The ear cushions are made of a vegan leather material and are magnetic and replaceable. I love that as those are usually the first things to go on headphones. Similarly, the headband is made of a similar vegan leather material with ample cushioning. It’s way too early to tell how comfortable the headphones are over long periods, but using them preliminarily for the last few days, it’s been great. As someone with big ears, I wish the ear pads were slightly deeper. Thankfully the cushions are magnetic and replaceable so let’s hope third-parties hop on the Ace and offer different cushion types.
What’s Missing?
Not much, to be completely honest. The Sonos community seems to be up and arms about the Sonos app refresh and by extension, the Sonos Ace headphones. But I’m relatively happy with the Ace so far.
While the Sonos Ace are great at being a Bluetooth headphone with one headlining Sonos integration feature, it leaves a lot to be desired. For many (including myself), we were hoping that we’d get Wi-Fi enabled headphones from Sonos. A set of headphones that can connect directly to the internet and stream directly to the headphones.
This did not happen. While the TV audio swap feature does use Wi-Fi, it creates a peer-to-peer connection with your Sonos ARC and the soundbar does all the heavy lifting. It’s the least Sonos, Sonos product to date. It’s controlled within the Sonos app but doesn’t really integrate with its other products beyond TV audio swap.
On that topic, I’d love to also see the ability to use the Ace’s built-in microphones while in TV audio swap. Say, for when you’re playing a game on your gaming console and want to use voice chat at the same time. That’s not currently possible.
I’d also love to see an updated case where the zipper doesn’t get caught on itself half of the time. And maybe a case that lets you put the headphones in with the headband fully extended. But that’s unlikely to come until a second generation (if ever).
Conclusion
It’s early, so I can’t come to a definitive conclusion just yet (I’ve only had the headphones for three days at the time of writing). But I do think the Sonos Ace are a solid set of headphones with one big caveat. It depends on what you’re looking for, of course.
If you’re looking for simple travel headphones with great noise cancellation and nothing else, the Sonos Ace aren’t for you. Consider the Sony XM5s or Bose QC Ultra. Those are substantially cheaper and offer exactly that experience. Plus, those have more extensive EQ options.
The Sonos Ace are hard to recommend. Not just because of price, but because they do everything right except for what you’d buy headphones for—sound quality. Comfort, design, TV audio swap, ANC, and transparency modes are done really well with the Ace. But the messy upper midrange and treble mean that these headphones just sound weird—not boring, stale or anything, just weird. The overly simplistic EQ settings means that you can’t really solve it either without outside tools that only apply to certain devices or applications.
The reality is we’ll see. Again, it’s too early to tell. If firmware updates come to solve some of the sound quality issues—or if Sonos releases a more comprehensive EQ in the app, they might be worth it then. But for now, I think the Sonos Ace are a pass. There’s too much "coming soon" and its overall tonality should turn most people away.