Hey, I'm JR, training manager here at Crutchfield, and this is the all-new Sonos Beam second
generation. The main upgrade is the CPU; it's 40 percent faster, so it's much better at processing
the sound it gets from your TV and playing those sounds on the exact right speakers to give you
great surround sound from a pretty small package, including Dolby Atmos. It has the same number
of speakers as the previous generation Beam, which is four woofers, one tweeter, and three
passive radiators. The combination of all of those speakers allows a speaker as small as this
to sound very full and rich all by itself. One of the main reasons you might want a sound bar
like the Beam second generation is for speech or dialogue enhancement, so that you can hear the actors
on the screen more clearly what they're saying so you don't miss a line of dialogue. This does
that; it indeed has speech enhancement in addition to having great sound and great surround sound.
To get the Beam connected to your TV, you'll simply use an HDMI connection. You'll plug that into the
ARC connection on your TV; that way you can get sound from your TV into the sound bar. That's
called Audio Return Channel, and if your TV has Anhanced Audio Return Channel, it's compatible
with that as well. That's how you can get the Dolby Atmos from compatible TV shows and movies into the
Sonos Beam. If your TV doesn't have ARC on its HDMI connections but it does have an optical output,
that's okay. The Beam comes with an HDMI cable as well as an HDMI-to-optical adapter, so you should
be able to use the Beam with just about any TV. Now for one of the coolest things about Sonos, with the
Beam connected to your TV either from optical or HDMI, the sound from your TV can be played
on the Beam as well as any other Sonos speaker or zone you have in your home, all controllable
from a Sonos app on your phone that allows you to play the same or different songs in each zone,
and to customize the volume and the sound in each zone. The Beam is one of those zones, and one of the
sources now available to all of those speakers. So the Beam has surround sound pretty well built
in and covered with all of the speakers and that faster CPU, but if you want more you can add more.
You can pair this together with two speakers you put in the rear of your room for rear surround
sound, so you might use Sonos Ones or One SLs as your surround left and right. You can also hook
it up with a Sonos Sub, so you can get a true full 5.1 system with loads of bass, and you can do all
of that in the Sonos app. Pair them all together to create a seamless, wireless home theater system.
All you've got to do is plug each Sonos speaker into the wall for power. Regardless of whether you're
using a full Sonos wireless surround system or just the Beam, you're going to want to take
advantage of a Sonos feature called Trueplay. You go into the app, you start Trueplay; you'll need
to use an iPhone for this, it's not compatible with Android. It uses your iPhone's microphone, so you'll
get the Trueplay started, you'll walk around your room with your phone, and it will basically
listen to sounds playing on your Sonos speakers in the room. It detects how those sounds bounce around
your room so that it can optimize the sound from all of your Sonos speakers in that room
for your listening environment, so it's pretty great. It's a way to customize the sound for
exactly where you watch TV. To control the sound of the Beam, you have multiple ways to
do that using HDMI CEC, or consumer electronics control. You're probably just going to control
the sound of the Beam directly from your TV remote, the same remote you were already using to turn
your volume up and down will tell the Beam to turn up and down, simply because of how HDMI connections
work these days. It's super simple. Of course, you also have the Sonos app on your phone, you'll be
able to control it and just play music or select an input to play something on the Beam as well.
You can also just talk to it, it has Google and Alexa built in, so you don't even have
to have a separate Echo Dot or Google Home in the room, this is that smart assistant for you.
You select which one you want to use, and you can speak commands to it, so if you want to hear
the weather or set an alarm or hear the news or tell it what song to play, you can simply
speak to it and it will obey. So if you're looking for a sound bar that integrates well with your TV,
the speakers you might have in a Sonos system and the rest of your house, looks great and
sounds amazing, the Sonos Beam second gen might be the right trick for you. If you have any questions
about it, please get in touch with us. Go to crutchfield.com/contact, you'll be able to
talk live with one of our advisors either over the phone or chat with them online. You can also post
your questions right here on this YouTube video, we do pay attention to those and we will respond
accordingly. And as usual, like, subscribe, and turn those notifications on. Thank you for watching.