Sonos Beam (Gen 2) sound bar/wireless music system | Crutchfield - YouTube

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.