Sonos may be closing in on your ears with a recent acquisition that (again) suggests the company is prepping its first set of headphones.
In November, Sonos acquired T2 Software, a startup that had been working on Bluetooth LE implementations, Protocol reports. “The codec is designed to achieve high-quality audio at much lower data rates than the current [codec] used in Bluetooth audio solutions today, thus achieving lower power consumption,” T2 said on its (now-deleted) website, Protocol says.
Last week, Pete Pederson, VP of Global Marketing and Communications at Sonos, also teased “one of the most ambitious projects in our history” in a LinkedIn post soliciting marketing firms with experience “launching a new brand/product/service in an established category,” and “creating a new category for an established brand.”
Sonos products have largely relied on Wi-Fi over Bluetooth, though it’s embraced the latter as it branched out into portable, wireless speakers. Last year, the Sonos Roam joined the Sonos Move as its second speaker designed to be taken on the go, with Bluetooth connectivity in addition to the Sonos-standard Wi-Fi multiroom audio system.
As the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) outlined at CES 2020, LE Audio is short for Low Energy Audio, and is based on the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) radio for sound transmission. Previously, BLE was only used for non-audio functions, like enabling remote control of consumer devices. Streaming sound over BLE radio is made possible by the Low Complexity Communication Codec (LC3), a low-power audio codec that could allow for robust battery life in a pair of Sonos headphones.
According to Protocol, T2’s technology could come in handy for Sonos by allowing things like synchronized streams to several pairs of headphones at once, like it does for speakers now.
