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Sonos Unveils New Audio OS 'Sonos 27,' AI Assistant and Hardware in Bid to Rebuild Trust

Sonos has unveiled a new operating system, an app with AI voice features, a soundbar and new headphones, seeking to recover from the backlash to its 2024 app redesign.

AI News Feed · 2026-09-02 23:26

Sonos executives say the company should no longer be seen as a speaker maker. "What we actually are is an audio operating system," Brandon Holley, Sonos' interim hardware lead, told Wired. The company is calling that operating system Sonos 27 and is branding its multiroom networking technology Sonos Fabric. New Fabric features include portable surround, which lets users temporarily move a speaker to another room and have it automatically configure as a surround channel, and Headphone Linking, which allows audio to shift between Sonos speakers and headphones.

The app update is designed to make the system easier to use. Sonos says it has improved tab navigation, room sorting and volume controls, and added new system-health tools for diagnosing connection problems. The most visible addition, however, is Sonos 27voice, a generative AI voice assistant intended to handle conversational music requests. According to Wired, the assistant can connect to services such as ChatGPT through Model Context Protocol and supports customizable "Sonos Custom Agents," including capabilities such as automatically activating certain speakers.

"Obviously AI is something that's very hot these days," Sid Patel, Sonos' software vice president, said. "So we have integrated various pieces of AI into our system."

The new AI features will be opt-in and require the newer S2 app. Sonos cautioned that "not every product will support every new feature" and said detailed compatibility information will be released later. Wired notes that existing Sonos owners may still encounter difficulties, because the company's home systems are not always easy to set up and older products have sometimes required separate apps. Sonos representatives say the company is taking a more customer-centric approach and will listen more after the previous redesign.

The overhaul follows a bruising stretch for Sonos. In 2024, software updates introduced to improve its multiroom speakers instead broke the app, removing functions such as volume control and accessibility tools meant to help blind users. Sonos acknowledged the misstep, considered restoring the previous app, replaced its CEO and apologized to upset customers. It now plans to release Sonos 27 and the new hardware as part of a broader shift toward whole-home audio and software services.