I've written a few times in the last couple of weeks about the new Sonos setup I've been using, which represents an upgrade on what I had before in basically every single area. I've swapped a Beam Gen 1 for a Gen 2, upgraded my Ikea Symfonisk surrounds with Era 100 replacements, and added a Sub Mini to top it all off.
While that last part left me impressed with the huge bass on offer, I have to admit I wasn't entirely sold on whether it was really adding enough to make me notice the change on a daily basis. That was my impression after some gaming and some streaming – but I just experienced something that changed my outlook.
A couple of nights ago, I hooked my PS5 Pro up to the living room TV and stuck in a Blu-ray copy of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I'd never seen the film in full, and we fancied some Spielberg magic, but there wasn't much more of a rationale behind the choice than that.
As the movie unfolded, it looked and sounded great, with the 5.1 surround sound coming across really well, even without the presumably newer mix of an UltraHD version. Then, though, the first spaceship scene arrived, with the cherubic little Barry running around his house as a ship implicitly hovers overhead.
Team, I simply wasn't prepared for the bass response I got from my sound system, largely driven by the Sub Mini. This wasn't just a subtle bit of low-end rumble at the bottom of my consciousness; it was a full-on earthquake of sound, with the ship's futuristic technology coming across on a totally new level thanks to the bass responsiveness of the subwoofer.
This isn't the first time I've had a sub connected to my system (I used Marshall's new Heston Sub 200 recently, too), but it's probably the first time I've had everything come together at once to demonstrate just what the point of one can be. It's not cinema-level sound, but it feels like an addition that gets you closer than you might expect in your own living room.
That said, I still find the pricing of the Sonos Sub Mini off-putting, as I'm sure many others do too. Plus, there's no getting around the fact that about 30 minutes further through the movie, I had to activate Night Mode on my system, because the bass was getting so obnoxious that I felt too awkward about my downstairs neighbours hearing.
There's no wiggling out of my living situation, and I'll be in this flat for years to come, so the simple fact is that my Sub Mini might have to be deployed pretty carefully and judiciously, rather than being let off the leash all the time.
Still, it was a revelatory bit of movie-watching, and really did sell me on keeping the Sub Mini in my setup for good. Now I'm building a bit of a watchlist to see what else I can use to test it to its limits.
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