Sonos CEO Patrick Spence on right to repair, spatial audio and those never-ending lawsuits

techcrunch.com:

This morning Sonos announced a pair of speakers. The Era 100 is a $249 stereo system that replaces the popular One speaker in the company’s lineup. The $449 Era 300, on the other hand, is an entirely new entry, focused on bringing the emerging world of spatial audio to the product line.

We had the opportunity to demo the upcoming products at a press event in New York City a few weeks back. After seeing how the speakers work, we sat down with Patrick Spence, who marked five years as CEO back in January. We discussed the emergence of spatial audio, the state of the smart home, and how a seemingly endless stream of lawsuits between Sonos and Google impact its day to day.

Image Credits: Brian Heater

TC: You have to make a choice between Spatial Audio and stereo. These couldn’t accommodate both?

PS: Not with the waveforms, all of the amps and everything we would need in it.

It’s a component constraint?

And design. Also a space issue. You see how big the 300 is, and what we could pack into it to get to room filling spatial. Right now, trying to do that for a product that size would not get us to what we want. We’re kind of at the forefront of where spatial is. So, it’s like, how do you create, starting from scratch, the best product to really celebrate spatial? We felt with this product, since it’s really been a mono product, that we could do stereo and really up its level of quality and sound.

I don’t know how many years it will take, as we move from stereo to spatial. I’m confident that it will happen, but it’s not going to happen overnight. For those who really want to feel the music and get into Spatial, we’ve got the Era 300. For many people who maybe aren’t there yet, in terms of getting on the spatial bandwagon, and they’re