Sonos brings India’s sonic heritage to life with an immersive showcase

The lights dimmed inside Soho House, Mumbai. On stage, sitar virtuoso Purbayan Chatterjee and jazz pianist-composer Merlyn D’Souza took their places, fusing Indian ragas with blues motifs in a performance that silenced the crowd into awe. The evening marked the launch of Sonos Sound Suites, an India-first experience designed to showcase how music transforms when heard in an environment tuned for precision and intimacy.

For the California-born brand, already celebrated globally for studio-grade sound in homes, Mumbai was not just another stop. It was an entry into a country where musical tradition is rich, layered, and emotionally charged.

A Listening Experience, Not Just an Echo

At the centre of the event, a Sonos Sound Experience Engineer hosted private sessions, making one thing clear: Sonos is not in the business of selling boxes with drivers and tweeters. It is selling a connection. The core philosophy is built on a long-term vision for sound, where the product is not static but evolves with the listener.

"The really good framework that we've historically built at Sonos is the fact that you can buy a speaker and it's only ever going to get better," Harry Jones - Sound Experience Engineer at Sonos, explained on the sidelines. "With every software update that we make, new features are added. It's almost like an investment, a Sonos speaker, because you can nurture it in a way and it's going to grow."

The Cinematic Conundrum: Bringing the Big Screen Home

A common frustration for modern film lovers is dialogue getting lost in a sea of explosions and swelling scores. The engineer noted this is a problem Sonos tackled head-on by fundamentally re-evaluating speaker architecture.

"Fundamentally, Arc was actually acoustically completely redesigned from the ground up," he revealed. "It's the first time that we've had forward-facing, direct LCR (Left, Centre, Right) drivers. We now have a dedicated centre channel, and a dedicated left and right channel, as opposed to doing all these sort of arraying tricks. It sounds a lot more studio."

This studio-centric approach also acknowledges the journey a film's sound takes from the mixing stage to your living room. The booming audio of a cinema does not translate directly to a smaller space. "That's the version that goes onto Netflix," he said of the specialised home mix. "It exists in a bit more of a compressed and controlled way. The dynamic range isn't as big, just to make sure people aren't leaning for the remote control all the time."

To bridge that final gap, Sonos developed an intelligent solution. "We're actually using AI and source separation to detect when dialogue is present and only enhance the dialogue when it's present, and if it needs to be enhanced. So if the dialogue is already clear, then we don't do anything."

Spatial Audio, Humanised

One of the highlights was how the brand framed spatial audio, a buzzword often dismissed as a marketing gimmick. In the demonstration, vintage recordings were played alongside modern pop tracks, showcasing how the Era 300 speaker placed instruments and vocals across the room, enveloping listeners in distinct layers. The difference was palpable: warmth, texture, and movement instead of flat loudness. It was less about effects and more about recreating the feeling of people playing in a room.

This commitment to authenticity is maintained through constant collaboration. "We work with creators tirelessly all the time to make sure that their content is coming across in the right way on our systems," Jones affirmed.

The Final Frontier: Your Living Room

Even with the most advanced technology, the final listening experience is shaped by the user's environment. According to the engineer, the single biggest habit that can compromise sound quality has nothing to do with settings or codecs.

"I would say it's probably the number one: the placement of the speaker," Jones stated. "We're seeing a lot of these unfortunate trends these days where people are making these media walls, where you have a sort of recessed gap for where the soundbar goes. What people maybe don't realise is that we use out-firing and up-firing arrays. What happens is it's just a really horrible mush of energy at the soundbar, and people say, 'I can't understand the dialogue,' and it's because it's got nowhere to go."

Why India, Why Now

For Sonos, the choice of Mumbai was no accident. Classical music in India is experiencing a resurgence, with younger audiences rediscovering traditions and older listeners craving new ways to engage with them. Rennie Addabbo, General Manager of Sonos APAC, framed it as cultural timing: "With Sonos, we want to connect Indian homes more deeply to their sonic heritage, to the people and content they love."

There is a lifestyle angle too. India’s luxury consumers are increasingly investing in home experiences, from vinyl collections to curated art, and Sonos wants to position itself as the sound equivalent of fine furniture or design lighting.

As the evening at Soho House drew to a close, it was clear that Sonos is betting on a philosophy of equal parts science and soul. The Sonos Sound Suites are only the beginning. In the coming months, the brand will collaborate with tastemakers ranging from vinyl archivists to visual artists, shaping an ecosystem where listening is both ritual and art. For Mumbai’s creative community, the night was more than a product showcase. It was a reminder of how music, when experienced at its most immersive, can make even a crowded room feel like a private moment with the artist.