The Sonos Ray is one of the best budget soundbars, and thanks to a new update this little speaker is now an even better pick for your cheap audio needs.
However, some Sonos Ray owners have reported hearing an odd buzzing sound while playing low-pitched pitched audio through it. This issue was also picked up by our friends at What HiFi in their testing, and while it doesn’t affect every Sonos Ray (we were lucky enough to avoid it with our review model), for some users this audible vibration can be a nuisance.
Following What HiFi’s report, Sonos was reportedly able to recreate the issue, and has now released a fix via the Ray’s latest firmware update.
According to Sonos, the issue was caused by the speaker playing tones of around 55Hz. Because of its design this is the resonant frequency of the speaker’s bass port, and so playing audio at this pitch could lead to chuffing – essentially large amounts of air were moving through ports when they shouldn’t be causing the irritating tone.
Sonos says this issue has now been mitigated by tweaking the system’s low-end response, meaning that the buzz caused by chuffing should be much less of an issue.
Considering that the previous fix that was suggested was picking up the Sonos Sub subwoofer – currently priced at $749 / £749 / AU$1,099 – this free update will be welcomed by those who were attracted to the Ray’s budget-friendly price; a cheap Sonos sound system isn’t really that cheap if you’re paying over $1,000 for it.