Today, Sony announced that it would launch two new speakers compatible with 360 Reality Audio, its spatial audio technology that reproduces the sensation of live music, placing different sounds and vocals in a virtual sphere around it. She said her plan is to release them this spring, but she did not share what the speakers would be like. We didn’t have to wait to learn more about them, as Sony’s UK site now has full product pages for the next SRS-RA5000 and SRS-RA3000 speakers.
The latest generation SRS-RA5000, pictured at the top of this post, will have three up-firing speakers, three side speakers and a woofer. It is also certified for high resolution audio. The SRS-RA3000, pictured below, has two tweeters, two passive radiators and a full-range driver.
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Both speakers can be calibrated for the environment they are in with an internal microphone and a “Sony exclusive algorithm”. With the SRS-RA5000, you must press and hold a button on the speaker, while the SRS-RA3000 can calibrate itself automatically. Both speakers also have Sony’s automatic volume feature, which adjusts the volume of each track automatically to play them at a consistent volume. And both speakers are compatible with Amazon and Google Assistant from Amazon.
The SRS-RA5000 will cost approximately £ 500 / € 599, while the SRS-RA3000 is priced at around £ 280 / € 359, according to the press release on Sony’s UK website. This also says that the two speakers will arrive in February 2021, which is slightly earlier than the previous “spring” date that we had heard before, so there may be different launch dates in different regions.
Sony said it is expanding the 360 Reality Audio platform from audio to video on Friday, and the company is working with major labels and service providers to start streaming video content with the codec later this year. Approximately 4,000 songs currently support the format, according to Sony.