US 7,571,014 · Granted 2009-08-04

The Sonos Patent That Invented Wireless Multi-Room Audio

Imagine controlling music playing in your bedroom, kitchen, and living room all at once—or separately—from one remote or phone app. This patent describes the system that lets you group different speakers together so they play the same song in sync, or let each room play something different. It's the tech that made Sonos the company that turned your home into a concert hall.

Curated and verified by the IsItPatented Editorial team

The plain-English version

What it protects

The patent covers a method for controlling multiple audio players spread across different rooms or zones. What's protected here is the ability to dynamically group these players together, sync their playback, and control them remotely from a single interface—whether that's a controller device or app. It also covers how the zone grouping configuration gets saved and managed, and how you can adjust volume for individual zones or for an entire group at once.

Why it matters

This patent is foundational to Sonos's entire business model. Before this technology, playing music throughout your home required either running wires everywhere or dealing with multiple separate speaker systems that couldn't talk to each other. By patenting the ability to wirelessly link speakers into groups and control them as one unit, Sonos essentially invented the category of wireless multi-room audio systems. It gave the company a significant competitive moat in a market that has since exploded.

Real-world use

Every time you open the Sonos app and tap to play jazz in your kitchen while your friend's rock playlist continues in the living room, you're using the exact coordination system this patent protects.

Original USPTO abstract

Techniques for controlling zone group and zone group characteristics such as audio volume in a multi-zone system are disclosed. The multi-zone system includes a number of multimedia players, each preferably located in a zone. A controller may control the operations of all of the zone players remotely from any one of the zones. Two or more zone players may be dynamically grouped as a zone group for synchronized operations. According to one aspect of the techniques, a zone group configuration can be managed, updated, modified via an interactive user interface provided in a controlling device. The zone group configuration may be saved in one of zone players. According to another aspect of the techniques, the audio volume control of a zone group can be performed individually or synchronously as a group.

Patent details

Publication number: US 7,571,014
Filing date: 2004-06-05
Grant date: 2009-08-04
Assignee: Sonos, Inc.
Inventor(s): LAMBOURNE ROBERT A., MILLINGTON NICHOLAS A. J.
CPC class: H04S7/00

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