How to Build the Best Multiroom Wireless Speaker System for You

The primary advantage of a closed system is that you don’t have to put a lot of thought into it once you’ve decided on which brand to buy. Many brands that offer closed audio systems sell a variety of speakers at different price levels, as well as adapter products that let you add your existing audio gear to the system.

Setup occurs via the company’s own control app, and you then use that app to launch streaming services, access your personal music library, and add/remove speakers and zones during playback.

A good closed system is easy to set up. Everything takes place in one app, and you get access to certain lifestyle-oriented features—like sleep or wake timers, accessibility features that make searching for and queuing music easier, and integration of multiple music streaming services into one interface, which might be handy if you subscribe to or have free accounts for more than one.

Closed systems also generally make it much easier to add your own source devices to the party, which might be appealing if you’d like to broadcast music from a turntable, CD player, or hard drive to multiple rooms throughout the home. You have to buy the company’s adapter devices to do it, though, and sometimes they’re pricey.

Closed systems are generally a better option for a home with multiple users. These systems often make it easier for different people to take charge of the music in different zones at the same time.

They also make sense if you live in a house divided when it comes to smartphone and/or computer preference. Most of these systems rely on control apps that are typically available for both major mobile operating systems, as well as PC and Mac.

You’re at the mercy of a single manufacturer, which could go out of business or just make poor decisions. This is the biggest downside to going the closed route. If the company decides to radically overhaul the platform, it can dramatically alter or even break the system for some users, either temporarily or permanently.

Sonos, the pioneer of multiroom wireless audio systems, has done this several times during its existence. Most notably, in 2020 it introduced an entirely new operating system and rebranded existing devices as “S1.” This meant that older and newer Sonos speakers would now be using different apps and not function together as a single system.

Earlier this year, the company redesigned its control app to work with its new headphones, and in doing so broke a substantial amount of functionality, including alarms and sleep timers, accessibility features, local music library support, and the ability to edit song queues and playlists. Needless to say, customers were not pleased. The company has been fixing the problems and pledges to do better.

Risks aside, if simplicity and compatibility are your top goals, it’s hard to beat a closed system. Here are our thoughts on some of the big players in this category.

BluOS: A simple system that sounds great but costs more

If you want a luxurious wireless speaker system or you particularly prioritize the navigability and intuitiveness of the company’s control app, we love the BluOS platform and specifically the Bluesound Pulse M speaker.

It isn’t the perfect system for everyone, in that there aren’t as many speakers to select from and most of the compatible products are pricey. But the BluOS app is one of the most intuitive we’ve tested, it supports all of the streaming services we think most people will likely subscribe to, and the company continues to make refinements that improve the user experience.

The Pulse M speaker really is a pleasure to use. The highlight is the proximity-sensing, capacitive-touch controls, which light up as your hand approaches and provide volume and playback control. It’s the sort of thing we normally tire of once the novelty has worn off, but after spending well over a year with the Pulse M, we still get a thrill from physically interacting with it.

Overall, the sound of the Pulse M is quite nice, with good neutrality in the midrange and a wide, room-filling soundstage. The optional Front Row audio-processing mode adds a bit of punch and energy that you may or may not prefer, depending on how close you are to the speaker and the types of surfaces in your room.

Bluesound’s speaker line is pricier and more limited. The company sells three other tabletop speakers ranging in price from $350 to $900, but in our opinion none of them compare with the Pulse M as far as design. If you like the look and feel of the Pulse M, though, you could build an entire whole-home system based on this speaker.

You can also build a multiroom audio system using compatible hi-fi components from sibling companies NAD and PSB, though these are pricier brands geared more toward the audiophile community. Bluesound also sells soundbars, subwoofers, streaming audio players like the Node, and streaming amplifiers such as the Powernode and Powernode Edge that let you integrate your own speakers into the system.

The BluOS app is stable and intuitive. When Lenbrook, the parent company behind BluOS, makes upgrades, they’re always incremental and, in our experience, have always been for the better. The system has never been crippled by a massive overhaul that removed functionality and locked some users out of future upgrades.

But most days, you might find that you don’t need to use the app at all, since the Pulse M also supports AirPlay, Bluetooth, and voice control from Alexa and Siri.

Sonos: Great speakers at a variety of prices, but the company’s control app is iffy

Despite everything we said above about Sonos’s track record, the company still makes excellent-sounding wireless speakers and soundbars. Sonos’s app supports the most streaming services (126 at last count), the company has a wide selection of speakers, and it’s quite easy to combine two speakers into a stereo pair or even build a 5.1-channel home theater system.

Sonos offers a lot of speakers at different price levels. Prices for tabletop speakers start at $180 for the portable Sonos Roam 2 and go up to $550 for the large Sonos Five. We particularly like the great-sounding Era 100 ($250) and Atmos-enabled Era 300 ($450).

IKEA offers Sonos speakers, too: the IKEA Symfonisk WiFi Bookshelf Speaker, Symfonisk Speaker Lamp Base With WiFi, and Symfonisk Floor Lamp With WiFi Speaker, as well as the Symfonisk Picture Frame With WiFi Speaker.

If you already own passive speakers that you’d like to use with your Sonos system, you can connect them to the Sonos Amp. If you want to add your record collection to the Sonos ecosystem, you can connect the Sonos Port, which features a single analog input that can work with your turntable, as well as analog and digital outputs that you can connect to your receiver. There’s also the $20 Sonos Line-in Adapter, which allows you to connect an external source directly to newer Sonos speakers such as the Era 100 and Era 300.

The sticking point with Sonos is not the quality of its hardware but the reliability of its software. Namely, the control app. On the plus side, the app has always made it easy to set up speakers, group them into zones, add or remove a speaker during playback, and launch music from all the integrated streaming services.

On the downside, connectivity between the speakers and app is less reliable than it is on the BluOS platform, and the new app is still a glitchy mess, despite the fact that Sonos is rolling out fixes that purport to undo some of the damage done in the big May 2024 update (see above). Sonos’s own voice-control capabilities are also lacking compared with those of Alexa and Google.

But because all of Sonos’s speakers support AirPlay, and some support Bluetooth and Alexa, you aren’t completely reliant on using the Sonos control app once you’ve set up your speakers. You can use other platforms for daily interaction, and there’s also a third-party app called Phonos that some Sonos users speak highly of.

Heos: If you already own audio gear from Denon or Marantz

Denon’s Heos multiroom system is integrated into speakers and audio products from Denon and its sister company, Marantz. If you’ve already built a home theater or hi-fi system around a Denon or Marantz receiver, such as the AVR-X1800H we recommend in our AV receiver guide, you already have the beginnings of a Heos system in place. You can build off that with Denon’s own tabletop speakers, ranging from the Home 150 NV ($220) up to the Home 350 ($700), as well as a soundbar, subwoofer, and stereo amp.

In the past, we’ve dismissed Heos due to its limited speaker lineup and the meager number of supported streaming services. Both concerns remain—especially the fact that the Heos app natively integrates only Amazon Music, Deezer, iHeartRadio, MOOD:Mix, Pandora, SiriusXM, SoundCloud, Spotify, Tidal, and TuneIn. In other words: no Apple Music (unsurprising, although you can connect via AirPlay), no Qobuz (slightly more surprisingly, but ditto), and no nugs.net (a bummer if you’re into jam bands and live music like I am).

The Heos app has improved over time. In a pretty substantial update last year, Denon overhauled the Heos app and added some much-needed quality-of-life improvements, including a handy now-playing box, universal search capabilities, and more personalization options.

We wish there was more variety in terms of available wireless speakers, but we do like that the Denon Home speakers support AirPlay, as well as both Alexa and Siri voice control. While Heos is not perfect, Denon and Marantz fans will be happy to hear that it’s much better than it used to be.

Nest Audio: If you want to spend as little as possible—and control the system mainly with your voice

If any of the systems above cost more than you’re willing to spend, you might find that Google’s Nest Audio platform is more than good enough for your needs—especially if you plan to control playback primarily with your voice. Nest Audio straddles the line between closed and open systems because you can set it up and use it a lot like the other closed systems above, via the Google Home app for either iOS or Android, but the inclusion of Google Cast technology opens up the system to work with a lot more products.

The Nest Audio is a smart speaker with Google Assistant. This speaker can respond to voice prompts, answer questions, offer directions, and control some smart-home devices like lights and Nest thermostats. Obviously, it’s not compatible with Alexa, nor does it support AirPlay or Bluetooth.

The $100 Nest Audio speaker is the only audio-focused speaker in Google’s line for now. (The tiny Google Nest Mini is good for smart-home control, but it’s not a great audio performer.) The Nest Audio speaker is small enough to fit in any room, it’s available in a variety of colors, and it sounds quite good for the money. Its bass is a little better than you might expect for a speaker of its size and price, although its sound isn’t as detailed as what you can get from Sonos’s entry-level speakers. Its midrange isn’t as neutral, either, so voices don’t sound quite as natural.

Even though Google’s own speaker options are limited, Google’s Cast technology is built into a ton of devices—including TVs, streaming media players, and soundbars—so you have many ways to build a multiroom audio setup. (Look for products with Chromecast built in.) For instance, in our tests we used the Nest Audio speaker along with an Nvidia Shield streaming media player in one room and a Vizio TV connected to an AV receiver in another.

The Google Home app isn’t our favorite for multiroom audio. It doesn’t make it as easy or as intuitive to add and remove speakers and zones as Sonos and BluOS do (we discuss this more below in the Android section). But if voice control is a priority for you, Google’s implementation is the best among all the closed systems we’ve tested. It almost always found the song we were seeking.

Natively, the platform lacks built-in support for a lot of popular music services. Technically, only Apple Music, Deezer, iHeartRadio, Pandora, Spotify, and YouTube Music are integrated. Still, assuming that you subscribe to any of the above services, we’ve concluded that the Nest Audio’s limitations are far outweighed by its solid audio performance and the fact that it isn’t constantly trying to sell you something the way similarly priced Amazon Alexa smart speakers do.