Sonos is at an impasse, and it’s mostly Apple’s fault. When what is now the largest cell phone maker in the world forced headphones wireless by removing the jack from the iPhone, the writing was most definitely on the wall.

Folks used to pile around a stereo, home theater, or pair of computer speakers in their houses, but they’d all too often use a plastic pair of junk buds that came with their iPhone (or iPod, or Walkman before that) to listen on the go. With its $150 AirPods—and subsequent AirPods Pro and AirPods Max—Apple finally brought higher-ish-end portable audio to the masses.

Just a decade later, we inhabit a world of great mobile sound. From excellent Bluetooth speakers to fantastic earbuds and over-ears, chances are the best musical experience you have in a day is now almost certainly not when watching TV or cooking dinner, it’s when you are walking the dog or working in a cramped coffeehouse. You can even stream lossless audio anywhere you have cell service (combined with Apple Music or Tidal).

This change posed a massive problem for Sonos and the streaming speaker market, which relies primarily on home internet connections, and ears in kitchens, living rooms, and bedrooms listening to music out loud, instead of on headphones. It wasn’t ready for either the scale or the pace of the shift to Bluetooth. Indeed, until just a few years ago, Sonos didn’t even offer Bluetooth in any product, let alone a pair of headphones for its fans to take with them when they stepped out the front door.

Now with a controversial ground-up app redesign, an update to its Roam Bluetooth speaker, and its first pair of noise-canceling headphones, the Sonos Ace, hitting store shelves this month, it finally seems poised to leap into the mobile market with full force.

Can Sonos convince legacy buyers to exit the home with it while simultaneously courting the massive wireless headphone market that Apple has created (and dominated) in the past few years? It’s possible, but only as long as it can continue to listen to its fans, and as long as its software updates keep coming.

Drawing straight from the leader-of-a-company playbook, right after the chapter entitled “Don’t Panic, Pivot,” Sonos CEO Patrick Spence thinks the company’s late conversion to Bluetooth is far from an issue for the streaming audio brand, it’s an “opportunity.”

A Sonos Shift

“I was talking to somebody yesterday, and they were saying how walking the dog used to be a time of like silence, and now everybody has a podcast on, or is listening to something,” says Spence. “And so this is a big opportunity: how we expand our product portfolio to deliver on the diverse wants of all the listeners that are out there—a more frictionless sound experience that moves with you as you go throughout the day.”

With the new Ace headphones (8/10, WIRED Recommends), Sonos has now finally embraced mobile. For Spence, the difference between making speakers and headphones felt distinct inside the brand, and it impacted Sonos’ strategy. He claims that the company has now shifted its internal focus to “moving sound”—products designed to seamlessly transport listeners from one situation to the other.

It should be noted, of course, that Sonos trotted out a similar line about seamlessly transitioning its listeners from inside to outside on the release of its first Roam speaker three years ago. However, Spence now sees headphones as the pinnacle of this vision for Sonos.

“It’s truly a personal product, and there is an intimacy, and I think big responsibility in making something that people will wear throughout the day,” he says, “That’s new for us, that’s different.”

Creating something that people will constantly touch and wear, rather than a speaker that they mostly interact with via an app or via a few simple buttons on top, proved to be a formidable challenge for the brand, which perhaps explains why it’s taken so long for the Sonos cans to land.

Sonos designers and sound engineers spent years making sure everything from fit (they used more than 500 different head shapes) to the gloss and durability of the paint on the headphones (which Spence admits was a shockingly annoying pain point).

Early in our conversation, Spence acknowledges that to play in a space with Apple, Sony, Bose, and other heavy hitters in audio, you need to launch with a formidable product. Anything less would spell disaster. “It’s our first entry into a $5 billion category that is growing by double digits every year,” he says. “So this is going to be the way millions of customers get to know Sonos.”

While focusing on making sure the experiences of new listeners with the Ace headphones are as good as possible, Spence concedes that the company also needs to retain existing customers who want to add a great pair of headphones to their Sonos ecosystems.

“We’ve had tens of thousands of customers that have requested that we do headphones,” he says, “So it’s pretty cool to actually be delivering something that people have been asking for.”

But heeding the cries of existing customers for cans does not bring headphones into an existing Sonos setup. To do just this, features such as the ability to use the Ace to take over for a Sonos Arc soundbar in your living room, or the ability to map your room and recreate it in the spatial audio of the headphones, aim to please long-term Sonos users.

Durability and longevity are also key. Spence claims that the brand’s headphones will be the longest-lasting on the market. Sonos has, for years, said it will support even discontinued products for five years after they aren’t on store shelves, which is better than most brands can promise.

Rough Seas

The shift to the new portable era hasn’t been without its hiccups. For one thing, the recently updated Sonos app has been buggy for a few weeks. I personally haven’t had any issues, but multiple members of the WIRED Gear team who have set up Sonos products since the recent update have experienced issues getting devices to pair, updating firmware, and generally getting them to work properly in the home.

This is a concerning trend, and one that we will keep an eye on as we continue to test Sonos’ latest products. (In addition to the Ace, we also have the new Roam 2 Bluetooth speaker in for review, and we haven’t yet had any connection issues.)

That said, the Sonos team has historically been extremely responsive to users when it comes to listening to and issuing fixes to the app as it is made aware of them. I’ve personally seen my own app and devices update multiple times during this short review period, and I expect fixes to keep on coming.

Still, it’s not great to always have to update your software, and there’s really no way to justify the new app issues other than to note them and to say that it’s clear there is truth to Sonos’ claims it is working on solving them.

Sidestepping the rocky rollout, for his part, Spence claims that the team inside Sonos is excited about the app update—and, what’s more, it was woefully necessary. “I would argue it’s the hardest, and scariest, thing for companies to re-invent something that’s working,” Spence says. “We built the new app from the ground up with a goal of delivering an experience that was easier to navigate.”

Sadly, not all users agree Sonos has achieved this goal. But it’s true that the old Sonos app was getting a little laggy due to 20 years of code written on code. Moreover, the external benefits might not be obvious to listeners now, but they will be in the long term, Spence claims, thanks to how considerably less messy it will supposedly be to implement new options in the new app. “It enables us to evolve the app faster, and it supports our move into delivering on moving sound,” Spence says.

Can Sonos Be Your Audio Everything?

In now offering speakers, soundbars, Bluetooth speakers, and headphones, Sonos is merely a pair of earbuds (Spence wouldn’t confirm or deny their development during our chat) away from making every audio product a person could need. That’s no small feat, and as long as the app woes get worked out, it could really give the brand a serious lead on virtually all competition.

There simply isn’t another brand that makes good products in every single audio category. Even players such as Samsung and LG, who also make headphones, speakers, and soundbars, tend to have a middling offering somewhere in their lineup.

“For our first 20 years, we focused on homes, and we were talking about filling your home with music,” says Spence, “Now we’ve shifted to be focused on humans in those homes, and how they interact with sound throughout the day, through all aspects of their life.”

Provided that it can keep this hardware quality up, I think Sonos’ change to “whole-life audio” will be met with the same success it had in the home.

Sure, most folks already know how good a decent pair of Bluetooth headphones can be, but the premium listening experience, and introduction to the ease of the Sonos universe at large, could make the Ace some of the most compelling over-ears since the AirPods Max. Just as soon as that darn app gets sorted out.