Hacking the Sonos
Ikea Symfonisk Into a
High Quality Speaker
Amp
CONNECTED HOME
HOME
MAKER NEWS
TECHNOLOGY
By Ben Hobby August 16th, 2019
As soon as I saw IKEA’s announcement for a
$99 Sonos-powered Airplay speaker, I was
excited for the possibilities its internals could
bring. And oh boy, was I right to be. In this
tutorial, I’ll show you how to whittle away the
woefully inefficient compact speaker unit, and
bring it to life on a pair of quality vintage
bookshelf speakers.
Just a quick note about speaker selection. Be
sure to select a pair of speakers that are (A)
set up for bi-amping (eg. four input terminals
instead of the standard two), or (B) a set of
two-way speakers that you aren’t opposed to
dissecting.
Tools required:
#2 Phillips Screwdriver (Possibly #1 as well, if
you’re picky)
Needle Nose Pliers
Spudger or pick (if you don’t have fingernails
long enough)
While there isn’t much information out there on
disassembly of the speaker, a little bit of
hunting around the sealed plastic enclosure
revealed that the fabric tab with the Sonos and
IKEA logos on it functioned as a pull tab to get
the grille off.
This reveals the three acoustic elements, a 1
inch rubber done tweeter, a 3 inch woofer, and
a curved tuned port. The rubber inserts that
suspend the grille in place are firmly seated in
their holes, requiring the needle-nose pliers to
remove.
Underneath each insert is a Loctite sealed #2
phillips screw, which will each give out a small
pop when unscrewed, due to the threadlocker
releasing.
Next is the tricky part. The front panel, with all
the speakers, is sealed to the case by a friction
fit foam strip. The easiest way to remove it is
to wedge as many fingers as you can into the
bass port, and hook them around the bend
(towards the tweeter) and pull firmly and
consistently. Be careful not to yank the whole
assembly too hard, as there are a few
connections to the motherboard inside that
can be quite fragile.
Once it’s free from the foam seal, it’s easiest to
open it up like a book, in order to get to the four
spade connectors, two per driver, and the small
flex cable for the buttons and status lights.
There are two different size spade connectors
per speaker, a smaller one for ground, and a
large one for the positive terminal. Be careful
removing these, they are locking spade
connectors, meaning that if you pull directly on
them, something important will give instead of
the connector. Pull back the clear heat shrink,
and locate the small locking tab. Squeeze this
down with the needle-nose pliers as you pull,
and they come off with little to no effort.
Next is the tiny, fragile 8-pin flex cable, and
corresponding connector, which the
motherboard uses to connect to the front panel
controls and indicator light. After peeling back
the small oval-shaped foam tape covering the
connector, use a spudger, or a fingernail, to
open the latch, and gently lift out the end of the
cable.
Now that the front panel is completely free, we
get our first real look at the internals of the
speaker, and WOW, is it impressive for the
price. We’ll take a closer look at the
motherboard later, but just as a precursor, we
can see three large, name brand capacitors, a
socketed wifi card (meaning a feasible wifi
upgrade years on), and properly isolated high
and low voltage sections of the PCB.
We’re next going to remove the brace that
holds the foam-wrapped speaker cables in
place. One short #2 phillips screws on each
side of the plastic part come off, and with
minimal effort, you can remove the cables and
ferrite core from the clips.
The speaker cables have their own socket and
connector, but watch out, as it is yet another
locking connector. Use the end of your
screwdriver to push the small rectangular latch
towards the body of the connector, while
simultaneously giving the cable a gentle tug.
On the opposite corner of the motherboard, the
AC power input has a similar connector, which
is removed in the same way. Next to that are
the two wifi antenna cables, one red and one
yellow. It is easiest to remove these by
removing the blob of hot glue they are seated
in at the same time. If it all comes out in one
unit, reassembly outside of the case will be
easier. If not, peel away the excess hot glue,
and prepare for the microscopic job of
reconnecting the two coaxial connectors.
Next, remove the six screws holding the
motherboard in place. Be careful with the four
screws closest to the bottom of the unit, as
they are threaded into a cast aluminum
heatsink, and require just a bit more torque.
Remove the board from the enclosure, turning
it diagonally to avoid the internal ribbing of the
enclosure.
This surprisingly large heatsink is held in by
three more phillips screws, but be careful not
to damage the two thermal pads when
removing the screws. Remove the heatsink,
and use four of the six motherboard screws to
affix it back to its spot on the board.
Now that the motherboard and heatsink are
one again, we can look closer at the board, and
marvel at the quality of it. A good mixture of
cheaper and more compact SMD components,
as well as appropriately beefy through-hole
components. Each side of the board has its
own EMI shielded enclosure, with the computer
on the front, and the amplifier on the back.
Plated mounting holes, heavy doses of
solastic, and name brand components all jump
out as features of much more expensive
circuitry.
Back to the front panel, we can remove the four
small phillips screws holding the button
assembly to the panel. Remove these, and the
buttons, rubber membrane, and small
daughterboard are freed.
Now, slowly peel the flex cable from the bottom
of the enclosure, as it’s needed to connect the
two circuit boards. It’s worth noting that the 8
contact pads of the flex cable face towards the
circuit board upon reinsertion. Remove the two
phillips screws around the AC socket, and
reconnect it to the motherboard for testing.
Next up are the two oddly angled antennas in
the top of the enclosure. Engineering-wise,
these feel like an afterthought, as they each
have their own plastic bracket connecting them
to the enclosure, instead of having their
mounts molded into the plastic, like all the
other components. Speculation aside, they’re
easy enough to remove, using a bit of force on
the bottom of each bracket breaks the strong
double-sided tape holding them in, and the hot
glue holding the antenna cables into the
enclosure is easy enough to break.
Now we have all the electronics free, it’s time
to connect them to the speaker and give it a
quick test. This is what you should have in
front of you.
Along with a speaker, of course. This is where
things start to differ. As mentioned in the
beginning of this tutorial, you will need either a
bi-amp-able speaker (i.e., separate terminals
for woofer and tweeter) or a two-way speaker
for which you can bypass the internal
crossover. These are two discrete digital
amplifiers, one for the tweeter, and one for the
woofer. Bridging them not only causes the
amplifier to shut down, but it may damage your
$99 pile of circuit boards and wires.
The connections are as follows, for the tweeter,
red for positive, black for negative, just like the
textbook says. For the woofer, blue for positive,
and white for negative. A polarity swap isn’t the
end of the world, it’ll just cause your two-way
speaker to be out of phase with itself. I have
my board connected to a vintage JMLabs bi-
amped two-way bookshelf speaker, as shown
below.
Plug in the AC cord, launch the Sonos app, and
launch the real star of the show, the TruePlay
tuning feature baked into the app, and your
board. Follow the directions, disregarding that
your speaker isn’t in its final resting place, as
you can simply retune it later. The TruePlay
software quickly adapts the digital crossover
within the board, allocating the correct
frequency ranges to the woofer and the tweeter
of your speaker, making it sound near perfect.
ben hobby
@benhobby
20 year old bookshelf speaker being tuned by futuristic
software courtesy of a gutted $99 IKEA sonos speaker.
Watch on Twitter
4:57 AM · Aug 17, 2019
87 Reply Share this Tweet
Read 26 replies
And there you have it! One half of the perfect
budget Sonos system. Repeat the procedure
for your second speaker, maybe build yourself
a nice enclosure for the electronics, and relish
in the glory of a beautiful pair of Airplay-2,
Sonos-enabled, TruePlay-tuned speakers for a
few hundred bucks.
Tagged Airplay ikea Ikea hack
network sonos speaker symfonisk
Ben Hobby
Ben Hobby is a
18 year old maker
(and destroyer)
from Maryland.
When he isn’t
building 3D
printers, CNC
machines,
electric scooters,
or raiding yard
sales, he studies
mechanical
engineering and
music at the
University of
Maryland,
Baltimore County.
