Your backyard party is peaking — the playlist is locked in, someone’s finally dancing, and your Bluetooth speaker dies. Battery dead. Sony is selling directly against that moment. The company is expanding its ULT POWER SOUND lineup with three new tower speakers — the ULT TOWER 5, ULT TOWER 7, and ULT TOWER MAX — arriving at Sony.com, Amazon, and Best Buy in September 2026 at $449.99, $649.99, and $1,499.99 respectively. These aren’t cosmetic refreshes. Four sound profiles, Auracast broadcast, XLR inputs, and tuning shaped by hip-hop producers suggest Sony is pitching something closer to a plug-and-play event rig than a party speaker.
Four Modes, One Button
The real upgrade isn’t louder bass — it’s a four-profile ULT sound system that finally gives you options beyond bass-or-nothing.
The new ULT button replaces the two-mode setup on current ULT Tower 10 and 9 models with four distinct profiles:
Sound Profiles
- ULT1 — deep, low-frequency bass that saturates the low end
- ULT2 — punchy, attack-style bass built for physical impact
- FLAT — neutral, source-accurate reproduction with no coloration
- LIVE — spacious staging with vocal clarity, simulating live performance
Connectivity & Hardware
- Auracast™ broadcast (Bluetooth LE Audio) streams simultaneously to multiple headphones or speakers — separate from Party Connect, which links up to 100 speakers
- XLR, RCA, and USB-C inputs alongside Bluetooth, making these viable for DJ setups and semi-pro rigs
- Battery: up to 30 hours on Tower 7, 20 hours on Tower 5; Tower MAX runs on AC
- Upgraded wheels on Tower 7 and MAX; redesigned carry handles across all three
FLAT and LIVE are what actually separate this lineup from everything Sony shipped before. DJs and producers who need a party speaker that doesn’t embarrass itself during monitoring will notice. Sony says the tuning emerged from co-creation with hip-hop producers and audio engineers — part of its ongoing “ForTheMusic” initiative — explaining why a neutral monitoring mode made it onto a party speaker spec sheet at all.
The Price of the Party
The ULT TOWER MAX is priced like event hardware, because that’s essentially what it is.
Three woofers, four tweeters, and a high-powered amplifier for $1,499.99 puts the MAX in small-PA territory — built for backyard concerts, not casual birthdays. One honest caveat: IP ratings and codec support, including LDAC, haven’t been disclosed yet. Spec-driven buyers should hold that question until launch day.
Tower 5 and Tower 7 are where most readers will land. Twenty and thirty hours of battery, expanded connectivity, and Auracast support at mid-tier prices make these the direct competitors to JBL’s PartyBox lineup. Sony’s artist partnership history — Post Malone, Peso Pluma — has informed actual tuning decisions before, not just campaign visuals, which lends the sound profile claims reasonable credibility.
September 2026 leaves time to see what JBL and LG bring to the fall. But if your current speaker has been running on borrowed time for two summers now, the Tower 5 is probably the conversation worth starting.
