Question

Sonos Sound Bar + 2x Sonos Play 1's - Surround Sound vs Stereo - What gives?

  • 13 October 2020
  • 4 replies
  • 740 views
X

Hello everyone,

I’ve recently bough two Sonos Play 1’s to set up the renowned Surround for Sonos for my Game room TV.

Suffice to say the setup was a breeze trough the Sonos App and the DTS 5.1 and Dolby Surround content are absolutely amaizing, even though i have no Apple device what so ever and can’t benefit from Trueplay tunning.

Sadly i can not enjoy the Surround anymore….

However half my usage is Surround content the other half is music streamed from my PC, TV, or otherwise my DJ mixing equipment, and this involves Stereo sound.

 

Just as the surround sounds absolutely magnificent on the Surround group, stereo sound is absolute garbage. And i am completley baffled because i can play Spotify in it directly and it sounds amaizing again, but anything i output into the group sounds total garbage.

The only work around i have found so far si to break out the surround group and make a second stereo pair as a group and have them play in tandem, it now sounds exactly like when i play it via Spotify.

The problem with this is that my surround sound is now completley gone, and i can’t just make and unmake the group every time i play something else.

 

Am i missing something, an option or what gives? Is there a button i can press to make the Surround group process stereo sound like it normally does?

Or am i asking too much of this top of the line sound system?

This topic has been closed for further comments. You can use the search bar to find a similar topic, or create a new one by clicking Create Topic at the top of the page.

4 replies

N
Userlevel 7
Badge +18

You don’t specify what/why/how the stereo sound is garbage. Poor sound quality? Poor stereo separation? Or what? 
 

That said: do you have the surrounds set to “Full” rather than “Ambient” for music? That can make a big difference. You can also bias the volume towards the Play:1’s. See if that helps. 

X

I tried all the settings in the app, from Ambient to Full, from higher to lower volumes. Suffice to say some algorithm is trying to Surroundify my sound which is stereo instead of doing extended stereo on the speakers.

So because you can't make up channels the sound coming out of them is like a randomly chopped out version of the main speaker.

It's as if I play with the volume of half the speakers while you listen to the song cutting the music/voice randomly.

I would just prefer it just extended the stereo instead of trying to do anything to the sound, I mean I have heard a lot of surrounding implementations and this is by far turning music into noise.

N
Userlevel 7
Badge +18

I don’t really understand what you mean. Is the PC processing the source, if Spotify streaming sounds ok? 

X

It's the Sonos doing it to anything stereo coming into the soundbar via HDMI ARC. Playing only randomly cut pieces of the sound via the 2 surround speakers in the group and it sounds horrible.

Terms & ConditionsCookie settings