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So I’ve done alot of testing listening to 5.1 surround and Dolby Atmos videos and movies. I’ve found that the Arc Ultra plays surround sounds through the soundbar even though I have connected 2 Era 100s as surrounds. On top of this the volume in the Era 100s is extremely low. If I turn up the “Surround”-slider it increases both the Eras but also the sound coming from the Soundbar and the issue persists.

It’s really distracting as it ruins the soundstage. Sounds that are supposed to come from behind now are audible from the front. Not only that but the Arc Ultra has a stronger treble than the Era 100 which makes it even more noticable. I tried EQing in hopes that maybe I could just “live with it” but honestly for the price I really shouldn’t have to compromise.

I’ve researched online and found people with similar issues in posts that are over 45 days old and in them people claim “Sonos has acknowledges the issue and are working on a patch to fix it.”. Considering it’s over a month and a half ago I’m starting to doubt they ever will. And I’m not going to have a faulty piece of expensive equipment sitting in my house HOPING that they might someday fix the issue.

I’ve tried doing Trueplay multiple times. It does the same thing with Trueplay turned on and off. I did however find a temporary “fix” in a post saying to use the Simple Trueplay rather than the Advanced one as appareantly the Advanced one is bugged for the Ultra. I did that once and the volume in the Eras came back but I can still hear surround sounds coming from the Arc Ultra. So it’s a fix but also not. With Trueplay turned completely off though the issue comes back and Eras are quiet while surround plays from the Arc Ultra.

I upgraded from the Beam Gen 2 and never owned the normal Arc so at first I thought maybe this is just how the Arc Ultra simulates Dolby Atmos. But after some research online I found that apparently this issue didn’t exist in the normal Arc.

I’m strongly considering returning the Ultra and just finding a used Arc and purchasing that instead which is currently going for half the price of the Ultra.

Is there any fix to this? 
And if not, are Sonos actually aware of the issue and working on it?

I have also heard of this challenge, can't remember if Era300 is also affected by this, but I suspect they are.

I have noticed that my Era300 were not powerful enough when the distance was set to less than 0.6M if I turned up the surround the sound became louder but never super good.
It was like the sound did not become clearer just louder.
Now they are set to 0.6-3M and the sound became significantly better and do not need to turn up the surround by more than +1-2.

I do not know if other settings will affect this but my speech enhancement is turned off.

It sounds like the Ultra is designed to spread the sound out into the room on its own and "forgets" to disconnect its spread when surround speakers are added. Whether this was intentional in the past to increase the experience of surround I do not know, but it does seem strange that sound designed to come from the back comes from the front.

Hi ​@Fortea 

Welcome to the Sonos Community!

I found the following information for you:

Side channels are virtualized by both the Arc Ultra and the Eras. Customers can use the “Surround Audio” features to adjust the sound level to their preference, but there are a few important points to note:

  • Setting it to “Less than 2 feet (0.6m)” reduces the volume from the rear speakers.
  • Setting it to “More than 10 feet (3m)” increases the volume from the rear speakers.
  • Surround TV Level and Music Level Slider Behaviour: The surround level sliders adjust the sound level for both the Arc Ultra and the surround channels equally. This is the intended behaviour since surround channels are rendered by both the sound bar and rear surround speakers.
  • Using Surround Distance Setting to Adjust Rear Sound Levels: The surround distance setting can be modified to influence the output level from the rear speakers relative to the sound bar:
  • Perceptible Differences: While the surround distance slider adjusts the levels equally for both the Arc Ultra and the surround speakers, testing indicates that listeners may perceive differences in the sound from the listening position, as described above.
  • Impact of TruePlay: The surround distance setting is disabled when TruePlay is active, as TruePlay automatically corrects for this. To adjust the surround distance, TruePlay must first be disabled.

There is a larger discussion on our recent Reddit Office Hours event.

I hope this helps.

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