Sonos S2 received audio format indicator for Line In/TV sources beyond just Atmos

  • 11 June 2020
  • 6 replies
  • 464 views
david82
Userlevel 3
Badge +4

Now that S2 has arrived and folks are sending in their hate mail since their favorite feature wasn’t included (or exactly the way they wanted) I figured I would jump up on a very small and rickety soapbox for my gripe.

Sonos has shown they have the UI skills to surface the received audio format information into the UI I’d love to see it expand to the format beyond just the DD/Atmos logo for the Arc. basically, surface any of the information we all currently have to dig into the About My System screen to find.

The Atmos logo is a start; complete the process.

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6 replies

controlav
Userlevel 7
Badge +23

That is weird. It is trivial to determine the audio source, if the work was done for Atmos, why not show all the codecs? Third party apps have shown the codec on Now Playing for years.

The Sonos engineering team really could help out the Sonos Support team with a few simple tweaks, and this is an opportunity lost.

Author of the leading independent Sonos app for Windows, the only Sonos app for Xbox, and a Sonos app for iOS
melvimbe

I can somewhat see, pre Arc, where the format displayed was less important.  You generally were receiving dolby digital, and you’d hear audio from the rear speakers if you had them, or PCM, and you would not.  Once you knew you were setup properly to get DD from a specific source, there wasn’t a lot of need to see it on the phone screen. And of course, if you don’t have rare speakers, the codec you’re receiving is even less important.  With the Arc, you can’t 100% confirm whether you are getting Atmos or 5.1 audio just by listening, and it does matter even with no surround sound present.

 

I wouldn’t be against them adding the codec display for all codecs, for the Beam and Amp as well. Just not sure I would really care that much.

Danny
C

Agree with the above. As a Technology Product Manager myself I’d see little value in just showing Atmos on the Playbar/Beam/Arc control screen. 

Hopefully it’s in the product roadmap for S2, I find it tedious to go into settings on my Playbar to view current source audio. 
 

If it’s in the product backlog please put it in the next sprint Sonos. It’s useful to know what format of audio is being received at a glance. 

H
Userlevel 2
Badge

Please add this feature, I want to see if I'm getting 5.1, stereo, DD, DD+ etc.... Most content is 5.1. it can't be that hard..

 

J

Please add this feature, I want to see if I'm getting 5.1, stereo, DD, DD+ etc.... Most content is 5.1. it can't be that hard..

 

It isn’t JUST a question of whether it is easy or not.  It’s a question of prioritising this against a whole host of different possible changes, big and small, easy or hard, when resources are (as always) finite.  The benefits of all these possibilities have to be considered.  Every change has to be tested to make sure it works and doesn’t have some unforeseen effect somewhere else.  

I am not arguing against it, but I would be a wealthy man if I had a £/$ for every different ‘simple’ change Sonos have been urged to make while I’ve been contributing to the forum.

H
Userlevel 2
Badge

I wouldn’t concentrate so much on the last word of the statement, but more so about the request. No one said the decision is based solely on the its difficulty level, it was just a passing comment. Try not to fight against requests, but embrace users feedback and together product maker and users can achieve the best result.

 

Back to the request, the reason i feel this feature needs to be elevated is because there is a lot of confusion and trouble shooting regarding the output of the Sonos arc. You only have to spend 2 minutes looking online to discover there are ALOT of people out there trying to make their semi compatible tvs work with atoms and sonos arc. Only having a single earc port maybe very “apple” of sonos (however, i think that trend will die but that’s another story) but it also restricts  a lot of older tvs. Some tvs output atmos lossy via standard arc, and others don’t. When you don’t, it would be helpfully to know what you are receiving.

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