buying decision: Ultra or Era 300s?

@jonmichael 

Difficult to say without knowing how each setup will sound in your room. 
Just speaking for myself I would go with Arc Ultra as the best home theater master device. First user reports are talking about a huge improvement of sound compared to the old Sonos Arc.

If you get satisfied with the setup, everything is fine. Otherwise you still can try to replace the in wall speakers with a pair of Era300. But under such suboptimal conditions I probably won’t invest the money on 2x Era300 as rearspeakers. 

I'm waiting to hear more about how the Ultra improves on the Arc for speech which is my only real issue with the Arc. If that is improved a lot the Ultra and selling the Arc is likely. 

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Hi @Stanley_4 

Nearly the same here… I never thought about buying Sonos Arc, because for me there wasn’t such a huge difference  to Beam2 using them in a setup with sub and rears. Also Arcs dimensions were a bit too large for me. But now after reading some user reviews on Reddit there’s a little Hammer in my head trying to persuade me to buy Arc Ultra, a new tv and tv furniture. 🙈😂

I fear the hammer is going to win the „battle“… there is a little hope for me that Sonos will also release a next generation of Beam that also improves by using the new sound driver technology. And I‘m sure that such a Beam would fit for me perfectly, but… I can’t imagine that it will be released the next few months. And waiting for something that even is not announced or isn’t part of some rumors is less to stay strong against buying Arc Ultra. 😉

Not sure how good your speakers are as rears, but era 300 x2 for surrounds are extremly good for atmos content. I would get the x2 era 300 first and uppgrade to arc ultra in future. I just sold my Arc to get a Arc ultra and that uppgrade is also very much worth it. 

@Alebaler

Under good room conditions of course a 50:50 option… but OP said, the ceiling isn’t at the same hight all over the room. So Era300s rear highs probably won’t work as expected to.