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Alan-64
Contributor I
April 24, 2023

Full Equalizer?

I have several new Sonos speakers (including the new Era 300) and notice that the ‘S’ and ‘T’ sounds in several songs sound very thin and ‘tinny’ (almost like coming from ‘cheap’ tweeters).

What I’d like to do is turn down the treble a bit (highest highs) without losing the mid-range frequencies.  Therefore, instead of just two sliders (Bass & Treble), I’d like to see no less than five sliders (Bass, Lows, Mids, Highs, and Treble).  I suspect doing this would be fairly simple to code into the app and would resolve tonality issues for many Sonos users.

Sonos could go one step further and allow users to save a few profiles for different types of music (perhaps as a future update)...

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    T_Rence
    Contributor I
    November 30, 2023

    Any updates on the Full Equalizer band Application for Sonos, I couldn’t believe they literally only have Treble & Bass as the only settings, come on Audiophiles !!!

    Give us one of those 20 Band Equalizer Stacks, Adjusting Mid Levels is the most enjoyable!

      jgatie
      jgatie
      November 30, 2023

      Any updates on the Full Equalizer band Application for Sonos, I couldn’t believe they literally only have Treble & Bass as the only settings, come on Audiophiles !!!

      Give us one of those 20 Band Equalizer Stacks, Adjusting Mid Levels is the most enjoyable!

       

      Sonos never gives updates on what they are working on.  However, I would not expect a full band equalizer.  Sonos leans heavily towards Trueplay automatic equalization, which is the opposite of a manual full band equalizer. 

        ratty
        ratty
        November 30, 2023

        To quote the Trueplay blog article: 

        Trueplay (the spectral part of it) does it for you. It does it quickly (in a minute or so) without any special equipment, just an iOS device with the Sonos app. The parametric equalizer embedded in Sonos products has sixteen filters—just try to adjust that by ear!

         

        In my experience the only way to manually configure a multi-band PEQ/GEQ acceptably is if someone or something has done a response sweep first and auto-generated the corrective adjustments. A good example is the AutoEq project for headphones based on Oratory1990 et al.

          T_Rence
          Contributor I
          December 1, 2023

          That is good point Ratty - There essentially needs to be an engineered effort of providing an equalized true raw baseline of which each equalizer band is then contemplated to its maximum capability or “Acceptable” capability.

          Would be good to hear how Sonos explains their approach if has been posted elsewhere

          Bimmerite
          Lyricist II
          December 30, 2023

          For Christmas I bought myself a pair of Era 300’s for my home office.  I’ve been playing with stuff since.  I’ve even signed up for the Beta program as it would be nice to provide input as development of this cool product line continues.  I really like these speakers.

          One thing I’ve been playing with is TruePlay.  Honestly, I’m not particularly impressed.  I’ve run it several times and find that 4Khz and above is severely muted; meaning you can’t hear cymbals or high hats.  The 250 Hz to 2000 Hz range has too much gain giving it an almost “AM radio” sound.  Even the voice range seemed to have too much boost making it sound muddy.  It wasn’t horrible but it wasn’t good either.

          Turning off TruePlay and all of sudden, even with the EQ flat, voices became clearer and I can actually hear cymbals and high hats again.

          Ran TruePlay multiple times.  When I had just one Era 300 setup I could use the “basic” version and that helped a little but once I made them a stereo pair I had to use the iPhone for TruePlay.  At first I thought I may have done it wrong but I ran multiple times and even followed recommendations online especially for small rooms.  It helped little.  It improved when I brought the volume from 25% to about 35% but that was just too loud with the family home (at least for them :-D)

          My point, TruePlay is cool but it will never be perfect because everyone’s ears hear different.  Everyone’s personal listening preference is different.  Heck, I wonder if my 1960’s heavy popcorn ceiling might be part of the issue.  I see TruePlay as a base to start from but not the end all be all because it has to have some type of standard to reach and that great for the “everyone” but not so great for the individual.  And ultimately, it’s the individual that has to listen to it.

          I think that the Sonos app should have at least a 5 band or better a 10 band equalizer for those of us who would want nerd knobs.  For those wanting to keep it simple is easy enough; leave the existing settings and have an “Advanced” button.

          These Era 300’s are amazing.  With the directional tweeters I see no reason why it couldn’t have a simple sound staging slider as well.  It would just adjust gain to those speakers and possibly delay (which would be determined by the initial TruePlay run).  

          I get Sonos wanting us to use their magical tool (which really isn’t magical; it is basically applying EQ along with gain per driver and delay) but just offering treble, bass, loudness just seems almost like I’m being punished for not being happy with what the magical software decides.  This is especially relevant because of the quality of this hardware:  well made, well designed, the software is feature rich but actual sound control is very much lacking.

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