Contributor I

Answered

Quick Detach Speakers & Custom Profiles

6 replies
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Ive two suggestions for product features. This is based on my experience of Arc Ultra / Era300 Surrounds.

1 - Detach a Surround speaker temporarily - So into its own environment / room (so for example if having guests and need something in the kitchen occasionally). Then re-add and it rejoins in one click with previous settings (but possibly suggest a profile tune)

2- Quick EQ Presets - Where the surround levels/Bass/Treble/Vocal levels/Height Channels etc are all saved and you can switch. For example at night you may want night mode, less bass, more vocal. Day mode all up! A Sport event, maybe louder surrounds and height than a film.

Both of these seem straightforward and massively overlooked. I get Sonos do multi room in relation to question 1, but its a bit overkill to purchase an extra speaker for occasional use. Likewise with the presets, its as if the kit gets tested but not real world as this seems very basic when factoring neighbours, listening environments, what gets watched etc and when

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Corry PAnswer

Sonos Staff

Hi @PaulSt

Welcome to the Sonos Community!

Thank you - I've marked this thread as a feature request and it will be seen by the relevant teams for consideration. Keep the ideas coming!

A bit of feedback for the feedback, if you don’t mind:

This is rather unlikely. There is no standard/method for how to handle surround audio when there is only 1 speaker acting as a surround. This is probably the main reason why Moves and Roams cannot be used as surround sound speakers - in case someone walks off with one of them! As we deliberately prevented Moves and Roams from acting as surrounds for this reason, I doubt we will move to allow it to happen with non-portable speakers. We refer to a surround sound system setup as semi-permanent for a reason - it can be undone, but is it not to be subjected to vagaries.
This sounds like a good idea to me! In regards to bass and treble, this is not a new concept, of course, but I do not know the reasoning behind why we do not already have EQ pre-sets (like Rock, Pop, Classical, Concert, etc. that you see on other devices). Including the surround/height levels in (user-made) pre-sets is a very interesting thought.

Thanks again!

Edit: @jgatie typed faster!

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein

jgatie

Asked for many times, explained many times why a quick switch is not possible. Here’s an example:

It’s important to understand what is at work here. When adding surrounds, the radios are reconfigured to a one-way dedicated 5 GHz connection from the soundbar to the surrounds. This requires a series of handshakes to get right, which is why adding surrounds takes a bit of time. The reverse happens when the surrounds are removed. So therefore, an “easy toggle” between the two is not possible. They could place a hot button that does the add surrounds/remove surrounds at the touch of the button, but that is not going to speed up the actual process, and doesn’t save much from the system menu commands we have today.

All of this is because the type of connection used for the low latency connection needed for synching video to surrounds/sub is not adequate for the more robust, but buffered connection needed to go through walls and floors in order to group separate rooms together.

Corry PAnswer

Sonos Staff

Hi @PaulSt

Welcome to the Sonos Community!

Thank you - I've marked this thread as a feature request and it will be seen by the relevant teams for consideration. Keep the ideas coming!

A bit of feedback for the feedback, if you don’t mind:

This is rather unlikely. There is no standard/method for how to handle surround audio when there is only 1 speaker acting as a surround. This is probably the main reason why Moves and Roams cannot be used as surround sound speakers - in case someone walks off with one of them! As we deliberately prevented Moves and Roams from acting as surrounds for this reason, I doubt we will move to allow it to happen with non-portable speakers. We refer to a surround sound system setup as semi-permanent for a reason - it can be undone, but is it not to be subjected to vagaries.
This sounds like a good idea to me! In regards to bass and treble, this is not a new concept, of course, but I do not know the reasoning behind why we do not already have EQ pre-sets (like Rock, Pop, Classical, Concert, etc. that you see on other devices). Including the surround/height levels in (user-made) pre-sets is a very interesting thought.

Thanks again!

Edit: @jgatie typed faster!

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein

P

PaulStAuthor

Contributor I

Appreciate the info and response. I’ll be honest, whilst I’m not fully up to specs on the Sonos system and networking systems, that excuse from Sonos seems a bit weak why it cant be done.

Im not asking for any 1 speaker to act as surround, just 1 x Era300 surround speaker, that can work on its own for music only standalone without the Arc etc and connect to Spotify to play music. Hot drop into solo mode. Even if this means switching to some sort of Bluetooth Music Only mode. You can even have different music playback modes for the surrounds, so Full or Ambient. Make it so its full, and mute the Arc?

I genuinely didn't think I was asking for much and assumed the WIFI/Bluetooth tech was a little more advanced than perhaps it is? I'm not asking for multiroom at all, just a breakout speaker occasionally for the Kitchen/Garden if entertaining. I’ve headphones that auto connect to multiple devices, laptops that move between WIFI networks all day long, a phone that can jump between WIFI/Bluetooth etc and all have been doing this faultlessly. Network & Wireless switching advanced a long time ago.

For me the problem as a new Sonos user - I find myself reasonably impressed by the audio, but at the same time, the user interface and app experience seems very clunky and underdeveloped and lets them down and if anything would definitely have me questioning adding more Sonos speakers to my house outside the TV/Surround system.

jgatie

Appreciate the info and response. I’ll be honest, whilst I’m not fully up to specs on the Sonos system and networking systems, that excuse from Sonos seems a bit weak why it cant be done.

Im not asking for any 1 speaker to act as surround, just 1 x Era300 surround speaker, that can work on its own for music only standalone without the Arc etc and connect to Spotify to play music. Hot drop into solo mode. Even if this means switching to some sort of Bluetooth Music Only mode. You can even have different music playback modes for the surrounds, so Full or Ambient. Make it so its full, and mute the Arc?

I genuinely didn't think I was asking for much and assumed the WIFI/Bluetooth tech was a little more advanced than perhaps it is? I'm not asking for multiroom at all, just a breakout speaker occasionally for the Kitchen/Garden if entertaining. I’ve headphones that auto connect to multiple devices, laptops that move between WIFI networks all day long, a phone that can jump between WIFI/Bluetooth etc and all have been doing this faultlessly. Network & Wireless switching advanced a long time ago.

For me the problem as a new Sonos user - I find myself reasonably impressed by the audio, but at the same time, the user interface and app experience seems very clunky and underdeveloped and lets them down and if anything would definitely have me questioning adding more Sonos speakers to my house outside the TV/Surround system.

You aren’t asking for multi-room, yet you are asking to move it to the Kitchen/Garden. As explained, if the unit remains tethered to the soundbar via the low latency one-way connection, all sources must go through the soundbar, which means it is multi-room, and therefore not reliable.

Believe me, dozens of people have tried to out engineer the actual engineers, and have failed. Physics wins, every time.

P

PaulStAuthor

Contributor I

Yes, not multiroom, just the ability to use an era300 in another location independantly. lets say I'm entertaining in the Kitchen or Garden, I want to move one Era300 to that location to play music. I don't want music playing anywhere else, just that location.

A simple button to disconnect it from the SoundBar quickly so its no longer a surround speaker and running independently, be it connected to my home WIFI or just Bluetooth as a one speaker system.

Same way you would use say a B&W Zeppelin or JBL portable speaker basically

jgatie

Yes, not multiroom, just the ability to use an era300 in another location independantly. lets say I'm entertaining in the Kitchen or Garden, I want to move one Era300 to that location to play music. I don't want music playing anywhere else, just that location.

A simple button to disconnect it from the SoundBar quickly so its no longer a surround speaker and running independently, be it connected to my home WIFI or just Bluetooth as a one speaker system.

Same way you would use say a B&W Zeppelin or JBL portable speaker basically

As was said above, “a simple button to disconnect it from the SoundBar quickly” isn’t possible. You would need to reconfigure the radios from the one-way ad-hoc 5 GHz connection to the soundbar to the 2.4 GHz two-way standard connection and perform the handshakes necessary for that reconfiguration. This is why adding/removing surrounds takes a little time, and there’s no way to speed that process up for a “quick” reconfiguration.

Also, to add to @Corry P’s point above, if you disconnect one surround, what happens when someone turns on the TV? Where does the surround sound go? What comes out of the other surround speaker?

Stop trying to out think this, it’s not going to happen.

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