Adding 7.1, 9.1, etc. to Playbase/Playbar

All these arguments may or may not be valid. My objection was purely to the completely subjective judgement as to what constitutes a 'proper' system. Having DTS and 7.1 makes a system... a system with DTS and 7.1. It doesn't qualify it for an official stamp saying 'proper'.

Saying Sonos isn't a 'proper' home cinema system is just a meaninglessly disparaging comment. You are perfectly entitled of course to continue to highlight its limitations at every opportunity if you wish.

If it was a proper home cinema system at the time of launch, I'm quite sure that Sonos wouldn't have a) hastily updated the promotional website and b) wouldn't have offered all early adopters a full refund.

It's a nice soundbar and I shall enjoy using mine again in my home gym, when (ironically) I get around to wiring it up.

I own both systems, I know the difference.

Sonos can provide a limited home cinema experience but with poor audio format support. A Playbar/base for enhancing audio whilst providing streaming music services as part of a Sonos system is it's forte.

All these arguments may or may not be valid. My objection was purely to the completely subjective judgement as to what constitutes a 'proper' system. Having DTS and 7.1 makes a system... a system with DTS and 7.1. It doesn't qualify it for an official stamp saying 'proper'.

Saying Sonos isn't a 'proper' home cinema system is just a meaninglessly disparaging comment. You are perfectly entitled of course to continue to highlight its limitations at every opportunity if you wish.

Its not really meaningless. I am a big supporter of Sonos and have been since the first time I heard a Play:1. I spent the cash and bought the full 5.1 for my home. I'm about to demote it, though. Read on:


Not as good as DTS! Why? What can you hear? One will sound different to the other but better? I don't think so.

What can I hear? How about the surround channels I paid for? I recently started watching Blu-ray movies again after going on a summer-long streaming binge. I was looking forward to that uncompressed picture on my UHD display. I was really dismayed to hear my surround channels drop down to a whisper,. I checked my Sonos app to find that my action movie was playing in stereo through my Sonos system, because the thing can't play DTS. Of course the answer to this "cutting edge system with great 5.1 sound" that can't play DTS is to go shell out $250 for a down-converting BR player, instead of Sonos waking up and offering a Playbar with an HDMI input, or at least offering DTS decoding in software if we use HDMI to ethernet in.

And about that streaming... The long standing reason Sonos has offered for not supporting higher bitrate codecs above DD5.1 is that "most users" stream instead of use physical media, and since streaming services use DD5.1, there's no reason for DTS. But now shows across various services are coming through in DD+, I understand, which explains why now I am seeing stereo on Netflix movies and shows instead of 5.1 playback. So what happens when this change is across the board, and even broadcast tv starts using higher codecs? What excuse will we hear then?

Right now I'm in the middle of building out two rooms at my house. One will be a dedicated viewing room, one will be a more general purpose entertainment room. I can't see going to the trouble of setting up a viewing room for an excellent display, with a theater couch and soundproofed walls, and then putting my Sonos system in there. Not if my viewing is increasingly getting reduced to stereo sound. More likely my Sonos will be relegated to the general purpose area, because just as Sonos thinks "most users" won't have a problem with the lack of DTS, I'm sure most of the people that come to my house to shoot pool or play foosball won't care about it since my Sonos system will just be background noise. Kind of like a metaphor of how Sonos appears to the increasingly sophisticated HT market.

So what do I get to replace it? I was looking at HEOS, but thats even more money for what will probably end up being the same problem as bandwidth needs increase. I refuse to use anything from BOSE. Not much else out there, because most everything uses a sound bar of one kind or another, and I prefer to control the separation of my channels. (Sonos is very odd in that respect, as sometimes I get amazing effects off to the side, and other times the sound path seems very narrow. I'm sure its the mastering that has a lot to do with that, but I've never seen a wired system that was so sensitive to mastering.)

It looks like I might be going back to good old fashioned twisted copper wire. There was a great article I read a few months back about using a pair of Atmos-enabled speakers and getting some pretty amazing sound that rivaled a basic 7.1 system.
Or maybe I'll pull out my excellent two channel stereo components, have them repaired, and use that. It wouldn't be much different to what I have now, since I'm listening to stereo over my awesome 5.1 Sonos system right now anyway...

I think we established on another thread that you had made the perfectly reasonable choice that Sonos wasn't for you as your main home cinema setup. I wish you great pleasure with your replacement.

Personally, I am happy with Sonos, having long since gone through the slightly irritating hoops that were needed. I consider it to be a proper home cinema system, although certainly far from the best possible.

Each to their own.

Proton - Thanks for adding your voice to the thread.

FYI, most of the HT fans I know regard 5.1.2 (Atmos) as better than 7.1 with the same number of speakers. The height channels do make a huge difference and incorporating both surround and rear speakers in a home set-up isn't very practical.

I recently switched from PLAYBAR to a Denon AVRX3300W separates system. At £450, it works amazinly well and I find speaker wiring easier to hide than chunky Sonos speaker power cables. Combined with Q Acoustic 7000i Plus speakers, it delivers all the codecs, all of the time with loads of HDMI inputs and two outputs which can each display a different source.

Saying Sonos isn't a 'proper' home cinema system is just a meaninglessly disparaging comment. You are perfectly entitled of course to continue to highlight its limitations at every opportunity if you wish.

I really agree with John here. It's becoming a bit boring to click on a thread and know what a post by a certain user will say without even having to read it. It is a Sonos forum after all, and not a generic AV one, so constantly bashing it (as opposed to having a discussion) seems in bad taste.

One point I'd like to reiterate is that if you're really into your various codecs and lossless home cinema audio, I cannot understand why Sonos is even an option for you. I mean it doesn't even stream 24bit lossless for music, so why anyone expects it do more than DD5.1 is beyond me. They've made it very clear their audience is the streamers, and not the hi-res disc watchers.

I think we established on another thread that you had made the perfectly reasonable choice that Sonos wasn't for you as your main home cinema setup. I wish you great pleasure with your replacement.

Personally, I am happy with Sonos, having long since gone through the slightly irritating hoops that were needed. I consider it to be a proper home cinema system, although certainly far from the best possible.

Each to their own.

I don't recall the thread you speak of. I'm glad you're happy with your system. I am too. Its just getting left behind, unfortunately.

I really agree with John here. It's becoming a bit boring to click on a thread and know what a post by a certain user will say without even having to read it. It is a Sonos forum after all, and not a generic AV one, so constantly bashing it (as opposed to having a discussion) seems in bad taste.

Relax, Francis. No one is bashing the equipment. Should I go through everything I like about it prior to asking a question, just to accommodate your feelings? Should I bring up how well-built it is, how good it looks, how much I enjoy it - when it works?

This is a support forum, not a fan club. You're going to see dissatisfied people. And as long as Sonos is a viable company - one which I want to see succeed because I like their products - I would hope they'd want to see in detail what people expect, so they can improve, innovate, release cool stuff we want to buy more of. Its also a great place to find user workarounds because lets face it, a lot of us are seeing the same limitations. If it weren't for these discussions, I would never have found out about the switching products that Monoprice sells, nor would I know about the transcoding Blu-ray players I'll now have to buy just so my Sonos can play the 5.1 sound I paid for.

One point I'd like to reiterate is that if you're really into your various codecs and lossless home cinema audio, I cannot understand why Sonos is even an option for you. I mean it doesn't even stream 24bit lossless for music, so why anyone expects it do more than DD5.1 is beyond me. They've made it very clear their audience is the streamers, and not the hi-res disc watchers.

First, no they didn't make that clear, as others have pointed out. The Sonos info for 5.1HT made it seem like it would work well with both streaming and physical media, but it glossed right over the DTS limitation. And as others here have pointed out, the furor over that meant Sonos changed the ad copy instead of working on better technology.

Second, I didn't even know about all these codecs when I bought my system.

I'm pretty sure I'm one of the small number of people here who would have been considered an audiophile 30-35 years ago. I spent a few years in the business, and many more years optimizing my own systems before finally getting out of it all in the mid-late 90s. The last I knew of surround it had gone from SRS to ProLogic to AC-3, or what we now call "Dolby Digital 5.1". I simply stopped caring. I used an exceptional quality 2 channel system for home cinema, and not a single person who heard it thought it was deficient compared to a multi-channel system. Then I finally bought an AVR and did a 3.1 setup and there I stayed for years.

When I became interested in audio again a couple of years ago, it was actually a direct result of hearing a Play:1. I became fascinated with the wireless mesh network, and how great a single speaker could sound, driven by a digital source. When I found Sonos had a 5.1 setup, I looked at the rats nest of stuff I had accumulated around my ancient audio video furniture from the CRT days and decided it was time to clean everything up. I wanted my floor back. All I knew about codecs then was you had Dolby Digital vs DTS. My garbage AVR at the time had about twenty different decoders built in, all stuff I'd never heard of but they all seemed to be permutations of DD or DTS. I never used them, had no idea what they were, and certainly never had problems listening to my stuff while ignoring them.

So I bought the Sonos HT. Once I got into it I learned about all the other multichannel codecs out there, and I was briefly interested in extending the system. I wished for more channels, but I really didn't care. I was fine with it. Everything seemed good until I started losing audio capability this summer. I now have the choice of adding the new 9500 disc player - and truthfully, I needed a new player anyway - or looking at other options.

Finally, I don't use Sonos for a serious listening system. Though current music sounds pretty good on it, it does a terrible job with the classics. Sonos is better for a room to room experience, whereas my dusty old 2 channel system, once repaired, sounds far better with any source. I just have to figure out how to get my music into my 27 year old preamp.

Proton - Thanks for adding your voice to the thread.

FYI, most of the HT fans I know regard 5.1.2 (Atmos) as better than 7.1 with the same number of speakers. The height channels do make a huge difference and incorporating both surround and rear speakers in a home set-up isn't very practical.

See, I didn't even know Atmos was 5.1.2 - I have no idea. I just know that my system is increasingly running in stereo when I paid for 5.1 HT.



I recently switched from PLAYBAR to a Denon AVRX3300W separates system. At £450, it works amazinly well and I find speaker wiring easier to hide than chunky Sonos speaker power cables. Combined with Q Acoustic 7000i Plus speakers, it delivers all the codecs, all of the time with loads of HDMI inputs and two outputs which can each display a different source.


I saw your thread about that. A friend on another forum rabidly endorsed the 4 digit Denon AVRs, and recommended that I get into one if I drop Sonos. You got a tremendous deal on yours, BTW. Did you get around to spreading those front channels apart? I thought it was kind of a waste of channel separation that you had them all clumped under the display. Then again, I have a Playbar so I shouldn't criticize... 😃

If there is one category of consumer that Sonos has never targeted it is those who self-identify as 'audiophiles'.