Beam + 2 Sonos One’s

New hear. I’ve been trying to find an answer to my question for 2 days now. Did my homework, but still can’t find an answer.

I recently purchased a beam and 2 One’s, connected to my TV through the HDMI ARC port. For some reason, there is a slight, super annoying echo when I’m watching TV. The echo only happens when I try and group the paired Ones to the beam.

Not sure if this bit of info is helpful, but I decided not to add the Ones as sureounds, because I found them to be way to quiet.

I’ve triple checked that the TV’s internal speakers are off. I’ve tried what seems to be everything. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Hi Sfmarc1981,

The Sonos home theater units (PLAYBAR, PLAYBASE, and Beam) use 5 ghz antennas to communicate with bonded rear speakers and SUBs. This is in order to keep up with the high bandwidth, low latency, audio stream needed in order to stay in sync with TV video.

When grouping players together, the Sonos system uses 2.4 ghz antennas which have longer range and better penetration, but lower bandwidth. You can bond your Sonos Ones such they they act as rear speakers in a surround setup, and they'll use the 5 ghz antennas, leading to no noticeable echo. If you group them together, however, there will be a slight echo due to the processing needed to maintain the stream over 2.4 ghz.

Bonding the speakers as rears reduces the flexibility of moving them around and playing separate audio, but should result in better performance. Here's a quick guide to bonding your Sonos Ones as rear speakers.

Sorry...just want to make sure I understand this. You can setup you playbar with surround rears in such a way that that the sound is perfect for home theatre and doesn't haven't any noticeable echo, but there is one downside for doing so, which is that if you want to play music out of them, the music must come from the playbar and rears and not just the rears. Is that correct? If so, that seems fine. I guess the only downside is if you temporarily wanted to move your rears to another room like for a party, but if so, just change their setup and you should be fine again, correct? Thanks for the clarification.

That is correct. If you’d be moving them often it would be better to get a new pair so you don’t have to constantly change the setup and tune