Beam and stereo pair

My rear speakers have no stereo separation during music playback

I may have to just upgrade to Playbar

Rear speakers SHOULD have stereo separation as long as you are feeding it a stereo source

Upgrading to a Playbar is unlikely to resolve your problem.


You could try and fault find the issue yourself by starting with removing the surrounds from the Beam in the controller and then set them up as a new room stereo pair (You don't need to physically move them). Then play a really good stereo track and confirm they are playing in stereo. Add them back as surrounds and set the music playback as "Full" and play the same track. Try it with the "Full" setting switched off. If you are still getting mono then submit a diagnostic and post the number here and/or call Sonos - it's possible some interference issues are causing this or even a hardware fault on the Beam

I’ll try that later and let you know

Is there possibly a setting on my tv which I have set wrong

Is there possibly a setting on my tv which I have set wrong

Not Unless the source of the music is the TV or if you’re routing the audio through the TV

Ok took everything off my Sonos,added beam then added 2 play 3’s and now everything in glorious stereo with lots of separation

Is it just my imagination,if I set music playback to full in surround settings when I play music my two play 3’s are much louder than usual,by this I mean max volume is much higher

I just bought a Beam but I haven't realise that I can't have an additional pair of front speakers 😞 I bought it to have a wider stereo sound with better speakers when watching TV and it looks like that it is not made for this. It will have to return it to the shop. I am still a bit confuse while I can't have a central sound from the Beam and stereo from my two Play 3? It seams a waste of an opportunity.

Not sure where you would get that idea as it's made quite clear that you can only connect rears and a sub to the beam. As stated above the beam already contains the front three channels, it would require a completely new system with a dedicated centre speaker and that would then pair with the two play 3's.

Ultimately, that seems highly unlikely and at that point you're better off just getting a receiver based system.

@vazandrew: It is clear when you install it, I didn't find it clear on the web site but It didn't know what I was looking either.

Anyway, would it be difficult to have the Beam working on mono (central speaker) and have the attached pair doing the stereo? Is that a stupid idea?

Another question: when I am just playing music (spotify) the to Beam+ attached pair/the rear speakers, the music only plays on the Beam and not sound comes out of the pair. Is that normal?

It is also made clear on the website.

Again, the beam is already a 3.0 speaker. It can’t suddenly become mono. It would require a completely new speaker that was made to be purely a centre speaker. If you’re looking at better separation then you shouldn’t be getting a Soundbar in the first place and are better off with a receiver and separate speakers.

When playing music, make sure the rears are set to full, rather than ambient, within the sonos app settings (room settings - advanced audio - surround settings)