...but I don't want a smaller soundbar

Atari_Prime wrote:

Shepdog wrote:

I’m evaluating options for the future. Honestly I’m very happy with Sonus. For those who are moving on, what are you moving too? I don’t see any viable options that do what I want better than what Sonus currently offers. I love Sonus but I will change in a heartbeat if I see a better value. Currently I do not.

Now that he lawsuit is resolved, I think I will be sticking with Heos. They cater more to the high end audio market. The Heos 7 is hard to beat and the Heos Bar and Heos Subwoofer is a great combo.

Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio support...

4x HDMI inputs with HDR10 and Dolby Vision passthrough...

?

Sonos still spouting lies

Trying to say the beam is better than your tv, some tvs are decoding Dolby true HD and your new beam soundbar can only do 20 year old Dolby digital no high resolution audio that’s lame

Sonos can’t claim this is better quality than in built tv sound it’s far behind tvs in audio bitrate

Chris wrote:

Depends on what a person wants. If person wants more feature. This wasn’t the big announcement for them. If someone wanted a low cost alternative to playbar etc. great alternative. I mean it’s priced to sell a lot (with Alexa included). May not be what each of you personally may want but I’m willing to bet they will sell triple the amount of those as playbar and playbase combined this year. Fail for Sonos ??? Don’t think so.

From a general sales perspective I suspect you are right. What is disappointing for those qanting to soend more, rather than less is that sonos don’t seem to have a roadmap for that part of the market. Yes they have the 5s and the sub, but the brains and the front and centre are severly dumbed down when you look at the competition.

I think had Sonos presented the Beam, along with a higher end centre speaker with hdmi audio and ability to use 5s as L/R there would have been only a small fraction of the frustration and disappointment being vented.

Commercially however it seems that Sonos have taken the decision that catering for the ceap and cheerful is their future and where they’re targetting sales. I’m sure this will drive sales (whether that translate to aubsrantial profits remains to be seen).

I suspect that many of us venting today are heavily invested and feel let down in general terms, maybe not by this specific launch, but by general lack of upgrades available. The kit we’ve invested in has hit the ceiling in terms of HT. no pun intended before the atmos dude gets excited.

I bought a playbar and all the rest not 3 months ago. Never expected a new one so soon, and never expected the old one to be updated in any way. It is what it is. I bought knowing the limitations at the time. BUT i did have high hopes - whether justified or not - maybe driven by discussion on this forum - or simply looking at what pratcially everyone else in the industry is doing - that there would some day be an upgrade path. and I fully expectsd to have to oay for it.... yes take my money!!! But that seems not to be the case at least for a great deal longer. Ffs, lots of more modern kit does not even come with a toslink any more!!!’

I hope the Beam does well though. So well that maybe sonos can reinvest some cash to develop a grown up version rather than a fisher price version.

Good thing for Sonos is I want to wait for HDMI 2.1 tvs anyway, but if by 2019 or 2020 they don’t have a modern product I will be moving to the Samsung Atmos soundbar

I've always been an avid Sonos promoter but i feel that we've been let down yet again by Sonos not listening and taking note of its loyal, committed user base. I can't describe the feeling of sheer dejection that i'm feeling at the minute. It just proves without doubt that they don't give a rats arse about us and the vast amounts of hard earned cash that we've all spent.
I never expected to say this but i'm definitely going to look at other alternatives for my TV and Home Theatre listening. Goodbye Sonos!!!!

The other issue I have is my country doesn’t get Alexa anyway so Sonos is not offering me anything that almost every other manufacturer doesn’t do and do better, everybody is now doing multiroom audio and Sonos is betting on smart voice feature that aren’t available in my country anyway so I have no reason not to move to something like a Samsung system that is going to do everything Sonos does and more and do it better

Sonos aims for Quantity not quality imho. To bad, no new sonos for me.
Playbar 2 with hdmi and atmos and i would have ordered a complete home theater system....

While we're on the subject of size, I have a more general question. I have an LG OLED TV, and the Beam is 2.7" tall so too high to sit in front of the TV. Does anyone know if it can go on the shelf of a TV cabinet? Or do the speakers go around to the sides? (My other option is a PlayBase, but I don't want my TV raised by a couple inches.)

If your cabinet has panels on the side of the shelf then the left and right wide channel sounds will be blocked

Well that settles it, selling the playbar, My house is littered with Sonos, like others I was hoping for an Atmos version playbar. I'll keep my 14 other sonos speakers in the house, but with home theatre I have been patient with this announcement. It really wan't much of one. I mean nothing that could not have been rolled out.

So, here where Im going. Either going with the Sony ST500 atmos sound bar or the Samsung Atmos K950 with the upward firing rear surround speakers. I have invested a lot in a new TV and found only a handful of times that i used the playbar for music. I'll keep the sub and learn to "group" it somehow with my main floor sonos 1,and 3, and 5

The n950 is coming soon so sit for it don’t go with k950, the n950 adds the two side channels and does 7.1.4 and also adds dtsx the n950 supports basically every sound format out there and has the most Atmos speakers

The n950 soundbar has 17 speakers and the wireless rears have 6 speakers and the sub has the single driver so that’s 24 speakers in total in that package compared to the 14 you get with Sonos 5.1

Naekyr wrote:

If your cabinet has panels on the side of the shelf then the left and right wide channel sounds will be blocked

.

Thanks. Not the answer I wanted, ha ha. What about mounting on the wall above the TV? (Even though my TV isn't wall mounted.) I guess that would look a bit ugly. I'm just not meant to have a soundbar!

Iphish wrote:

Well that settles it, selling the playbar, My house is littered with Sonos, like others I was hoping for an Atmos version playbar. I'll keep my 14 other sonos speakers in the house, but with home theatre I have been patient with this announcement. It really wan't much of one. I mean nothing that could not have been rolled out.

So, here where Im going. Either going with the Sony ST500 atmos sound bar or the Samsung Atmos K950 with the upward firing rear surround speakers. I have invested a lot in a new TV and found only a handful of times that i used the playbar for music. I'll keep the sub and learn to "group" it somehow with my main floor sonos 1,and 3, and 5

This was the last straw for me. I'm not only selling my Sonos 5.1 system, but all of my Sonos gear. I'm moving on.

I listened to the Sony HT5000 at Bestbuy yesterday and for not having any rear speakers it sounded pretty good. I really like how Sony has configured the HT5000 to support so many codecs (Atmos, DTS:X, Dolby True HD, DD+) and it passes both HDR and Dolby Vision. This is the type of compatibility that I wish Sonos would use with the Playbar. The HT5000 would be the perfect system - if it had rear speakers. D'oh!

I'm going to wait for the Samsung N950 to come out and see how it stands up.
The Nakamichi Shockwafe 7.1/9.2 system looks good also.
Most UHD blu-ray discs are coming in Atmos now. Whatever I end up getting, it's going to have Atmos that's for sure.