I don’t see why speaker phantoming would be necessary since your setup already includes all five channels for 5.1 audio. The Beam includes separate drivers for the center, left front, and right front channels and the SYMFONISKs include the left surround and right surround channels. Phantoming would only be necessary if one or more of these channels were missing from your setup.

Yeah that does make sense, but I’m now realizing that windows seems to playback surround audio as either Dolby Atmos (for the very few games that support it) or Dolby multichannel PCM 7.1, at least as reported by the Sonos app.

Does this mean that channel phantoming should be left on regardless as windows is always playing in 7.1 and my system is only capable of 5.1? Every game or movie I’ve tried (that isn’t atmos) is always reported as 7.1.

Go with the setting that sounds the best to your ears.

EDIT: Do you have the Digital Sound Out setting on your TV set to Auto or Pass Through? Do you get the same audio reported on the Sonos app on both settings?

So I’ve had it on pass through until now and just tried auto. I’ve tested it on games that I know support surround audio and pass through results in the Sonos app reporting Dolby multichannel 7.1 while auto results in Stereo pcm.

Regardless of auto or pass through however video files with a 5.1 track show as Dolby multichannel PCM 5.1 and atmos tracks are still atmos.

I pretty much only have a PC connected to my TV/Sonos when playing games so I only really care about getting that right but might just settle this as a windows quirk cause I’m not sure what else to try.

EDIT:  I finally got the Sonos app to report Dolby multichannel 5.1 by setting the tv sound out to Auto and setting windows to Dolby Atmos and configuring the speakers so that the right and left side speakers are disabled while leaving rear surrounds on. Now to figure out if this actually makes any meaningful difference lol