Hi @AdamOstgaard 

Welcome to the Sonos Community!

This is correct - TruePlay affects EQ, timing and reflection correction but not overall balance.

For Home Theatre, you can adjust the balance of the surround speakers as shown in our Change surround audio settings help page.

With Stereo Paired speakers, you can adjust the balance as described in our Adjust the bass, treble, balance, and loudness help page.

I hope this helps.

I may be missing something here but…

To ‘compensate for distance’ wouldn’t Trueplay need to know where you were sitting?  What if you moved?  

My wife sits slightly closer to the right rear speaker.  I sit slightly closer to the left.  How is Trueplay to keep us both happy?

@John B When you tune with TruePlay on a home theater setup it asks you to sit at your normal listening position, the balance should be adjusted for that position. Of course the balance would be slightly off if you are not in that exact position, but not as off as if no compensation would be done. All other home theater systems I’ve ever owned either did this automatically, through a microphone, or you could tune it manually. 

To try to explain further I have used my amazing drawing skills:

I want the sound balanced for the green spot as I’m mostly listening/watching alone and want to sit at center of the TV and soundbar, and when I have people over neither them or I care too much. With my old receiver/speaker setup the automatic calibration sorted this out for me, and if it didn’t I could just boost the left back channel a few db.

Of course it might not be a problem for completely symmetrical setups, but I feel like the overall balance is one of the most basic things that has to be nailed for a home theater system to give a immersive surround experience. 

@Corry P Thank you for the clarification, even though I was hoping that that was not the case. If I adjust the balance as described in the articles you provided I can get it to sound slightly more balanced, though i think the granularity of the balance setting should be finer to get it perfect. What is really infuriating though is that the balance setting is turned off when TruePlay is on. I essentially have to choose between balanced L/R sound or TruePlay tuned EQ. This seems like a very weird design decision. I would understand if it was disabled if TruePlay tuned distance as well, but this just seems like lazy programming... 

@AdamOstgaard 

TruePlay disables balance due to the mathematical environment modelling TruePlay performs and how it can then use that model to manipulate the sound reproduction in that environment. So although TruePlay doesn’t affect balance, they are functionally incompatible.

I recommend you disable TruePlay and use the best balance and EQ settings you can find. Your point about the granularity of the control is noted - with balance especially, finer control would be good.

Just curious about how “the mathematical environment modelling TruePlay performs”, and then uses “that model to manipulate the sound reproduction in that environment” can not take in balance left and right and front and rear. Why would you have to sit in the usual listening position and walk through the room is distance to speakers is not part of the model?

TruePlay times and corrects for spectral defects and reflections. I assume the listening position will be related to combatting the reflections.