Hello! I have a feature request - front left and front right channels. I think the wider sound stage will sound better, and Sonos can sell us more speakers in the process :)
Hopefully it’s implemented in a way that gives us options like using all drivers vs turning off redundant drivers. But the important thing is we retain that option (much like full vs ambient sound for surrounds.)
Thanks!
A quick search of these forums will show you that this has been requested many times. There’s also a thread with Sonos’ explanation why they’ve not implemented it.
The solution is to get an Amp and some conventional speakers instead of a soundbar that is not meant for that use.
As stated, the reasons for this feature not being released (yet?) were explained by the Sonos CEO himself:
Oh boy, same. I’d love to be able to set up Era 100s or 300s as discrete front left and right channels too. It’s one of those ideas that just feels right. And I want you to know that posts like this - direct, passionate, clear - are one of the reasons we pay close attention to Reddit. You help point us toward the kind of experiences people are hungry for, and this is a great example.
We’ve actually done a fair bit of work on this over the years, including an external beta where we let people try out a front L/R setup using speakers like the Ones. The bones of that effort are still buried in the software, which is how tools like SonoSequencr can recreate the configuration today. But what we learned in the process gave us some humility. It turned out that pushing discrete front channels over wireless, especially that close to the soundbar in some homes could cause a lot of packet drop and bandwidth issues. That created dropouts right in the front soundstage. That kind of thing is unforgiving. It’s super noticeable and totally undermines the experience.
We also found that tuning the front soundstage in those configurations was tricky. Without precise positioning, getting the balance right between the soundbar and the extra speakers was harder than you’d expect. And when you add in multi-channel speakers like the Era 300, the challenge only grows.
That said, we’re investing here. Arc Ultra and the latest Era speakers support 6GHz WiFi, which gives us more bandwidth to work with and helps reduce interference. We’re also getting smarter about how we understand room layouts and speaker positions, which should go a long way toward making these kinds of setups more feasible and better sounding.
We’re not going to get there in 2025, but this is definitely something we want to bring to life the right way. We know how much flexibility and richness this kind of configuration could add to home theater. And we want to build it in a way that doesn’t just technically work, but feels magical.
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