Hi everyone,
I’d like to raise (again) a feature request that has come up in several threads already, because it significantly affects the listening experience for people using Sonos home theater systems as their primary music system.
My setup is an Arc Ultra with Sub and Era 300 surrounds. For movies and Atmos content, the system is excellent. However, the experience when listening to stereo sources over HDMI (YouTube, Spotify via PlayStation, TV apps, etc.) is honestly extremely disappointing.
When the system receives Stereo PCM 2.0, only the soundbar plays while the rear speakers remain silent. Sonos currently does not provide an option to duplicate or upmix stereo channels to the surrounds for TV sources.
This means that a multi-speaker system that costs several thousand dollars ends up behaving like a single soundbar for a huge amount of everyday content.
What makes this especially frustrating is that Sonos already supports something very similar for music played inside the Sonos ecosystem. When using the Sonos app and setting music playback to “Full,” stereo audio can already be distributed across all speakers in the room.
So the system clearly has the capability - it simply isn’t available for HDMI sources.
Before switching to Sonos, I used a traditional AVR with a 5.1 system. Even basic receivers have had a simple “All Channel Stereo” / stereo mirror mode for decades. It’s not about creating fake surround effects - it’s simply about filling the room with music when the source is stereo.
Another aspect that I find frustrating is that discussions about this topic sometimes turn into telling users how they “should” listen to audio - for example, that stereo should only come from the front speakers. Respectfully, that feels a bit patronizing.
People invest in multi-speaker systems because they want an immersive room-filling experience, and different users prefer different listening styles. Having an optional toggle would allow everyone to choose what they prefer.
There are already several threads discussing similar requests:
All of these discussions point to the same underlying request: give users more control over how their speakers are used.
A simple solution could be a toggle in the surround settings such as:
- Preserve original mix (current behavior)
- Stereo mirror / All Channel Stereo
This would dramatically improve the experience for music, YouTube, podcasts, live concerts, and many other common stereo sources.
Given the capability of modern Sonos hardware, this feels like something that should be achievable via software. I hope Sonos considers adding this as an official feature request.
Thanks for reading.
