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I have the Arc + Sub + 2x Ones setup as a surround system. Which is great for TV. But for music I can’t for the life of me work out how to turn off the Arc soundbar so it doesn’t interfere with the stereo presence of the Ones + Sub.

I’ve tried

  • setting Ones to “full” (not “ambient”)
  • setting "Music Level" in "Surround Audio" to be +15

But I can stil hear the Arc.

Furthermore if I turn up the Ones to +15

  • I have to pump the Sub to +15
  • AND the Sub still gets lost so I have to boost bass in EQ as well and then it sounds 'off'
  • AND if I don't reset the Sub and bass EQ to 0 each time then the next time someone watches TV (think kids in the morning) the whole house shakes.
  • AND I can still hear the Arc.

So that's not workable.

How do I get just the Ones in stereo + Sub for music playback? Surely I don't have to disconnect/reconnect the whole surrount system and re-do Trueplay each time I swap between listening to music and TV do I?? Please tell me I’m missing something!

Thanks for your help everyone.

Sorry, you are not missing anything.

Best bet might be another pair of Ones and another Sub.

Might consider a pair of 5s. Try them with and without a Sub and decide if you want one with them.

This question is asked on a regular basis.  Essentially it is a software reconfiguration which would require the alternate settings to be stored in each Sonos device.  Maybe there is not enough ram available in each device to allow for this but Sonos don't seem to want to add this as a feature.  I am in a similar situation but surround movie watching is infrequent so I think that I will use a sub mini and play 1s for music and go through the full palaver to setup HT mode with my beam for movies.  It is very unfortunate that it is an either/or situation when alot of customers seem to want a 2.1 option after spending quite an amount of cash on a Sonos system.

It is the reconfiguration of the radios, and the handshaking that goes on when they are configured that makes the process non-instantaneous.  That type of configuration cannot be stored in a cache, because one reason for reconfiguring is to move speakers to another room where the conditions would be completely different.  So if you stored the settings, you’d have people hot “switching” from surrounds to stereo and moving them out to the patio or some other area, where the saved configuration is useless.

This question is asked on a regular basis.  Essentially it is a software reconfiguration which would require the alternate settings to be stored in each Sonos device.  Maybe there is not enough ram available in each device to allow for this but Sonos don't seem to want to add this as a feature.  I am in a similar situation but surround movie watching is infrequent so I think that I will use a sub mini and play 1s for music and go through the full palaver to setup HT mode with my beam for movies.  It is very unfortunate that it is an either/or situation when alot of customers seem to want a 2.1 option after spending quite an amount of cash on a Sonos system.

Thank you that’s a helpful if unsatisfying insight.

I don’t suppose there’s a way around it with say Smartthings, Home Assistant, Rasberry Pi, etc?

This leaves me restless!

No one has yet to come up with any way around this. 

You might look at some of the Sonos control programs mentioned around here, if any support that you’d still have to do a lot of configuration but you might be able to automate all but the Trueplay.

The heart of the issue is that if one has a HT Sonos system then Sonos expect you to be happy having the sound bar as your main 'stereo' speakers for music playback.  However, many if not most listeners prefer the sound of physically separated speakers for 2 channel. While I think that the beam is okay for background music it certainly falls short compared to a pair of ones.  I have neither the money nor space to have 2 separate systems in one room for two different use cases.

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