New to the Sonos world so this is my first purchase to replace an aging Yamaha AV receiver and floorstanders, the wife is happy with the extra space she now has!
Bought from John Lewis with the benefit of the 2 year warranty.
Very impressed so far, was a breeze to setup. Using HDMI ARC and we can control the volume of the Sky Q box.
Alexa works well, we can also replace our Echo Dot in the living room which is handy.
Seems to work fairly seamlessly, the downside is I now want the rears and the sub :)
Thanks
New Sonos Beam Owner Feedback
+2This topic has been closed for further comments. You can use the search bar to find a similar topic, or create a new one by clicking Create Topic at the top of the page.
Yep I'm in a similar boat and experience similar. Though I found the setup of alexa tough (never used alexa before) and it didn't work initially so had to mess around in the alexa app that I didn't understand.
However, setup now and I like it. I just wish they had a cheaper sub for it. A £700 sub with a £400 soundbar makes very little sense.
However, setup now and I like it. I just wish they had a cheaper sub for it. A £700 sub with a £400 soundbar makes very little sense.
+2However, setup now and I like it. I just wish they had a cheaper sub for it. A £700 sub with a £400 soundbar makes very little sense.
Agreed, the sub seems expensive and is going to be a hard sell for me unless I get it in a deal. I can stomach the two rears for £150 each but the sub may have to wait or not happen.
However, setup now and I like it. I just wish they had a cheaper sub for it. A £700 sub with a £400 soundbar makes very little sense.
Agreed, the sub seems expensive and is going to be a hard sell for me unless I get it in a deal. I can stomach the two rears for £150 each but the sub may have to wait or not happen.
But it's something you will never regret, it will put a smile on your face literally every day! If my sub broke tomorrow, i'd beg borrow or steal to replace it immediately, it's that good.
PS. The sub is the far better upgrade option before the rears (in my opinion, but shared by many others)
Enjoy!
However, setup now and I like it. I just wish they had a cheaper sub for it. A £700 sub with a £400 soundbar makes very little sense.
Agreed, the sub seems expensive and is going to be a hard sell for me unless I get it in a deal. I can stomach the two rears for £150 each but the sub may have to wait or not happen.
But it's something you will never regret, it will put a smile on your face literally every day! If my sub broke tomorrow, i'd beg borrow or steal to replace it immediately, it's that good.
PS. The sub is the far better upgrade option before the rears (in my opinion, but shared by many others)
Enjoy!
No doubt, but the current $700 sub is overkill with a Beam. It needs a more suitable match.
However, setup now and I like it. I just wish they had a cheaper sub for it. A £700 sub with a £400 soundbar makes very little sense.
Agreed, the sub seems expensive and is going to be a hard sell for me unless I get it in a deal. I can stomach the two rears for £150 each but the sub may have to wait or not happen.
But it's something you will never regret, it will put a smile on your face literally every day! If my sub broke tomorrow, i'd beg borrow or steal to replace it immediately, it's that good.
PS. The sub is the far better upgrade option before the rears (in my opinion, but shared by many others)
Enjoy!
No doubt, but the current $700 sub is overkill with a Beam. It needs a more suitable match.
Problem is though, there is no alternative, and with Sonos you could be waiting for something that may never materialise. Also it’s not overkill, in terms of performance, it will seamlessly blend with the Beam. Price is the only concern.:@
I'm some what doubtful that we'll a 'sub-lite' any time soon. if they made a $400 version of the sub, it would either kill the sales of the full size sub, or be significantly inferior to the full sub that sales probably wouldn't be all that great for the sub-lite. I am guessing but I think it's going to be hard to find a sweet spot in the market for such a product.
I suppose the Beam is for smaller rooms and apartments were bass is not welcome, needed, or allowed! If you want good home cinema, good surround, good bass, you’re probably more of a playbar customer. Basically it’s two different markets.
Bought from John Lewis with the benefit of the 2 year warranty.
Very impressed so far, was a breeze to setup. Using HDMI ARC and we can control the volume of the Sky Q box.
Alexa works well, we can also replace our Echo Dot in the living room which is handy.
Seems to work fairly seamlessly, the downside is I now want the rears and the sub :)
How did you set up Beam with your Sky Q box and do you get sound throughput.
Yea, I bought a beam with a sub for my use in my gameroom. 'Gameroom' is really more of study/bedroom size room that is used for video gaming 99% of the time. Good sound is important in the room (although the kids seems to be on headphones most of the time) and a good size for the beam, but I also really wanted good bass beyond what the beam would do on it's own. I would guess thought that I'm not the typical case, but then again, Sonos does sell the beam+sub in a set.
I've a Beam and a pair of play 1s. When everything works they sound really good, and I'm very pleased. The invisibility of the system is it's absolute strength - there's a lot of sound for hardware that you barely know is there. For stereo TV it's a home run - really good product.
The system really exposes problems with TVs, consoles and players in the way they pass audio formats around - and if one part of the link doesn't work then surround sound won't happen. I'm slowly working through my issues, but I'm still pretty miffed that I can't get a PS4 to transcode DTS codecs. I get why Sonos don't support Atmos on a 5.1 system, but lack of DTS support is harder to justify, it's pretty ubiquitous in this day of age, and it would save their customers a lot of hassle. Blu ray and home cinema buffs should probably stick with traditional home cinema brands.
I suppose I'm lucky, I use a lot of streaming services and transcode my physical media to a good Plex server, so I can get around most of the issues. I guess I'm the type of customer Sonos knows.
The system really exposes problems with TVs, consoles and players in the way they pass audio formats around - and if one part of the link doesn't work then surround sound won't happen. I'm slowly working through my issues, but I'm still pretty miffed that I can't get a PS4 to transcode DTS codecs. I get why Sonos don't support Atmos on a 5.1 system, but lack of DTS support is harder to justify, it's pretty ubiquitous in this day of age, and it would save their customers a lot of hassle. Blu ray and home cinema buffs should probably stick with traditional home cinema brands.
I suppose I'm lucky, I use a lot of streaming services and transcode my physical media to a good Plex server, so I can get around most of the issues. I guess I'm the type of customer Sonos knows.
+2My living room is 16x20 feet and the beam is more than adequate, I am not an audiofile who dribbles at the thought of something being the best of the best to be honest, there is more to worry about in life.
The audio seems fine for TV and decent enough for music, the added bonus of Alexa is brilliant as we have Philips Hue everywhere so a single device can act as a wireless speaker, soundbar and control for the house.
+2Bought from John Lewis with the benefit of the 2 year warranty.
Very impressed so far, was a breeze to setup. Using HDMI ARC and we can control the volume of the Sky Q box.
Alexa works well, we can also replace our Echo Dot in the living room which is handy.
Seems to work fairly seamlessly, the downside is I now want the rears and the sub :)
How did you set up Beam with your Sky Q box and do you get sound throughput.
Sky Q into a HDMI port on the TV.
HDMI-ARC Port on the TV into the Beam.
I then went into the Sky Q menu and selected Sonos as the TV control.
I have disabled my TV's built in speakers in the menu also.
All just seemed to work fine, perhaps I was just lucky with my TV combination?
Happy Beam owner reporting from downunder..
Hooked up to my 'aging gracefully' Panasonic VT60 (VT65 in the UK) plasma and ARC works perfectly.
In fact, the ARC handshake is infinitely more reliable (hasn't had a failure yet) compared to my previous soundbar, the Philips Fidelio B5 (HTL9100). The Philips works 50% of the time and every now and then would not detect the signal ('unbonded' from TV) necessitating a power cycle. I would assume Beam works better because it's always on state.. rather than the usual / other AV products which go into standby / on cycle.
Tour De France is much more enjoyable and I'm finding it easier to stay up late now with the Beam :)
The only downside is that I prefer music to come out only from the rear surrounds (in this case, two Play 1s), not the Beam. There's no easy way / setting to do this other then completely 'unbond' the surrounds which takes minutes. Anyone has any tips on this?
Hooked up to my 'aging gracefully' Panasonic VT60 (VT65 in the UK) plasma and ARC works perfectly.
In fact, the ARC handshake is infinitely more reliable (hasn't had a failure yet) compared to my previous soundbar, the Philips Fidelio B5 (HTL9100). The Philips works 50% of the time and every now and then would not detect the signal ('unbonded' from TV) necessitating a power cycle. I would assume Beam works better because it's always on state.. rather than the usual / other AV products which go into standby / on cycle.
Tour De France is much more enjoyable and I'm finding it easier to stay up late now with the Beam :)
The only downside is that I prefer music to come out only from the rear surrounds (in this case, two Play 1s), not the Beam. There's no easy way / setting to do this other then completely 'unbond' the surrounds which takes minutes. Anyone has any tips on this?
The only downside is that I prefer music to come out only from the rear surrounds (in this case, two Play 1s), not the Beam. There's no easy way / setting to do this other then completely 'unbond' the surrounds which takes minutes. Anyone has any tips on this?
You can change the behaviour of the rears to play full stereo rather than ambient while playing music - I think it's in the Room settings somewhere. Yes, the Beam still plays, but with each speaker in the group giving 100%. I think it actually sounds awesome. The setting doesn't affect TV audio.
Perhaps Sonos could add an additional option where only the rears play music? Maybe some people would prefer that.
I would love as well full stereo even for TV audio on TV stereo signals rather than having surround silent.
Enter your E-mail address. We'll send you an e-mail with instructions to reset your password.