Please excuse the question but I’m new to Sonos and currently quite disappointed with what I’m sure is a great sound system and would really appreciate some help.
I recently set up an Arc, Sub (gen 3), and a pair of Era 300s but when I sat down to enjoy the immersive experience of surround sound, I was badly disappointed. The two rears and the Sub made no contribution at all and I was left with sound only coming from the Arc.
Everything works fine with films and the andverts are great but sport is a total fail. Is this normal or is there a setting I’ve missed that enables the rears to kick in with things like crowd noise?
I really want to enjoy my sport so would welcome any advise.
Thanks
Best answer by Rhonny
Your soundbar will adjust according to the programming it receives. So for example currently the football on ITV1 (terrestrial not ITVX) is showing Dolby MAT 2.0 on the Sonos app, which is nothing to do with the TV or Arc - that’s what the broadcast sound format is. The sound is coming mostly from the Arc, not the surrounds, but that’s the sound format. If it was in Dolby, it would be very different (but even then it would only be in the surrounds when the broadcast content has anything going on in the surrounds).
And just to say, the BBC iPlayer and ITVX tend to broadcast in different sound formats to terrestrial, so if for example the iPlayer isn’t sounding good, switch to BBC terrestrial which is often better.
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The source needs to be encoded in a surround format and some sources are not. Check the format on the Now Playing screen in the Sonos app. If you don’t see Dolby Digital 5.1 or Atmos, then you aren’t getting surround, and the effects will be minimal, if any at all.
The source needs to be encoded in a surround format and some sources are not. Check the format on the Now Playing screen in the Sonos app. If you don’t see Dolby Digital 5.1 or Atmos, then you aren’t getting surround, and the effects will be minimal, if any at all.
This will be the same for most systems, not just Sonos. I believe that some sound processors have a “sports” mode which processes the audio and injects boosted crowd noise, but that’s not a part of the actual broadcast program.
By “source”, do you mean TV? My Sonos setup is connected to a 2024 Samsung OLED which supports both 5.1 and Atmos.
I’m guessing the problem is with the TV then?
Thanks for helping btw 😁
No, as stated by @Stanley_4 the source is the media itself. If it is not broadcast/streamed in a surround format, then you aren’t going to get surround. Most talk shows, some sports, and many older shows are in stereo only, depending on your location and/or the capabilities of your provider/streaming service.
Your soundbar will adjust according to the programming it receives. So for example currently the football on ITV1 (terrestrial not ITVX) is showing Dolby MAT 2.0 on the Sonos app, which is nothing to do with the TV or Arc - that’s what the broadcast sound format is. The sound is coming mostly from the Arc, not the surrounds, but that’s the sound format. If it was in Dolby, it would be very different (but even then it would only be in the surrounds when the broadcast content has anything going on in the surrounds).
And just to say, the BBC iPlayer and ITVX tend to broadcast in different sound formats to terrestrial, so if for example the iPlayer isn’t sounding good, switch to BBC terrestrial which is often better.
