Simple stereo, please Sonos!

I think that his would also be disappointing for you because the left and right speakers would be very close together. For decent stereo the listener and the L/R speakers should approximately form an equilateral triangle.

I get it, but Sonos soundbars want to transform a stereo pcm signal into fake surround and this is where the sound is lost. I adore my Sonos system, the 5.1 content sounds really good but stereo pcm suprises me (not in a good way) every time.

Thanks for the reply

Neven

Feel your pain my solution was a bit overkill 

I bought 2 sonos 5 speakers and have paired those with my gen 2 sub

I am old school and prefer my music to be stereo not surrounding me 

Before getting into sonos I had a 7.2 yamaha system which never sounded right for music either 

I have less wires now I suppose 😊

My solution works for me I have my arc sub and ones for movie and TV watching and my 5’s and sub for music I also have my astell and kern player connected to one of the 5’s and am toying with connecting a turntable to the other 

Seems my hobby is growing out of control 😜

I hope you find your solution too 👍

My rears are Play 3’s. They work the surround duties and play music in full mode. The pitty is I have to turn around to face them for “critical listening”. I enjoy music as background anyhow, while playing with my kids so music is not a problem. The problem is video with stereo pcm signal, mostly concerts. I compared concert of my favourite artist in 5.1 and 2.0 and the difference is significant. I plan to upgrade to Arc, I hope the sound will be better in stereo for two reasons. It’s wider than the Playbar and it’s speakers are directed forward not at 45 degree angle.

Neven

@Neven

As a temporary measure, when playing TV with stereo audio, you should be able to shift some of the playing audio to the rear surrounds by moving the ‘TV Level’ slider bar to +15 in the surround settings of your HT product. Also if you switch off trueplay temporarily you should be able to select a distance for the surrounds from the listening position.. set them to greater than 3m/10ft, as that too will add to the surround output.

I just want to add that I too did want to see ‘Full’ audio for TV stereo audio, as I like the added separation when listening to Music (Deezer) and Video (YouTube) Apps on my TV, but I suspect these Apps may eventually go onto support Dolby Digital Plus Atmos audio eventually, plus there are now devices on the market, like Nvidia Shield TV, that have these Apps and allow for upmixing stereo to 5.1 surround audio - so I’m not so sure that Sonos need to add this to their own speakers, but I certainly understand the reasons for your suggestion here.

I hope Sonos will become even more flexible, i.e. allow for example to put three Play Fives in front of the TV, feed 5.1 audio and say these are left, right and center. 

If this is too much, if they want to continue the soundbar route for home theater, just add the option for us users to select the configuration in which the Playbar, Beam or Arc works. All based on the sound you are aiming for or the soundbar is getting: Stereo, 5.1, with or without Atmos. I think it could be easily done.

Neven

Mod Edit: Modified formatting for easy reading

One would need some sort of ‘box’ to break out the TV’s audio feed for the PLAY:5’s because TV’s don’t usually provide separate outputs for each speaker. There is an ARC, eARC, and/or optical TV output that requires external processing in order to break out individual speaker feeds.

Thanks for the explanation. 

Neven