sonos arc with 2 ONEsl speakers & sub

What are you playing on your TV when you’re attempting to “hear” the surrounds?

I’ve been trying different Amazon prime movies that list Dolby digital sound or 5.1 as the sound sources.  
 At the moment my granddaughter is here so we have on Aqua Marine. 
my Sonos app is showing receipt of “Dolby digital 5.1”

I don’t hear the rear speakers.  So I got up from my chair and picked up the right rear SL one ( which is about 3 feet behind my chair) and by my ear I do hear sound???

At that point it depends on the source. If the director/audio person for that particular movie doesn’t push sound to the surrounds, you wouldn’t hear anything. I’d suggest trying something a little more aggressive, like one of the Jurassic Park movies, or a Star Wars movie. One of my favorites for testing all of that is the beginning of Saving Private Ryan, when they’re storming the beach, and the bullets are flying from every direction, including under water. Those really exercise the surrounds.

What you’ll never get is the same sound for the surrounds that you’re getting from the center channel, i.e. the voices. It’s not the way surrounds are supposed to work.

And just to confirm, the room in the controller looks like “Beam +RS +LS”, or something like that, correct?

Mine is written a little different- like this and maybe this is athe problem 

Living room (+Sub+LS+RS)

Arc

note that inside the parentheses all the letters are in BOLDFACE 

Whereas Arc is unbold and listed below.

you have beam before the first + sign.  I wonder if that means something negative?

Aitgetlam. - I will try your suggested movies to see if that produces sufficient sound from the rear speakers 

No, it was just bad memory, I wasn’t at home to check in my controller. Yours is correct, and the way it should be (matches mine).

There are occasionally folks who set up the surrounds as a different Sonos ‘room’ with the same name, and they’re not really surrounds, their just stereo speakers grouped. 

Check those ‘better audio designed’ movies, and I suspect you’ll hear much more.

Important to note that just because a source is encoded in 5.1, it doesn’t mean they’re actually always using all the channels. When I lived in Texas, the pre-season games for the Cowboys were aeries by the local station using a 5.1 signal, but the originating feed was only in stereo, so while my Sonos was 5.1 active, only the front left and right speakers in the PLAYBAR or Arc were being utilized. It’s possible that movie you’re testing with, while encoded in 5.1, isn’t actually using the surrounds channels, or for that matter, the LFE for the Sub. 

Bruce:

thanks for your help .

im watching “Saving private Ryan” and the surrounds sound GREAT 😊 👌🏼
 

I appreciate your time and advice. This is my first time getting help from a source like this .

Heh. You’re most welcome. That movie, at least in that beginning scene, really does show off the surrounds well. I’m sure there are others, too, but it was the first movie I tried after setting up mine ;) Personal experience for the win!