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skazzyskills
Contributor III
December 27, 2018
Answered

Surround sound

Hi, new to Sonos but loving it! I have a Beam and two Play 1’s in my Living Room setup. My question is about surround sound. It seems like most of the characters on TV speak via the Beam and not through the Plays on each side of the couch. What comes out of the Plays is mostly music and some effects. Often this overshadows the speaking which is then hard to hear. I’ve gone into advanced settings and played with the surround sound but doesn’t help much. I’m a bit confused by them too though. What is ‘TV level’ anyway? What about music as ambient or full? Does this mean these settings are only for my Plays? I also noticed in About My Sonos system, on the Beam I SOMETIMES see Dolby 5.1 but don’t see Dolby anything on the Plays. Is this normal? On my Samsung TV the sound settings are set to HDMI input, which is presumably my Beam. Any help appreciated. Thanks.
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    vazandrewAnswer
    Enthusiast I
    December 27, 2018
    Most dialogue will come out of the centre channel, as it's meant to be right in front of you. It will depend on the source but most rear activity will be music and sound effects. I have the same setup and have no issue hearing dialogue. Did you use trueplay to calibrate your system?

    You can adjust the surrounds volume independently for music and TV, that is why there is a TV level and Music level setting.

    For music playback you can set the rears to full if you want the Play 1's to act as full range stereo speakers. Ambient is pretty self explanatory, it will produce more subtle and ambient while most of the music comes from the beam.

    This article also explains the around settings
    https://support.sonos.com/s/article/2927#surround_settings

    The Beam and Play 1's are bonded so they are one unit. When it shows it's receiving a Dolby 5.1 signal then you are receiving proper surround sound and will hear out of all speakers. If it's stereo you will either only hear content through the beam or it will try to emulate surround (it does a decent job, but obviously not as good as the real thing).
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    vazandrewAnswer
    Enthusiast I
    December 27, 2018
    Most dialogue will come out of the centre channel, as it's meant to be right in front of you. It will depend on the source but most rear activity will be music and sound effects. I have the same setup and have no issue hearing dialogue. Did you use trueplay to calibrate your system?

    You can adjust the surrounds volume independently for music and TV, that is why there is a TV level and Music level setting.

    For music playback you can set the rears to full if you want the Play 1's to act as full range stereo speakers. Ambient is pretty self explanatory, it will produce more subtle and ambient while most of the music comes from the beam.

    This article also explains the around settings
    https://support.sonos.com/s/article/2927#surround_settings

    The Beam and Play 1's are bonded so they are one unit. When it shows it's receiving a Dolby 5.1 signal then you are receiving proper surround sound and will hear out of all speakers. If it's stereo you will either only hear content through the beam or it will try to emulate surround (it does a decent job, but obviously not as good as the real thing).
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