Question

Surround sound quiet

  • 2 January 2018
  • 7 replies
  • 5021 views

Play 1’s too quiet on surround sound

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7 replies

Couple of things. First, Full and Ambient are settings for when your PLAYBAR is on music, not TV. Inconvenient, but relevant.

Surrounds aren't supposed to carry speech. That's what the "center" speaker, in the middle of the PLAYBAR is for. Surrounds are supposed to carry surround information, which isn't speech. But there's a couple of things that you might want to check in your controller app.

Open up the app, swipe down so you get the bottom bar and click on the three dots to the menu where you can click on Settings.

Select Room Settings

Select the room name that your PLAYBAR and surrounds are in.

Select Advanced Audio

Select Surround Settings

You arrive at a page where you can adjust the volume of the Surrounds for when they're playing music, or on the TV.

Click on Done to return to the main page

Swipe down again to get the bottom bar, and select the Rooms button.

Select the TV room, whatever you have it named. Look at the screen. On the left, you have a moon, on the right is a square with a tail. Try toggling that square with a tail See if that helps. I leave mine on all the time.

However, if that doesn't make you happy, I'd remove the surrounds, set them up as a stereo pair, and then "group" them with the PLAYBAR. What you'd get would be the same information that is playing on the PLAYBAR, rather than any surround sound. There might be a minor delay, I'm not sure, I've never tried this.
By the way, it's worth double checking that the program playing while you're doing all this is in Dolby Digital, not stereo. You can open up the settings, and then click on "About my Sonos System" to see what the PLAYBAR is receiving, either a stereo signal, or a Dolby Digital one.
[quote=Airgetlam]Couple of things. First, Full and Ambient are settings for when your PLAYBAR is on music, not TV. Inconvenient, but relevant.

Surrounds aren't supposed to carry speech. That's what the "center" speaker, in the middle of the PLAYBAR is for. Surrounds are supposed to carry surround information, which isn't speech. But there's a couple of things that you might want to check in your controller app.

Open up the app, swipe down so you get the bottom bar and click on the three dots to the menu where you can click on Settings.

Select Room Settings

Select the room name that your PLAYBAR and surrounds are in.

Select Advanced Audio

Select Surround Settings

You arrive at a page where you can adjust the volume of the Surrounds for when they're playing music, or on the TV.

Click on Done to return to the main page

Swipe down again to get the bottom bar, and select the Rooms button.

Select the TV room, whatever you have it named. Look at the screen. On the left, you have a moon, on the right is a square with a tail. Try toggling that square with a tail See if that helps. I leave mine on all the time.

However, if that doesn't make you happy, I'd remove the surrounds, set them up as a stereo pair, and then "group" them with the PLAYBAR. What you'd get would be the same information that is playing on the PLAYBAR, rather than any surround sound. There might be a minor delay, I'm not sure, I've never tried this.[/quote
Thank you very much, I’ll give this a go later. I’ve never had any issues with this before, it just seems to be more noticeable since the last update, I’m also experiencing a lot of random echo too?
By the way, it's worth double checking that the program playing while you're doing all this is in Dolby Digital, not stereo. You can open up the settings, and then click on "About my Sonos System" to see what the PLAYBAR is receiving, either a stereo signal, or a Dolby Digital one.

You need to be playing something on the TV. That's why it says "Silence" next to the line Audio In under the PLAYBAR. That will tell us whether the content you're playing is either Dolby Digital (ideal) or Stereo (less than ideal, and why you'd have a low surround level).