Sonos Staff

Arc Ultra Surround Sound change!

70 replies
7958 views

Hi All

We are happy to announce to all Arc Ultra owners that the latest Sonos system update (issued today) includes a change to the behaviour of the “TV Level” surround setting slider option, in response to your feedback.

Previously, the slider had an effect on the apparent volume of the Arc Ultra itself, as the Arc Ultra is involved with the rendering of the rear channels, even when rear speakers are present.

Now, the new behaviour of the “TV Level” setting will be that it will only affect the rear drivers/speakers, rather than the rear channels. The result of this is that when adjusting “TV Level”, you will no longer hear the audio coming directly from the Arc Ultra increase or decrease with the slider. Instead, you will only hear the surround speakers raise or lower their volume with the slider.

I hope you all enjoy the change we’ve made - happy listening!

Please note that I am keeping this thread separate from the threads already extant in relation to Arc Ultra and it’s audio profile. I will link to this thread from them, but as many of the threads are now rather murky in terms of exactly what they are referring to, I wanted to avoid implying that this change will address all complaints made in any particular thread.

I hope this helps.

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M

Minhlong

Enthusiast I

When you say “the slider” are you speaking of the slider on the Era 100 or are you speaking of a slider within the Sonos app?

The sonos app ( "tv level")

J

JohnnyDo123

Lyricist III

Thanks for the update, your explanation made more sense than the one given officially on the Sonos Reddit, I had a difficult time understanding it. I hadn’t been on this forum in a while, so glad I decided to pop by! I plan to read more here as there’s just so much of the same complaints to filter through on the reddit lately.

M

Minhlong

Enthusiast I

When you say “the slider” are you speaking of the slider on the Era 100 or are you speaking of one of the sliders within the Sonos app?

What I’m looking to accomplish is to have the sound of a jet or a race car for example as it moves from in front of the viewer/listener on past or now behind the viewer/listener you would hear the swish going past you and then off to the distance behind you. A typical home theater system with rear surround speakers regardless of sophistication or cost has done this forever. Unfortunately with the Arc Ultra and Era 100s as Surrounds the viewer/listener doesn’t get this effect because the soundbar duplicates the sound of the rear speakers. No matter what I try I cannot increase the Era 100s Surround configuration volume without simultaneously increasing the Arc Ultra (front of the room sound).

I will go back and try to find a slider in the App that allows me to accomplish my goal but I haven’t had any luck thus far.

Since today's update, the tv level slider on surround settings of the sonos app allows what you want ( you ahave to perform a system update , not an app update)

F

Fofer

Collaborator II

What I’m looking to accomplish is to have the sound of a jet or a race car for example as it moves from in front of the viewer/listener on past or now behind the viewer/listener you would hear the swish going past you and then off to the distance behind you.

That works for me, with my Sonos Home Theater. Now, not all streams contain surround sound audio. Lots of it is only in stereo. So in order to test Sonos’ capability here let’s first narrow down the variables. What content/format/streaming service/media are you playing?

M

MiamiC70

Trending Lyricist I

@Corry P we now have a very loud centre channel, quiet left and right channels.

The rear channels are more adjustable so thank you, but the Arc Ultra side channels still play rear side and rear, rear sounds?

And THIS is the actual issue. It’s like no one at Sonos has ever owned an actual home theater setup.

M

MiamiC70

Trending Lyricist I

When you say “the slider” are you speaking of the slider on the Era 100 or are you speaking of one of the sliders within the Sonos app?

What I’m looking to accomplish is to have the sound of a jet or a race car for example as it moves from in front of the viewer/listener on past or now behind the viewer/listener you would hear the swish going past you and then off to the distance behind you. A typical home theater system with rear surround speakers regardless of sophistication or cost has done this forever. Unfortunately with the Arc Ultra and Era 100s as Surrounds the viewer/listener doesn’t get this effect because the soundbar duplicates the sound of the rear speakers. No matter what I try I cannot increase the Era 100s Surround configuration volume without simultaneously increasing the Arc Ultra (front of the room sound).

I will go back and try to find a slider in the App that allows me to accomplish my goal but I haven’t had any luck thus far.

THIS 100%

Henrique Gusso

Lyricist III

Please don’t use “test tone” videos - they are not fit for purpose. Please use actual cinematic content.

Could you explain what you mean with test tones not being fit for purpose?

I believe that for a lot of us with issues, the process goes:

I am watching real content and notice something strange about how the sound is reaching my ears, the location of the sounds doesn’t feel right, but it’s hard to know exactly what is going on because there are many sounds emitted at the same time.
Then I put on test tones to simulate real content without all the extra noise, to understand if the system is able to accurately put objects around me.

This sounds like a simple scientific method to isolate the problem, to more accurately know what to call out when discussing the issue with customer service. How is it not fit for purpose?

Surround test tones don’t do anything different than “real content”, they just have less sounds to make it easier to understand how each channel reaches my ears.

The only reason I can imagine for test tones to not be fit for purpose is if Sonos dynamically changes the volume of speakers throughout the playback by analysing the sound being fed, where test tones could indeed be processed differently. Does this happen?

M

marsbeetle

Trending Lyricist I

How does this separate volume control on surrounds affect the height volume? I would assume if you are increasing the surround volume then you are effectively also increasing the height volume from the virtualised height in surrounds from e.g. Era 100’s ? …in which case my next question would be, what does the height volume slider do in the case of using an Arc Ultra with Era 100’s as surrounds?

106rallye

@Henrique Gusso It seems Sonos has chosen for cinematic effect instead of more distinguishable separate channels that perform well with test tones. I would trust Sonos in that, but others would not.

M

MarkJnf

Lyricist III

Hello everyone,

I don’t mean to be rude, but I don’t understand the point of this announcement.

1. It does not fix the issue where the side-firing speaker of the Era 300, directed at the listener, is silent when paired with the Arc Ultra. Everything is fine with the Arc Gen 1.

2. It does not fix the issue where sounds that should come from the side-firing speakers instead come from the top speaker—again, only with the Arc Ultra.

3. It does not fix the issue where, in a 5.1 setup, the Era 100 rear speakers are barely active—again, only with the Arc Ultra.

4. It does not fix the issue of extremely quiet L/R channels (or an overly loud center channel—whichever applies). Again, only with the Arc Ultra.

Did I state this correctly? If I misunderstood, could you please clarify which of these issues this update actually resolves?

Thanks!

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