Arc Ultra Surround Sound change!

​@Corry P we have all been unhappy with this. Why is this likely not to change. A toggle to turn this on or off would be so easy to implement and would make your customers happy.

Sonos not listening to, AND implementing customer requests, is part of the reason why the company is shrinking and losing touch with its customer base…

A real shame as I used to be so positive about Sonos.

I was hopeful the Arc Ultra, dual subs and era 300’s would be a genuine replacement for a proper surround sound system, not a ‘half baked attempt’.

I completely understand the option to virtualise channels when there are not enough physical channels. But when there are enough channels, therefore this is plain lazy in my opinion.

Thanks for clarifying.
and
Thank you for being with us since this whole mess started. 

I understand its never easy to be trapped between (rightfully) angry customers and company organization/structures.

So really even though I’m not happy about this whole situation, I still thank you for making the effort to communicate with us.

Hi ​@Gavalar 

Please know that I do get your points, but..

Who is “all”, and how have you come to this conclusion? Certainly not all owners of Arc Ultra have said this - the forum (and Reddit) would be flooded if this were true. I can accept that you and a small number of others are not happy, but to say “all” is grossly inaccurate. It is understandable, when you have a few people who you’ve never met agree with you, to say therefore that everyone does, but it is just yet another trap of human psychology to do so.

Sorry, but I don’t think this would be easy to implement at all. The mathematics are complex.

I may be wrong and it may change at some point - I am not in possession of the information one way or another. It is my own personal opinion that it won't change, which I gleaned from the text in my previous post (which is mostly not my own words).

We are listening. In this particular case, however, the world-class audio experts in our employ do not agree with you. We also consult with other experts in the field that are not in our employ, including Hollywood sound engineers. You seem to be assuming that a Home Theatre system with 3,4 or 5 discrete speakers should operate in exactly the same way as a Home Theatre system that has 15 or more discrete speakers in unique positions. That is just not going to happen.

There is no direct mapping of the 9.1.4 channels to the individual drivers contained within the speakers. This is in fact not lazy - it is very complicated, and a lot of expert work went into it.

I hope this helps.

I think everyone should realize that the old paradigm of 5.1, 5.2.1, 7.2.1, etc. is gone.  Sounds are not mapped to channels any more, they are mapped to positions in the room.  As such, each room will map them different, and the speakers/drivers playing a tone in one person’s room may be completely different in another.  You simply can’t expect a single tone to play out of a single channel anymore.  Once you drop that old way of thinking, it’s easy to understand what is at work here. 

Very true and especially so for Atmos content. That said, when using an Atmos test channel file, the right rear and r side channels should not sound exactly the same.  They currently do. And that is the concern. Run the test file and go put your head next to your 300. When you flip back and forth between those 2 channels there is zero difference in output from the 300. 
 

I acknowledge and agree that those “channels” or positions in the room should be virtualized be some combination of the different drivers in a Era 300 all working together to place that sound in a specific location in the room.  The amount of sound coming from each driver should differ based on how far behind or to the side that effect is supposed to be.  But that’s not how the 300,s currently work.  Sonos is currently treat the 300’s almost like there 100’s with upward firing drivers. The 300 does not appear to differ how much sound is coming from the right vs left side of each speaker.  
 

The pitch from Sonos when I bought the 300’s was that in surround mode they were able to complete the rear half of the Atmos bubble using the side firing drivers to place effects to the side or behind me. That’s what we want. If the effect is supposed to be behind me.. inside drivers play louder. If the effect is supposed to be coming from beside me.. outside drivers play louder. 

​@Corry P thank you for your replies, okay, people in this forum and over the internet are frustrated.

It’s a shame your ‘world class’ audio engineers changed how the 300’s used to work with the old arc. I was really happy with how it used to work. Sonos obviously believes this is the best way forward. However, not sure how a ‘world class’ audio engineer believes that sounds from behind you should come from side drivers of a sound bar in front of you, I would say a child would understand that.

Looks like it’s best for me to give up as there will clearly be no change here, even if you say there might be. Best for me to move back to a traditional surround sound system which maps sound how I want it to.

Thank you anyway for trying your best. Just a shame you have gone from ‘on our side’, had written something and then the brakes are on. It sounds like a ‘higher up’ told you to leave it how it is, likely to save the money Sonos is haemorrhaging.

Thank you ​@Gavalar and ​@rboard for putting the problem in clear words. And I appreciate your challenges and patience for dealing with this issue ​@Corry P, thank you for everything so far.

I would earnestly like to entertain the idea that me and everyone else complaining about the issue don't get the decision from Sonos to emit rear channels from the front speaker, and that the decision is valid. For anyone defending the decision, could you help me understand how this is justifiable in your opinion? Maybe we have sound engineers that could pitch in, as I am really just an enthusiast. I don't believe I have heard any argument on the why beyond thought-terminating remarks like "Sonos engineers know better", "by design", and "cinematic". Yes, I understand virtualisation, and I am not arguing that each channel should come from a single driver from a single speaker. I am arguing that position matters when watching movies and playing games, and flipping the direction is very hard for me to wrap my head around.

​@Corry P Maybe you have an answer to this, or you could encourage an engineer from the team to share their thoughts with us. I know Sonos is under no obligation to explain their design decisions, but there's been significant noise on this that I assume it would be beneficial both for Sonos and their customers that we could all be educated by it. It would bring peace to everyone involved. Once the design philosophy is clarified, everyone that decides they disagree can move elsewhere, but we are here because we like a lot of your products and there's this baffling thing that is just so hard to accept for some of us.

For me, an important detail have been lost in this discussion : the virtualisation is perfectly fine with a Dolby Atmos content. I don’t know what happens internally with the Arc Ultra when the system “upscales” a 5.1 content to 9.1.4, but it’s in this specific case (sadly very common) that the virtualisation stops working and sound very flat. At least with Symfonisk rears.

While I don't want to throw anyone into a “bad listener” bin, expectations for the surround experience vary. Many new surround users expect to be smacked in the back of the head by surround energy. Less than this the user feels that the surround is not working. Their first few films should be action movies with lots of “boom” in the rear. Even then the surround levels should be elevated above what more experienced viewers feel is realistic. We’ve been through this before. In the early days of stereo a curtain was drawn between the left and right half of the orchestra. This was often characterized as “ping pong” stereo because the focus would abruptly jump between left and right — in order to prove that the recording and playback were stereo.

A bad initial choice for a new surround user would be a city street scene or outdoor country scape. While the viewer will probably not directly perceive the surround channels, the audio scene will collapse if the rears are muted.

Perhaps there should be two surround settings, “ambient” for more seasoned viewers and “progressive” for new users.

AMEN

and we were all fooled into believing this, and now they pretend this was never the case