Arc Ultra Surround Sound change!

THIS 100%

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?

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?

​@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.

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!

Hi ​@macladd 

Not as far as I am aware, no.

Hi ​@Gavalar 

Yes, but as there is no direct mapping of the various channels to particular drivers on Arc Ultra, they simply are not effective at testing what is happening. They are designed to be used with Home Theatre systems that are not virtualising speakers.

This has been discussed a fair bit in other threads, and the behaviour was not changed with this update. Are you saying, however, that before this update you did not notice that the centre channel was louder, and you only notice it now?

Yes. Algorithms determine which drivers on the various speakers present are used to recreate particular channels, and it’s entirely possible that each channel will be rendered by multiple drivers, located on multiple speakers.

I hope this helps.

Hi ​@DaytonJohn  

I am sorry to hear that you still see this behaviour. I do not, so when you said that you do, the first thing I did was made sure that your updates went through correctly - they had, so ​​​​​​I then thought I had best see if I can recreate what you were reporting in order to try and help you, or at least to confirm that in certain circumstances, I see the same behaviour as you. To do this, I asked what specific content and formats you were playing. 

I am not sure why you took this badly, but please be assured that I was merely trying to help in the only way I can.

​@MarkJnf Sonos might say your points 1 and 2 are not issues, but sound design choices.

I heard people saying it's also the same thing with the regular Arc is this not true?

​@Corry P I have not run the test tones to compare the centre against the other channels in volume, only for the existing issues for side and rear channel level. I actually skipped past the centre to side channel comparison.

I did compare all channels and the centre channel after your update and the centre channel feels at least double the volume of the front side channels.

I have come from a full surround system and Beosound stage (at different times) which had no such issues. I wanted to simplify the system, hence the arc for a short while and now Arc ultra with dual subs and 300 rears. I do regret the Sonos purchase.

It is a shame to have almost no control over the system. I appreciate you want to make this simple and ‘enveloping’ for basic users, but an advanced toggle to adjust channel levels and to ‘correctly map’ channels as they should be played would be ideal. Many people have asked to be able to adjust channel levels as well.

I would imagine people spending this much money on a system would want some flexibility, especially when they don’t want a full HT setup in a lounge / family room/ TV room.

I do have to agree that after purchasing the Sonos system its limited with its ability to be able to tweet the sound & other settings.

Hi ​@Corry P 

Thanks for the update. It works exactly as you said. Kudos!!!

I have Arc Ultra with Symfonisk frame as rear speakers.

The fact you can adjust the rear volume indepedantly, i can finally hear the rear speakers when there is rear surround.

However, (and i think it was mentioned already in this thread) the orginal issue of Rear suround coming out of the Arc Ultra still persists. Before it the Arc ultra suround (For Rear sounds) was louder than the actual physical rear surounds.

I guess its a step in the right direction, because at least the issue is “confirmed”

Apple has IOS releases where you have new features and improvements.
Sonos has releases that makes the product work more normally :)

Well….. see you all in X months when the next fix is out for their Flagship product.

Hi ​@Woglinde 

Both the Arc Ultra and Era 300s virtualize audio for the left/right wide speakers and left/right side speakers. The blending of surround audio between the front and rear sound stages is intentional and by design. This sharing of surround channels is not unique to the Arc Ultra, as it also occurs with the Arc, too.

As a result, you should not expect this to change.

I hope this helps.

​@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.