Arc Ultra thin bass, no noticable change to Arc

Two questions:

 Did you turn off your sub when comparing the Arc’s? If the sub is still on, it offloads lower frequencies to the sub and you probably won’t hear a difference. One of the first things I noticed with the Ultra was the deeper, louder and fuller bass. I was actually quite surprised that it was only coming from the Ultra so I verified that my sub was set to off.

​​​​​​​Do you use True Play? If so, have you run it yet on the Ultra set up? Try toggling it on/off if you are using it. In my two setups, True Play tuning sounds horrible, so I don’t use it. When on, it sounds like what you are describing.

Thank you for the suggestions. Yes I run the Ultra only standalone for now, no Sub and also no Trueplay.

 I think the 100 year thing applies to the Mayht speaker driver tech which was re-badged by Sonos as “Sound Motion”.  For me the jury is still out until I hear that driver tech applied to a small book shelf speaker.

 Some of the Arc Ultra reviews stating loss of bass when bonded to a sub as well as those comments that refer to “thin” sound are a non-started for me.  Yes, I’d love better dialog intelligibility, but not with the sacrifice of high frequency accuracy for music reproduction.  Exaggeration of the high frequencies is the bane of so called high end audio.  At first you say “Wow…I’ve never heard that before in this song!”.  Then after a few minutes you find yourself turning it down or off.

I’m waiting to hear feedback from ARC ultra owners on music listening---has it improved the experience of listening to music and how much. Yes I’m interested in the ARC Ultra with rears and a sub/sub mini.

I have an ARC with rears and a sub mini and it’s just not been really good with music. It’s been great for movies and TV listening. 

I would consider the ARC Ultra if it notably improves music---otherwise I’ll stay put and perhaps consider 5’s as rears up the road with my existing ARC setup.

You are correct..voice is clear and pronounced...but same tinny voice issue of original arc continues with ultra too....horrible to listen conversation....tinny voice

@Cravemoreconfigurability yes music is notably better, but still not great. Sounds better than 1 era 300, but far behind 2 eras 300 in stereo setup.

I would say 15-20% increase in soundstage probably 40% in bass. 

Rather than the Fives as surrounds consider a pair of them up front as a dedicated Stereo Pair, that is going to be a big improvement in your music. Add a Sub if you really like source material that delivers on the low end.

The worst thing is  that most people bought with out even testing the product I live in Australia, and no major retailer like Harvey Norman, JBhifi have the unit available for testing , the Sonos representative haven’t even bothered to put on display.