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I am planning to add an ARC soundbar on my living room TV. I already have 2 ERA 100 paired in that room. I understand my 2 ERA 100 will be able to play music as before and will be used as surround speakers when watching TV. How does this work? What happens if someone is watching TV and at the same time someone else in the house starts playing music in the living room ?

I read I will have to unpair the 2 ERA 100 in order to add them as surround speakers. If I do that, what will happen when I want to play music in the living room?

I want to make sure I understand everything before buying the ARC.

Arcs are getting rare new as the Arc Ultra is replacing them.

You have a choice, use your 100s as a Pair or as part of the TV Room. You can switch back and forth but it gets old fast.

Since the Arc or Ultra plays music quite well most folks just go with it as the primary speaker. You have the option of setting the 100s for Ambient, background sound, or Full where they duplicate the front R/L channels. That switch is easy and not disruptive.

When the 100’s are ‘Bonded’ to the ARC as Surrounds, the 100ls and ARC become a single ‘Room’. In this configuration the 100’s cannot be played alone. If you break the surround Bond, then Bond the 100’s as a stereo pair, the ARC and 100’s become two different Rooms that can play independently or be Grouped to play the same music. If you Group the two Rooms to play TV audio, there will be a time delay between the two Rooms that most listeners find annoying, however, some listeners enjoy the delay. Only you will know what sounds “best” (to you).

Experiment with the two configurations and decide how you should proceed. Likely, you will decide, as Stanly_4 suggests, that flipping between the two configurations is too much work.

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