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Contributor I
August 24, 2024
Answered

Audio delay for TV to wireless speakers

I have a TV with an Arc connected by HDMI, then two wireless speakers, an Era 100 and a Roam. They’re distributed around an open space, so my goal is to hear TV on all three speakers.

This works great with non TV, such as Spotify. But for TV audio, the wireless speakers are slightly delayed. It creates a bad sound similar to a school assembly in an echoy gym.

I’ve found audio sync features to make it worse, but none to make it better. For example in the Sonos app in settings there’s a Group Audio Delay, which _adds_ delay to the Era and Roam speakers (though doesn't add delay to the wired Arc).

I think what this really needs is a TV feature to delay the video, and then for the Sonos speakers to coordinate with each other and stay in sync.

I’d like to add a Sub to my system, but since that’s wireless too, I’m worried that it won’t work.

What confuses me is that I see you can use wireless speakers like the Era for surround sound. Is the delay in that case somehow solved? Or maybe the delay isn’t noticeable since the surround isn’t generally used for audio (so you can’t see lips out of sync)?

 

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Airgetlam
AirgetlamAnswer
August 25, 2024

If speakers are ‘bonded’ as either surround speakers or the Sub to the Arc, there are no ‘sync issues’, as they are all part of the same Sonos ‘room’. 

Any ‘room’ that you group with a Sonos Home Theater input (TV via HDMI) will have a 75ms delay between the Home Theater room and any/all grouped rooms…for the TV only. Any streamed data / music will have already paid that buffering tax, and play in sync across all rooms.

Bruce

11 replies

buzz
Grand Maestro
August 30, 2024

Maybe you can improve the situation by adjusting voice sync. It will be a trade off.

In addition to SONOS introduced latencies and voice sync fumbles by video sources, you have the physics of pokey sound propagation. Sound travels at about one foot per millisecond. If you have speaker and listener ‘A’ separated from ‘B’ by 30 feet, ‘A’ and ‘B’ will each claim the other is 30ms late, while listener ‘C’ standing at the midpoint will claim “equal’. All three listeners are correct. Reflections from walls, floors, and windows will arrive later — creating the “echoy gym” effect.