Skip to main content
Question

Beam 2 Audio Biased toward Left

  • January 14, 2026
  • 2 replies
  • 14 views
A

Hi all! I have the most odd “issue” (complaint?), and wanted to see whether others had the same experience. I recently bought a Sonos Beam 2 and the audio is weirdly biased leftward. This is particularly interesting since I previously bought (and returned) an Arc and Arc Ultra for the exact same issue. But my daily driver has been a Playbase which has no directional bias and sounds fantastic. I also have a Playbar which has no bias.

I searched around and saw that others had this observation, too. Are the tweeters on these speakers somehow left-oriented or left-positioned?

For context, I am in a small room and sitting about 6-7ft from my TV. There is a wall about 5-6 feet to the right of my TV when facing it, and the wall on the left is far away.

I am having the issue regardless of TruePlay or input source, or surrounds. But again, the Playbase and Playbar are perfect! (I only swapped them out because I am getting a weird ~5-20ms audio delay over optical with my TV’s latest update).

Any advice greatly appreciated!

2 replies

Sotiris C.
Forum|alt.badge.img+16
  • Sotiris C.
  • Sonos Staff
  • January 15, 2026

Hello ​@Aridneptune, welcome to the Sonos Community!

I am sorry to hear you are experiencing an audio balance issue with your Sonos Home Theater setup.

Allow me to preface this by saying that speaker placement/location is quite important in the performance of a Sonos speaker/soundbar.

The fact that you’ve had this issue with a Sonos Arc, a Sonos Arc Ultra and a Sonos Beam (Gen 2) makes me think it’s probably the location, but I’m not discarding the possibility of a hardware issue, although unlikely.

In order to check this, if possible and temporarily, relocate the Sonos Beam (Gen 2) completely and test, either with a music source from the Sonos App or TV audio. You can also try and Trueplay tune after the initial test to see if it’s even better.

If the audio balance issue is present in all scenarios, please reach out to our Support Team for live troubleshooting. They have tools at their disposal to provide you with information and advice specific to your Sonos system and what it reports.

I hope this helps.

Leaving a like and marking Best Answer might make someone's day. Who knows, that someone might be you.
    A
    • Aridneptune
    • Author
    • Contributor I
    • January 15, 2026

    Thanks! I thought so as well, and there is a wall ~5 feet away from the TV on the right hand side. It is interesting that the Playbase sounds fine, however, even when getting DD5.1 from optical. Is the wall a problem?

    Terms & ConditionsCookie settingsAccessibility statement