Adding Era 300s as surrounds will be an improvement over the Play:1s. The 300s will give you a much wider rear soundstage and give you added height channel effects when playing Dolby Atmos audio.

Hello, 

i have Beam gen 2 + Sub Mini and just got 2 ERA300.

The sound is great as Surround with Atmos or less but I do not have a comparaison with an ARC.

But it seems here that the Beam gives more sound with music than the ARC.

The only thing missing is having the center driver enable otpion yet when listening to non Atmos tracks.

Thanks for the answers…but i am interested how the atmos effects are when you looking a movie. And does it gives big difference against the play1‘s (dolby atmos)? Should it be a big upgrade for me if i get the era300‘s?

So, for instance I have had the One’s, the ERA100 and now the ERA300.

I can tell that:

ERA100 the sound is much more full than the One’s.

ERA300 you have the ATMOS effect.

If u look at “Troll” on Netflix, a t 10min 40 you can hear the sound of the elicopter  passing form the left speaker (left ear) to the center (the elicopter mouvement).

So it’s quite immersive!

If you like DOlby Atmos in music and movies (there are more and more coming out with this feature), go for the up grade.

Consider that , at today, the central front driver on the 300 isn’t enabled...but it could be a next future up date.

In the mean time you can higher the surround volume output of the 300 compared to the Beam s one so to have a more immersive bubble.

Hi, i got both arc and beam setups. The latter just yesterday.

Arc + 2 era 300s + sub are reallly the best. So decided to upgrade my beam 2 + play 1s + sub set up with era 300. It was an upgrade but as of now i feel like its a marginal improvement for playing apple music atmos. The beam seems to be the centre of the source unlike arc wherein the sound seems to have a more distributed “bubble.” 
 

making me think now if i need to upgrade the beam to arc. Hahaha! 

Is it necessary that the eras 300’s be within 15 feet from the Beam gen 2? My room setup is causing me to put the 300’s at about 16ft from the beam gen 2. Is this going to be a problem. Would like some advice before I set it up. 

I wouldn’t think that would be a significant issue, but remember, the Era 300s are communicating with your Beam across a 5Ghz connection when acting as surround speakers. But you could certainly test that, before you mount them.