I recently bought a Beam (gen2) for my tv. I used to have a soundbar and sub from Harman Kardon. But now I only have the Beam. I might buy a sub mini later on. But as it is now living in an apartment, there's no need for it.
Does anyone have some suggestions on what settings I should have for the Beam to get the most out of it when watching movies?
I recently bought a Beam (gen2) for my tv. I used to have a soundbar and sub from Harman Kardon. But now I only have the Beam. I might buy a sub mini later on. But as it is now living in an apartment, there's no need for it.
Does anyone have some suggestions on what settings I should have for the Beam to get the most out of it when watching movies?
It will be important to adjust the EQ to your taste (treble and bass) - but as the Beam can only play what it receives from the TV, perhaps more important will be to ensure the TV’s sound output settings are set up correctly to output at the best quality, and potentially also the sound settings of any external devices (e.g. Apple TV box, Firestick, cable box, etc).
You may find Peter Pee’s YouTube video below useful too…
I would suggest you consider adding a sub and surrounds too, at the earliest opportunity, as those things can often make a huge difference for both TV and Music audio.
My tv is set with hdmi arc output and my Apple TV4K will play Dolby Atmos when available.
What about the settings in the Sonos App when choosing room and then sound. Below the EQ option there’s something called height sound. What is this? And should turn Loudness and Spatial Sound ON?
My tv is set with hdmi arc output and my Apple TV4K will play Dolby Atmos when available.
What about the settings in the Sonos App when choosing room and then sound. Below the EQ option there’s something called height sound. What is this? And should turn Loudness and Spatial Sound ON?
The things mentioned are user-settings - you can alter them to suit yourself and the local environment - the height audio slider will adjust the ‘virtual’ front height Atmos audio channel on your beam to boost or decrease the audio on that channel - it’s a virtual channel in the case of the Sonos Beam.
Loudness when enabled will boost certain frequencies, including bass, during low listening volume and is designed to compensate for normal changes in the ear’s sensitivity when listening to audio at low volume levels.
Ok thanks for explaining Ken. And what about the Spatial 3D below volume limit. Should this be on or off?
Ok thanks for explaining Ken. And what about the Spatial 3D below volume limit. Should this be on or off?
That’s for music and is for Atmos audio …and I think it supports Sony 360 reality audio too, available on Amazon Music, but I’m not too sure about the latter.
Anyhow, if you disable it, you don’t get Atmos audio, but just stereo only audio usually and with some streaming services that’s often HD/UHD 16 bit/24bit lossless audio in some cases.
If you go onto add surrounds, then that setting becomes more important for the FULL/AMBIENT audio setting too in surround audio, as ‘Full’ stereo playback on the surround speakers is ignored (obviously) if Atmos Music is played to the Home Theatre room.
At the end of the day, what sounds good to you in your room will be the best settings. You won’t break anything by trying out the different settings, so play about and let your ears decide.
If you do get the Sub or Mini, try it in several locations as placement can result in significant differences in the sound.
If you change furniture this can have an effect on the room’s acoustics. And if you move again, the new room will probably result in a new search for the “best” settings.
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