Hello everyone, since people often ask how to perfectly tune their Sonos system and because it depends heavily on the room I created a small test file that can help with the setup.
Quick disclaimer:
This test is about volumes between speakers and channels and what is technically the most accurate. If you don’t like the settings after the test, feel free to adjust them to your own taste afterwards.
My recommendation is: perform a fresh TruePlay calibration, then test it with your favorite song and adjust your EQ settings so the song sounds best to you personally. EQ preferences vary a lot. some people prefer more treble, others a bit less. To match the bass, you'll find a step in this calibration video.
For me TruePlay quick worked the best. With the advanced TruePlay I got some weird sounding EQ curves.
I set my bass EQ to +3 because I wanted to give the sound more body through the speakers. At 0, the speakers sounded too “thin” to me, and I could hear the transition between the speakers and the subwoofer too clearly.
The first step is to calibrate your surround volume. At first you'll hear some white noise flying around you. Use your surround volume setting to match the volume as good as you can. The white noise signal should be equally loud on all speakers at you listening position.
The second step is to calibrate your height volume. Use your height volume settings to match the volume as well.
This test will repeate with a different sound, because sometimes with white noise you'll hear same phaseshifting due your room. For me personally its a bit easier with the second sound.
The third step is to calibrate your sub level. Since your Sonos system also sends the BASS OF all channels to the subwoofer, this can be tested quite effectively. In this test, the center and the LFE channel will play the same tone, except that the center channel is 10dB louder. Therefore, both bass tones should sound equally loud for your subwoofer level to be set correctly.
In the link you'll find two versions of the calibrate video. On with a intro similar like the text above and one without. In the file is a EAC3 (Dolby Digital Plus) and a Dolby TrueHD audiotrack.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1cUn5Wlv4BRsqYZGxUmsTt1QMA2M5Y3gr?usp=sharing
Last but not least. English is not my native language, and I tried to keep everything as simple as possible so that even beginners can understand and use it. If you have any questions or suggestions for improvement, feel free to let me know.
As a bit of background about myself: I work as a video editor and audio engineer at a film production company. In addition, I’ve been making music in various genres for around 20 years, including film music.
Note for Sonos engineers who are reading this maybe.
Please give us a bit more freedom. Even with this, my sub is not perfectly tuned, because I need to turn the phase 180°, but I can't do this with TruePlay on. TruePlay does not correct it correctly, I did multiply runs ofc. Also please let us balance left and right surround speakers, TruePlay does not correct the volume of these either. My right surround is still about 2db louder than my left. I tried to trick TruePlay by changing my seat position, its not working.
Let us balance our Height speakers a bit better. I need to turn down my surrounds -3 to balance my system, but my rear heigh channel has the same volume as in the front. Thats why my rear height sounds way louder. If lowering the surround volume, it would be good lowering the rear height as well.
Last but not least, let us balance our dual sub system. Every room has a different configuration and sometimes you don't have an ideal position of both subs. Let us balance them to de- or increase volume of every sub individually. Maybe with a balace slider like you could implement with surrounds.
And PLEASE let us decide if we want a correct layout where the rears are actually coming from the rear and not rear channels are coming from above ;)
You could implement it with a toggle at the surround settings like a classic mode and Sonos mode or something like that.
Speaking about this topic.
Have a great day. :)
