central driver disabled...

Hi @flybyme 

Thanks for your post!

The Era 300s have 6 drivers each, so even with one disabled on each of the two, there are still 10 drivers in play at the rear. Compare this with the 3 drivers that each Era 100 has, or the 2 drivers that each One has, and I would be very surprised if anyone reported that the Era 300s did not sound better than either alternative.

I hope this helps.

Would the up firing driver be working if there is no Dolby Atmos source playing?  Also the other drivers would only be firing sideways so no sound coming directly forward to listener for basic music and movies which would lead to a different sound experience compared to front firing speakers I would suspect   If anyone out there has a different listening experience please post 

If I could easily swap between the Ones and Era 300’s, as things currently stand, I would switch in the Ones for 5.1 content. If you have a look around, here and elsewhere, you will absolutely find I am not the only one of that opinion (with all due respect to Corry). If you do not primarily watch, or listen to, Atmos content, I would not personally recommend these until the central driver fires for non-Atmos playback. (And there’s no guarantee that will ever happen.) Just my 2p/c.

Hi @cklim55, I have not noticed the up-firing driver being used much, if at all. It is indeed a very different sound compared to typical front-firing speakers! This works well enough for Atmos, but poorly in my opinion for non-Atmos formats—in which, by far, the most broadly available media is encoded. Very disappointed to be honest thus far.

Yes, we gained more speakers but we also lost the most important one, the one that faces you and definitively tells you where the sound is coming from. (which the Sonos ONE did well)

To temporarily compensate, the surround-speaker volume needs to be increased. This is after running TruePlay.

Please provide us an app setting that can turn the missing drivers on. Thanks.

I have also been very disappointed in the Era 300’s … I have the Arc, 2Subs and just added the 300’s and I feel like I’m going backwards from the 1’s I previously had … I adjusted the surrounds to +8 and the height + 2 so it does sound better this way but if it’s not Atmos I think the 1’s sound better with all other content … I have the 1’s now in my bedroom with the playbase amd my wife who never comments on my stuff said she like the bedroom setup better than Tv room setup cause she can hear the rears more 

Hi @weimin108 

I’d encourage you to add your voice to the following thread, if you haven’t done so already:

• FEATURE REQUEST: Add option to enable "Center speakers" for the ERA's 300, if they are added as surrounds

Same here... what are they doing,  closed the request as discribed above.. 

Topic was closed because people started losing their manners, and perhaps Sonos didn't want the thread to grow anymore. 🤣

That is even more reason to fix this asap. 

How...so disappointed 😔.

Last time I felt like this towards Sonos product was with one arc and 2 one's sl when I discovered I couldn't play standard 2.0 over rears when listening to tv.

I had just ditched my amp and old speakers.

Dumb system but it could play all speaker at once even on stereo content.

The system was so good on all other points I simply left this point out.

This time I'm on the verge of ditching all Sonos product for ever.

I just bought two 300's.

I first listened to them as standalone speakers and I loved what I heard.

When I removed my one's to set up the 300's as rears.

I immediately noticed something was wrong with music.

Then I played an Atmos movie.

There's improvement and room for improvement.

There's really good point going toward the 300.

But the fact you cannot play all speakers when playing music cannot be understood as a customer.

Sonos has always used tech.

How come your Linux dev can't go around that matter ?

Or simply add a toggle to activate center speaker?

So now I've got a lot of job.

Return the 300.

Sell the one's 

Sell the arc.

Find what other brand offer.

@FrenchJohn based on your previous experience it might be best to do the “Find what other brand offer” task before you start offloading the Sonos gear