era 300 front driver clarification

Thanks for the answer. 

I am a long time Sonos user and find it hard to believe there is no manual or auto toggle switch in the app to turn it on.  This is such a common use case, it just blows my mind. Surely it can't be too hard of a technical challenge for them, but if it's not why isn't the option there?

Can a Sonos rep please provide some insight and at least let us know if it is on the roadmap?  I'm not looking for a date or firm commitment, just acknowledgement that devs have agreed that it's a design flaw or bug.  

I have read all the other threads from 6 months ago, so I think an update is on order. 

I don't think this info was on the arc or 300s product page and it may well have swayed my decision.

Thanks and I am optimistic Sonos will get this fixed soon because your products are amazing and I know the devs care about these important details. 

As this was requested 6 months ago, I’m just wanting to know the status of the request.  I’m a developer and to me this is less a feature request and more like a Sev 2 bug.  

If there are currently no plans to fix it, I would just like to know that.

Thanks in advance for any update you can give me, positive or negative.

@Corry P 

As I said, you aren't going to get a status, a road map, a release plan, a punch list, an update, or anything else which amounts to them telling you what is coming down the road.  It isn't and never has been their policy.

Probably not as Corry has become addicted to food and shelter, both of which along with the Sonos job would be at risk by violating Sonos policy.

Thanks for the replies.  I don't see the big deal of a Sonos rep at least admitting there are no current plans to change this, but sounds like that is indeed the case. 

I just would love to know the reason why. Maybe there is a perfectly good explanation. I'm not claiming to be all knowing, I'm just curious by nature and an engineer so I'm always asking why when I don't understand something. 

Does anyone out there have any theories on why this would not be plausible or a good idea?  Maybe I'm just missing something obvious. I just want to play Spotify on my 300s with all drivers, then watch a movie with front drivers disabled. 

PS - jgatie, please don't yell, that hurt my ears

Hi @Optimeist 

During product testing, it was determined (by our engineers and our test audience) that things sounded better with the front-facing drivers disabled in a surround setup - this is the only reason we’d ever take such action.

However, the response from customers after launch was such that we (in the community) felt it best to turn the feedback into a feature request. The request saw significant support from our customer base, and was forwarded to our product team.

That’s where my knowledge of things ends. If we do add an option whereby the front-facing drivers can be enabled by user choice, it’s very likely that it will be added without pre-announcement - neither I nor you will be informed prior to the feature being released.

Please note that this is not to say that the feature will be added - the reasoning for the current behaviour still stands.

I don’t know how long it takes for a feature request to be turned into a functioning feature, but my guess is that it takes a while, especially if we have other things to contend with that are considered higher priority, so even if it does get added, it may take a while yet.

Sorry I can’t give you more to go on.

I hope this helps.

This is a valid point. If the front driver is only used for music then… why not enable it for music when the surrounds are playing music, even if only for the ‘full stereo’ option. 

I suppose one argument could be that as surrounds the Era300s are sometimes quite close to the listener. They’re not really suited for near-field. Perhaps having the front-facing driver active detracts from the desired wash of surround sound.

I don’t want to disparage either group, but I observe two groups of listeners with respect to the purpose of surround. One group prefers that the surround speakers provide ambience and the other wants to be constantly smacked in the back of the head with “events”. I tend to be the former. One of my favorite films, with respect to use of surround, is not an action film, but there is very effective use of ambience. In city scenes you are aware of the subtle “streetscape” and emergency traffic a few blocks behind. You may not be overtly aware of these sounds, but if the surround is disabled, the scene collapses. Those who want constant, aggressive surround activity would be disappointed. New to surround listeners tend to want to want the surround to be aggressive and will immediately notice that the ERA 300 center speaker is not barking at them and assume that there is a fault. Evidently, the SONOS design crew is in my group.

Perhaps there should be two settings for surround output. My group would prefer “natural” vs “aggressive”. I wish that I could think of a pair of words for the other side. “Wimpy” and “natural” come to mind, but both pairs reveal my bias.

And this is why I will likely. never buy a pair of Era 300s. I listen to digital music in stereo (2.0) and multichannel (5.1). Some of my TV watching is in stereo, some in multichannel, and some with Atmos -- with the realization that I cannot get full Atmos without the 300s. 

I am uninterested in giving up the stereo and the multichannel I get from the Ones in favor of an Atmos based system that chokes 2/3 of what I listen to. The Arc system can automatically switch from stereo to multichannel to Atmos, depending on what signal I am sending to it. A simple software switch for the Era 300s could do the same thing, allowing me and others here to utilize the full potential of the Arc system.

Too bad that Sonos won’t/can’t offer us that option. As I said, unless this is changed, I will likely never buy the 300s.

Do any other companies put what they won’t do on their packaging?

Thanks Cory. But this “feature request” has been in the queue for many months. In my experience, a positive decision to add this ‘feature” could be followed by almost immediate implementation. So my best guess is that Sonos does not want to do this, and they hope, in time, we will stop complaining.

I hope I am wrong. But it doesn’t look good to me.