Enthusiast II

Era 300 rear driver is silent (with Arc Ultra)

393 replies
25030 views

First things first. This is not a rant. This is an expalation of a problem, which reduces the experience in 3D audio a lot. For background: I'm a sound engineer and music producer and I don't wanna sound arrogant, but I know what I'm talking about. (I'm a really nice and funny guy :D)

So lets get to the problem then :D

NO I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT THE FRONT FACING DRIVER

for better understanding watch this VIDEO

This bug appeared the moment I switched the Arc with the Arc Ultra. Before I made the switch I was on the 16.1 app and firmware. So I don't know if the Ultra causes the problem or the app/firmware. Before the switch everything was running as it should.

So, since there is not much of a topic around this, I'm curious if I am still one of a few who have this bug or one of a few who noticed it.

I made this post in Reddit, but not everyone is on Reddit and the more people know, the faster Sonos can work on it. Reddit discussion

I didn't saw any review which mentioned it.
As you can see in the video, the rear driver is completly silenent when the Era 300's are paired with the Arc Ultra. Also Truplay isn't "sweeping" the driver either. (Timestamp 0:44)
So the mesurement isn't right.
First I thought it could be a feature instead of a bug, but it doens't fit the Dolby Atmos recommendations like this. You won't get sound from "behind" your seating position.
And I remember Sonos self promoted it how it should work, where the rear driver is playing.

DOLBY ATMOS LAYOUT

Sound from side driver/channel should boucing off your side walls, rear driver/channel bouncing off the back wall of your seating position and height channel obviosly bouncing off your ceiling. Thats why you should position them facing forward. At the moment you don't get the immersion that sound is coming from behind you, since the driver is silent.

I tested every setting, played the Dolby Atmos testfile (MKV [TrueHD Atmos] and MP4 [EAC3 + joc Atmos]) from different sources (TV Plex app, Nvidia Shield, from a USB through TV) Same result everytime.

If someone could test this behavior and can confirm this, it would be very nice. Sonos can't fix something they don't know and if most people doens't recognize doens't mean something isn't wrong.

Currently I'm running app version 80.12.04 (Android) and 80.12.03 (iPhone) and firmware version 81.1-58210.
If you don't have this problem, what version are you running?

And last but not least: IF this ever getting fixed, the experience with Arc Ultra and Era 300 will be much better! I love my Sonos products soundwise and Arc Ultra is sounding really good, but it could be much better.

Have a nice day

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Pinned Reply By Jamie A

Hi all, thank you all for your patience.

I was going to post at the same time as Keith on Reddit, however I wasn’t able to. I see that the link to the reddit post has already been copied here, but just to confirm what you've already discovered, this is expected behaviour as explained by our audio team.

I’m happy to forward any questions and feedback you have, as well as forward this as a feature request.

The side tweeters on the Arc Ultra are “overpowering” the bonded rear surrounds.
Side channels are virtualized by both the Arc Ultra and Era 300’s. While you can use “Surround Audio” features to dial in the sound level of your preference there are a few important things to keep in mind:

Surround TV Level and Music Level Slider Behavior: The surround level sliders adjust the sound level for both the Arc Ultra and the surround channels equally. This is the intended behavior.

Using Surround Distance Setting to Adjust Rear Sound Levels: The surround distance setting can be modified to influence the output level from the rear speakers relative to the sound bar:

Setting it to “Less than 2 feet (0.6m)” reduces the volume from the rear speakers.
Setting it to “More than 10 feet (3m)” increases the volume from the rear speakers.

Perceptible Differences: While the surround distance slider adjusts the levels equally for both the Arc Ultra and the surround speakers, testing has indicated that listeners may perceive differences in the sound from the listening position, as described above.

Impact of Trueplay: The surround distance setting is disabled when Trueplay is active, as Trueplay automatically corrects for this. To adjust the surround distance, Trueplay must first be disabled.

There is no audible output from inner woofers when Era 300 is bonded as rear surrounds.
This is by design. The rear speakers are designed to disperse sound throughout the room, rather than directing it to the listener exclusively.

The Era 300 plays rear channel audio through its height array.
This, too, is by design. The Era 300’s DSP (Digital Signal Processing) leverages either the rear height tweeter OR the outward-facing tweeter/woofer to create the intended sound experience. Because of this, when you play the Dolby test track, you might notice that rear height channel as being active during rear-channel playback. This is expected.

Edit: Modified the wording on the 2nd and 3rd bolded points to closer match the wording in the app.

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Lewdog129

Lyricist III

For the people who bought them or the ultra and aren't on here or reddit. Honestly if I bought the ultra and my rear sound went missing without knowing it was a bug they were fixing I would just return what I could. I'm still tempted to return the ultra and go back to an arc because of this.

As said above. It is the same with the Arc. My guess is that a firmware update causes it and now Arc and Arc Ultra having this bug. I'm curious if the beam with Era 300 having this bug, too. This setup doesn't make a lot of sense but for science it would be interesting haha

I have a Beam Gen 2 paired with some One SL’s before I got the Ultra and Era 300s. I just switched the system back to the Beam to test if the issue is only on the Arc and Ultra. I can confirm that, with the Beam Gen 2 paired with the Era 300s, the issue is still present with the Beam. So this issue is not just an Arc issue but a wider problem when they are set up as rear speakers. When unpaired and music plays on each 300 individually, all drivers work. So it’s definitely not a problem with both my 300s either.

S

superlollo

Enthusiast II

Ok so it’s pretty much confirmed that all 300s used as surrounds have this problem, no matter what they are paired to

D

da3wilson

Lyricist III

For the people who bought them or the ultra and aren't on here or reddit. Honestly if I bought the ultra and my rear sound went missing without knowing it was a bug they were fixing I would just return what I could. I'm still tempted to return the ultra and go back to an arc because of this.

As said above. It is the same with the Arc. My guess is that a firmware update causes it and now Arc and Arc Ultra having this bug. I'm curious if the beam with Era 300 having this bug, too. This setup doesn't make a lot of sense but for science it would be interesting haha

I have a Beam Gen 2 paired with some One SL’s before I got the Ultra and Era 300s. I just switched the system back to the Beam to test if the issue is only on the Arc and Ultra. I can confirm that, with the Beam Gen 2 paired with the Era 300s, the issue is still present with the Beam. So this issue is not just an Arc issue but a wider problem when they are set up as rear speakers. When unpaired and music plays on each 300 individually, all drivers work. So it’s definitely not a problem with both my 300s either.

The question is if they are never paired with the ultra do the 300s still have this issue. Is there a way to factory reset the firmware/revert and update and test with the arc or beam?

L

Lewdog129

Lyricist III

For the people who bought them or the ultra and aren't on here or reddit. Honestly if I bought the ultra and my rear sound went missing without knowing it was a bug they were fixing I would just return what I could. I'm still tempted to return the ultra and go back to an arc because of this.

As said above. It is the same with the Arc. My guess is that a firmware update causes it and now Arc and Arc Ultra having this bug. I'm curious if the beam with Era 300 having this bug, too. This setup doesn't make a lot of sense but for science it would be interesting haha

I have a Beam Gen 2 paired with some One SL’s before I got the Ultra and Era 300s. I just switched the system back to the Beam to test if the issue is only on the Arc and Ultra. I can confirm that, with the Beam Gen 2 paired with the Era 300s, the issue is still present with the Beam. So this issue is not just an Arc issue but a wider problem when they are set up as rear speakers. When unpaired and music plays on each 300 individually, all drivers work. So it’s definitely not a problem with both my 300s either.

The question is if they are never paired with the ultra do the 300s still have this issue. Is there a way to factory reset the firmware/revert and update and test with the arc or beam?

No they don’t have this issue when they are on their own. I tested this too during my unpairing of them from my Arc Ultra before I moved the system to my Beam for testing.

S

Snoomuffin

Enthusiast II

Ok so it’s pretty much confirmed that all 300s used as surrounds have this problem, no matter what they are paired to

Good to know. Damn that’s a lot.

N

Nivek-

Lyricist I

This seems like a massive issue that isn’t even being officially addressed. Pretty disappointing to hear about this after purchasing a pair of era 300s on black friday. They still haven’t arrived, but once they do it sucks to hear they won’t function correctly. If this a bug everyone is experiencing, I think this has a lot to say about Sonos’s testing methods. To have an entire side of a driver be completely non functional is a crazy thing to miss in an update.

106rallye

Hi @da3wilson

Sorry to hear that! We are aware of the issue and are investigating, but we have no estimate for when a fix might be put in place.

If you have not already contacted support about this issue personally, I’d encourage you to do so in order for us to gather data on the matter.

A reboot of the Arc Ultra and all connected satellites (surrounds and Sub(s)) may help.

I hope this helps.

@Nivek- If this really is a “massive issue” is debatable, but I can see that it would not be very nice to have installed expensive speakers that do not work as they’re supposed to. Sonos has picked up on it though….. I’d count the statement above as the problem being “officially addressed”.

J

jkossis

Enthusiast I

@106rallye i think giving Sonos the benefit-of-the-doubt at this point is misguided. After the continuous missteps that have encompassed almost all of 2024.

It is a massive issue that a surround sound product is released without verifying that the correct channels are playing out of the correct drivers. That should be at the top of the list when it comes to regression testing.

106rallye

I’m not giving Sonos the benefit of the doubt - I just pointed out that they acknowledged the problem, which was disputed above.

S

superlollo

Enthusiast II

@106rallye i think giving Sonos the benefit-of-the-doubt at this point is misguided. After the continuous missteps that have encompassed almost all of 2024.

It is a massive issue that a surround sound product is released without verifying that the correct channels are playing out of the correct drivers. That should be at the top of the list when it comes to regression testing.

Totally agree that the issue is massive, we’re talking about tens of thousands of Era 300 users who are getting a wrong atmos experience. I’m amazed that so many people, including reputable Sonos youtubers like Peter Pee, haven’t noticed this. It’s noticeable in movies and it’s glaringly noticeable when playing test tunes (and a reviewer should do that)

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