Enthusiast II

Era 300 rear driver is silent (with Arc Ultra)

393 replies
24998 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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dominikleiAuthor

Enthusiast II

Technically its like this:

in 5.1 you got only side channels which are playing by the outer driver and tweeter.

in 7.1 you got a side and rear channel. the outer and inner driver and tweeter should be playing.

in Dolby Atmos it is like in 7.1 with the addition of the height tweeter which of course playing height objects.

The Era 300 having 6 drivers each. 2 on every side (driver and tweeter) one tweeter above and one tweeter at the front which is disabled in surround and this is correct.

So 5.1 based atmos is outer drivers and top drivers working?

Atmos is Atmos. There are just 2 containers which are TrueHD and EAC3 + joint object channel. But at the ene the only difference is bitrate and codec.

Ok is my diagram understanding correct? like is this how it’s meant to work when everything is running as it should.

Thats correct. It should be like this.

A

AR_S34

Trending Lyricist I

So most streaming content will work fine so will 5.1 PCM but the issue is mainly with Dolby Atmos music and Lossless Atmos via disk?

dominikleiAuthor

Enthusiast II

So most streaming content will work fine so will 5.1 PCM but the issue is mainly with Dolby Atmos music and Lossless Atmos via disk?

Issue is with Atmos and 7.1.

5.1 and stereo upmix is fine

A

AR_S34

Trending Lyricist I

So most streaming content will work fine so will 5.1 PCM but the issue is mainly with Dolby Atmos music and Lossless Atmos via disk?

Issue is with Atmos and 7.1.

5.1 and stereo upmix is fine

Right...(sorry for so many questions) so wouldn’t DDP+ Atmos that’s used by netflix work correctly? since it wouldn’t utilise the inner drivers anyway making the issue something that will occur on 7.1 based Atmos and regular 7.1 audio sources?

S

Snoomuffin

Enthusiast II

It will be interesting to see some kind of response again. But personally in more inclined to "Trust" what Corey wrote before

Well corey went awol at this point. It’s up to everyone to keep on chugging and enjoy the system as it is - not working the way it should - and hope to the Sonos Gods they feel generous enough to bless us with a working system.

dominikleiAuthor

Enthusiast II

So most streaming content will work fine so will 5.1 PCM but the issue is mainly with Dolby Atmos music and Lossless Atmos via disk?

Issue is with Atmos and 7.1.

5.1 and stereo upmix is fine

Right...(sorry for so many questions) so wouldn’t DDP+ Atmos that’s used by netflix work correctly? since it wouldn’t utilise the inner drivers anyway making the issue something that will occur on 7.1 based Atmos and regular 7.1 audio sources?

DDP+ is utilising the inner driver with Atmos.

DDP+ (EAC3) without Atmos is also capabil of 7.1 and EAC3 +joc (joint object channel) is Atmos in EAC3 codec.

The bitrate of EAC3 is 1024kbps (mostly UHD-Blurays) and 768kbps for streaming.

TrueHD has a bitrate of 6000kbps (lossless)

When I'm making a Dolby Atmos project, I do my mix and at the end I create a broadcast wav which contains all informations. Then you use Dolby Media Composer to create your Atmos file and can choose your codec and bitrate of it.

If you would play each file side by side, it would sound the same beside the bitrate.

Just a quick explanation without getting to deep into it.

dominikleiAuthor

Enthusiast II

It will be interesting to see some kind of response again. But personally in more inclined to "Trust" what Corey wrote before

Well corey went awol at this point. It’s up to everyone to keep on chugging and enjoy the system as it is - not working the way it should - and hope to the Sonos Gods they feel generous enough to bless us with a working system.

I spoke with my Sonos support contact again and he created a "feature request" to the audio team of Sonos. Because the audio team wanted it to sound like it is now. It is a feature, not a bug at this time and thats why we created a feature request to solve our problem. That said, we don't know if this ever will be "fixed" or lets say be changed like it was originally..…

I would love to speak with one of the audio team. Maybe someone read this in here, because they are aware of this thread here and on reddit.

S

Spaxx24

Trending Lyricist II

It will be interesting to see some kind of response again. But personally in more inclined to "Trust" what Corey wrote before

Well corey went awol at this point. It’s up to everyone to keep on chugging and enjoy the system as it is - not working the way it should - and hope to the Sonos Gods they feel generous enough to bless us with a working system.

I spoke with my Sonos support contact again and he created a "feature request" to the audio team of Sonos. Because the audio team wanted it to sound like it is now. It is a feature, not a bug at this time and thats why we created a feature request to solve our problem. That said, we don't know if this ever will be "fixed" or lets say be changed like it was originally..…

I would love to speak with one of the audio team. Maybe someone read this in here, because they are aware of this thread here and on reddit.

Would be nice to get a confirmation from @Corry P on this. Since he said otherwise

It really sounds absurd that sending rear channels throught height speaker only(?) would sound better to the audio team. But I mean if there is anyone at Sonos I actually trust it is the audio team.

S

Spaxx24

Trending Lyricist II

I also spoke to Sonos support. At first he thought I was talking about the center speaker, but then he said (CHAT gpt from Swedish)

Yes, that is the intended behavior in a Dolby Atmos surround setup with the Era 300. When used as rear surround speakers, the inner, forward-facing driver (the one closest to you if you're sitting on a couch) is not utilized. Instead, the upward-firing driver handles height effects, and the side-firing drivers manage spatial surround sound to create the Atmos soundscape. This design optimizes the immersive experience by focusing on the spatial and height elements of the sound.

S

superlollo

Enthusiast II

This is some next level BS.

I don’t know who we should trust tbh, @Corry P said one thing, two different people from support/sound team say otherwise.

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