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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Show previous replies

S

superlollo

Enthusiast II

Straight up lying about the issue, we have reached a new low here

S

Snoomuffin

Enthusiast II

Should I return the entire system? Feels like samsung, or any other brand, would automatically be better by default just because all of their channels/drivers fire appropriately…

P

ProfessorFrag

Enthusiast II

Sorry Jamie, the last part (The Era 300 plays rear channel audio through its height array.) is such a BS reply.

Here’s a Sonos Era 300 Q&A YouTube video from last year:

Pay attention to Product Manager Ryan Moore’s answer to the very first question. The rear channel audio is SUPPOSED to be playing from the other inward-firing side tweeter/woofer. What we have now is clearly a bug that’s being dismissed as a “feature”.

Wow!! It’s at the 2:00 minute mark if anybody wants to jump right to it.

I thought Sonos had explained in the media and on these forums that only the center was disabled and that the Era 300 sides were used for surround rear on the inside and surround side on the outside.

These official posts about the inside being disabled intentionally alongside the center made me doubt my own memories. Literally unbelievable until you showed us this video. Well done.

K

krion

Trending Lyricist I

Sorry Jamie, the last part (The Era 300 plays rear channel audio through its height array.) is such a BS reply.

Here’s a Sonos Era 300 Q&A YouTube video from last year:

Pay attention to Product Manager Ryan Moore’s answer to the very first question. The rear channel audio is SUPPOSED to be playing from the other inward-firing side tweeter/woofer. What we have now is clearly a bug that’s being dismissed as a “feature”.

Wow!! It’s at the 2:00 minute mark if anybody wants to jump right to it.

I thought Sonos had explained in the media and on these forums that only the center was disabled and that the Era 300 sides were used for surround rear on the inside and surround side on the outside.

These official posts about the inside being disabled intentionally alongside the center made me doubt my own memories. Literally unbelievable until you showed us this video. Well done.

Just within the last hour, they have changed the video’s visibility to private! They were caught in a lie and are now trying to remove evidence.

Transcript of the now-private Q&A video, then Principal Product Manager Ryan Moore speaking:

"It really boils down to the way that our acoustic engineers tested the speakers in all of our different listening environments, as we were developing Era 300. And really what they found was, when these are used as surrounds..., we found that the best, most immersive, kind of clearest separation came when this center waveguide was turned off because you're really able to send sound to that rear side [points to the outward-firing side tweeter/woofer] and rear surround [points to the other inward-firing side tweeter/woofer] and keep things really separated and really clear."

S

superlollo

Enthusiast II

Sorry Jamie, the last part (The Era 300 plays rear channel audio through its height array.) is such a BS reply.

Here’s a Sonos Era 300 Q&A YouTube video from last year:

Pay attention to Product Manager Ryan Moore’s answer to the very first question. The rear channel audio is SUPPOSED to be playing from the other inward-firing side tweeter/woofer. What we have now is clearly a bug that’s being dismissed as a “feature”.

Wow!! It’s at the 2:00 minute mark if anybody wants to jump right to it.

I thought Sonos had explained in the media and on these forums that only the center was disabled and that the Era 300 sides were used for surround rear on the inside and surround side on the outside.

These official posts about the inside being disabled intentionally alongside the center made me doubt my own memories. Literally unbelievable until you showed us this video. Well done.

Just within the last hour, they have changed the video’s visibility to private! They were caught in a lie and are now trying to remove evidence.

Transcript of the now-private Q&A video, then Principal Product Manager Ryan Moore speaking:

"It really boils down to the way that our acoustic engineers tested the speakers in all of our different listening environments, as we were developing Era 300. And really what they found was, when these are used as surrounds..., we found that the best, most immersive, kind of clearest separation came when this center waveguide was turned off because you're really able to send sound to that rear side [points to the outward-firing side tweeter/woofer] and rear surround [points to the other inward-firing side tweeter/woofer] and keep things really separated and really clear."

This is the last straw @Jamie A @Keith - Sonos @Corry P , caught lying and now trying to remove evidence by making the video private.

This is shameless, never thought I’d see a real, huge problem like this being handled in such an unprofessional way by Sonos, even considering it’s less than stellar past record when it comes to busting their own software.

Will our “feature request” (lol) be taken into consideration?

dominikleiAuthor

Enthusiast II

Taking the video down or making it private shows clearly that we are right. Did someone downloaded the video before? 😂

What a s***show, sorry.

I guess we won't get an answer on that.

But to be clear, I don't think that Corry, Jamie and Keith are lying in that case, cause they just telling us what someone told them. Its coming straight from the level 3 audio team. Corry, Jamie, Keith and the german support guy are just "support" and they got informations from "above".

Moderator Note: Modified in accordance with the Community Code of Conduct

K

krion

Trending Lyricist I

Taking the video down or making it private shows clearly that we are right. Did someone downloaded the video before? 😂

What a s***show, sorry.

I guess we won't get an answer on that.

But to be clear, I don't think that Corry, Jamie and Keith are lying in that case, cause they just telling us what someone told them. Its coming straight from the level 3 audio team. Corry, Jamie, Keith and the german support guy are just "support" and they got informations from "above".

Moderator Note: Modified in accordance with the Community Code of Conduct

The thought of downloading the video came to my mind yesterday, but I thought Sonos wouldn’t do that because it will look even worse for them if they took it down. Well, they continue to surprise me!

S

superlollo

Enthusiast II

Taking the video down or making it private shows clearly that we are right. Did someone downloaded the video before? 😂

What a s***show, sorry.

I guess we won't get an answer on that.

But to be clear, I don't think that Corry, Jamie and Keith are lying in that case, cause they just telling us what someone told them. Its coming straight from the level 3 audio team. Corry, Jamie, Keith and the german support guy are just "support" and they got informations from "above".

Moderator Note: Modified in accordance with the Community Code of Conduct

Well, as “official” spokespersons for Sonos I guess they would at least have a clue of what’s really happening here. I realize it’s their job and they’ve probably been told to lie and that’s what they have to do, but this whole thing has become really shady, even for Sonos standards.

Can’t believe we’ve come to this, I regret giving € 2.500 of my hard earned money to such a despicable company

P

ProfessorFrag

Enthusiast II

They took down the video?!

@tomwarren , I believe this just became newsworthy.

G

Gaham

Headliner I

They took down the video?!

@tomwarren , I believe this just became newsworthy.

There is clearly a disconnect in Sonos between the Product Managers and the Product Marketers. I suspect the latter are working with the specifications of the final product as opposed to what will make the actual launch. This is a common problem with software based appliances which is why the golden rule is:

Never buy a product for a promised feature (you really want) that is not yet available.

It always pays to wait until the dust has settled so you can clearly see the product and not the promise.

Remember 2 things about early bird offers:

They benefit the seller more than the buyer
The discount is always matched, and some times exceeded, later in the sales cycle

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