Era 300 rear driver is silent (with Arc Ultra)

Oh man, it’s probably gonna take 6 months for Sonos to fix it, if at all. I still remember the terrible firmware update from 2-3 years ago when surround sound stopped working randomly. 

This sounds like the classic case of each department being in a silo and not talking to each other. Which is horrible for problems such as this, as it tends to mean fractured priorities and views of their internal workings. 

Keith replied on the Reddit open forum:

https://www.reddit.com/r/sonos/s/Twvpd0pFMw

“Hey there ~ Appreciate the question. I spoke with one of the Product Managers on the Audio Team about this, and here's what they said:

Sonos soundbars and multichannel speakers use a variety of rendering, arraying, and psychoacoustic techniques & effects to create an immersive sound experience. It is not sufficient to assume that one audio channel in a spatial audio mix will map to one driver or speaker in a Sonos home theater set.  In the case of Arc Ultra bonded with Era 300, both the soundbar and the Era 300 take advantage of these techniques.

The inner speaker (tweeter + woofer) IS NOT disabled on an Era 300 surround when bonded to any Sonos soundbars with Dolby Atmos support (Arc Ultra, Arc, and Beam Gen 2). The inner speaker is primarily responsible for rear surround channel content, however, the rear surround channel is also mixed into the up-firing tweeter with the rear height channel.

The inner speaker is notably lower [in] volume than the up-firing speaker due to the direct path of sound propagation to the main listening position compared to the indirect path from the up-firing tweeter.  The choice to share rear surround content between the inner speaker and up-firing speaker was made to improve the immersive and environmental quality of the rear surround sound stage.

For the Sonos Arc Ultra soundbar, Dolby Atmos content is rendered to 9.1.4, while 7.1 and 5.1 content are up-mixed to 9.1.4 content. In all cases, the inside-facing, outside-facing, and up-firing speakers are active while the front-facing speaker is inactive.

The behavior of Era 300 as surround speakers with a Sonos soundbar has not changed since it was first introduced.  The Arc Ultra is capable of higher fidelity rendering at 9.1.4, compared to Arc and Beam Gen 2 which render surround content at a max 7.1.4. With all supported Sonos soundbars, the Era 300 can utilize the inside-facing, outside-facing, and up-firing speakers.

Broadly speaking, the best way to judge the immersive sound experience of an Arc Ultra with Era 300 surround speakers is to listen to a high-quality Dolby Atmos mix, either music or cinema content. A full mix will produce an experience that single-channel pink noise and frequency sweeps from home theater test tracks can never deliver.

All that said, I still think that there's room for conversation. We are listening and will continue to take that feedback to the team for consideration.”

As I suspected, we cannot expect a discrete channel analysis of a positional codec to be the same for every room, or even be of any use. 

TBH I’m not going to lie but this last explanation kind of makes sense to me? I sit fairly close to my 300’s and if the inner driver was as loud as the rest of the speakers/drivers I guess it would be an issue for my specific setup….

Also every time I tested listened close to the inner driver (this was before I became aware of this supposed issue) I always thought I was getting audio if a little quieter than the outer driver but after I became convinced something was wrong I thought that the sound I was getting from the inner driver was just the upward driver audio leaking through but with this latest explanation everything makes more sense to me. 

Yeah but not everyone has the era 300’s close to their head. This idea only helps some people. M

if sonos actually let us control the volume of the rear channels that would definitely help…

it doesn’t help anybody. 20% less volume on inner driver array would make sense, currently it’s -95% lol

“The behavior of Era 300 as surround speakers with a Sonos soundbar has not changed since it was first introduced”

Does this not put this issue to bed? Everybody on Reddit making out like some big bad update came out at some point and nerfed them.

Except the sound profile from the Era 300s as surrounds has changed recently.

To All

My apologies that I have to quote the OP in this manner as the OP is entitled to their opinion. However, IMO the OP regardless of their credentials should not have taken it upon themselves to unequivocally characterize their opinion as a “Problem” that Sonos should fix.

Humans have a tendency to automatically lend credibility to people who are supposedly an authority on a subject. In some instances the credibility bestowed is warranted as others in the specific field with equal credibility have given their approval to the additional findings. You don’t just cut your leg off because one physician says it’s necessary…to the contrary you would seek a second opinion.

Granted the OP goes on to present videos of sound tests they have chosen to justify their claim. Others in the community have allegedly made their own test using test sounds. However, the fault in doing so is that no one has a baseline of sound to say that the supposed lack of sound from the inner drivers is a fault. Furthermore there is no standardized sound test that everyone uses over another or has access to.

I mentioned in another post to this thread that I watched the movie Twisters and was thoroughly impressed with the Atmos sound in my space. That’s not to say that you watching the same movie will achieve the same enjoyment; as the accuracy of the Atmos “bubble” is heavily dependent upon the parameters of your space. That said one’s opinion as to how Atmos sound is reproduced in their space is not an inditement of a faulty design of the Era 300’s.

Your next comment may be that how is it so many in the Community are indicating the same issue. That’s a fair statement. However, I ‘d ask how many who claim they have the same issue may have been unconsciously convinced there is an issue based upon what the OP has presented as “gospel” because of their credentials that were presented at the start of their post.

​@Jamie A has presented an answer from the Sonos engineers that the audio behavior of the Era 300’s is as to be expected. So until Sonos reverses that decision all of the Sabre rattling in this thread is pointless, IMO.

There has been talk of making the volume adjustment for the inner drivers a feature request. The potential issue with such is that more issues may be created than resolved. One has to remember that the Era 300’s act in unison with the soundbar to create a balanced listening experience. Tweaking one aspect of sound has a direct impact on other sound parameters. I believe that Sonos has determined that some adjustments should be limited in scope or not offered at all. You might call such as “Big Brother” exercising too much control. However’ I would ask…”do you control everything in your life or are some factors limiting or beyond your control”. 

No need to keep beating a dead horse so I’ll leave it to you to make your own decision as to how you move forward (or not) regarding the Era 300 inner drivers.