Enthusiast II

Era 300 rear driver is silent (with Arc Ultra)

393 replies
24994 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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Airgetlam

Is this an Android release? I’m on iOS, and several ‘release numbers’ back, and just checked, there are no updates available to me from the iOS store.

Bruce

P

Peter_254

Prodigy II

Is this an Android release? I’m on iOS, and several ‘release numbers’ back, and just checked, there are no updates available to me from the iOS store.

That's just for the speakers

Airgetlam

Ah, thanks, not a client release, a firmware release. I’m not home for three more days, can’t check my speakers. ;)

Bruce

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Snoomuffin

Enthusiast II

Hi @superlollo

I do get your point, though I have a single Era 300 and all of it’s drivers are working (when playing spatial content), as would they if had a stereo pair of 300s. The Era 300 is not designed to solely be a surround speaker.

Certain drivers are disabled when a pair of Era 300s are added as surrounds, but that is to optimise the sound stage - would you prefer it if we enabled all the drivers and it sounded much worse as a result?

The inner drivers did work, so it’s quite baffling that they were disabled recently.

As far as I am aware, the behaviour of these drivers has not been changed. I am currently seeking clarification on the behaviour of the inner drivers, however, as someone on the Audio team said the following on Reddit, which disagrees with the above quoted text in blue from my documentation:

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.

I shall update you here when I hear more, but it seems most likely that the documentation will be altered (so please don’t take the parts in blue above as gospel).

it’s especially bad for all of us who have an open plan room. My left surround is quite close to a wall, the right one is more than 12ft from the closest wall. Because of this, even after advanced trueplay, the sound from the left surround is always much louder than the right one. This could be solved if we had the option to have sound come from the inward facing drivers, or at least a way to manually control the left/right surround volume. I’m sure a lot of people have similar room layouts

I think this is a fair point, and I have already passed on some suggestions to this effect. There are definitely recommended ideals for a Home Theatre setup, and only rarely will all of them be met.

Please note, as hinted to in the Reddit post, that some drivers - especially those that rely upon reflections, will be too easy to accurately locate (something you don’t want to do) if their levels are too high. I noticed being able to hear height channel content played by the Arc Ultra no longer sound as if it were coming from above once I set the height channel setting too high (more than about +6).

I hope this helps.

Cory,

it doesn’t make sense to have the rear speakers be very low to the point where they sound non-existent.

it was never like this before, ever. Sides, rears, upwards all worked together in a good way. All could be heard discretely.

No reason to have the heights essentially taken over for the rears even if your engineers feel they know what sounds best. This is the first anyone’s ever heard rears should route to the height channels to make things sound better. Idk what planet your engineers are from but it’s not earth.

Stanley_4

Grand Maestro

Ah, thanks, not a client release, a firmware release. I’m not home for three more days, can’t check my speakers. ;)

Something they could add to the Web App!

S

Snoomuffin

Enthusiast II

Something needs to happen. You don’t just cut off speakers and say that it was doing it wrong the whole time when no one even complained the 300’s were bad in any way, shape, or form.

It’s even more frustrating hearing the company who made the speakers describe the speaker itself exactly the way it supposed to play/function in those YouTube videos.

lmao it’s like a “woops - we described our product completely wrong - our bad. Here’s the way it supposed to function a year and half later”

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superlollo

Enthusiast II

The inner drivers did work, so it’s quite baffling that they were disabled recently.

As far as I am aware, the behaviour of these drivers has not been changed. I am currently seeking clarification on the behaviour of the inner drivers, however, as someone on the Audio team said the following on Reddit, which disagrees with the above quoted text in blue from my documentation:

Can we please be honest with eachother?

There was literally a video where one of sonos senior VPs was explaining how the rear channels were being output from the inner drivers of the Era 300s. And I say that there WAS a video because it was promptly taken down by Sonos as soon as it was posted in here. That was really scummy btw.

Let’s at least stop pretending all your customers are stupid

Corry P

Sonos Staff

Hi @superlollo

Can we please be honest with eachother?

Yes. The video is still here: https://www.sonos.com/en-us/sonos-live, but was taken down from the YouTube channel as part of a general clean up, as I understand it, along with other videos. I agree that the timing was lousy.

The statement made in the video agrees with the statement in print on the Reddit event, which I quoted above. It does seem like this is going win the contest over the information in my documentation - it was this that I was waiting for clarification over, and still am. Official documentation is official documentation, and I have to stick with it, which is why I - and others - have been seeking clarification over this apparent mistake. I apologise for any confusion or consternation caused as a result, but we are trying to rectify matters.

Please know that we are listening to the feedback you are all providing, we are presently investigating the reasons for the feedback, and I personally think it very likely at this point that changes will be made.

I hope this helps.

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein

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superlollo

Enthusiast II

Hi @superlollo

Can we please be honest with eachother?

Yes. The video is still here: https://www.sonos.com/en-us/sonos-live, but was taken down from the YouTube channel as part of a general clean up, as I understand it, along with other videos. I agree that the timing was lousy.

The statement made in the video agrees with the statement in print on the Reddit event, which I quoted above. It does seem like this is going win the contest over the information in my documentation - it was this that I was waiting for clarification over, and still am. Official documentation is official documentation, and I have to stick with it, which is why I - and others - have been seeking clarification over this apparent mistake. I apologise for any confusion or consternation caused as a result, but we are trying to rectify matters.

Please know that we are listening to the feedback you are all providing, we are presently investigating the reasons for the feedback, and I personally think it very likely at this point that changes will be made.

I hope this helps.

Thanks for your answer, I appreciate it. Currently the inner drivers are completely disabled, it’s not like the volume is only lower. If it actually is lower, it is 95% lower, you can’t hear anything unless you put your ear right next to it (touching it). At that point you might as well turn it off.

I’m sure it wasn’t like that a couple of months ago, you could clearly hear it. Even in trueplay configuration, both quick and advanced, the inner drivers don’t emit any sound at all.

Having some sort of setup in the app where you can specify your surround placement (corner, close to a wall, no wall) would be extremely beneficial. My B&O speakers have such a setup and it’s not like B&O is a huge software company or anything. Even better, some separate volume sliders for left/right surrounds.

If Sonos is afraid that the user will screw it up, just add an “advanced” mode in the app that enables those functions only for those that want to use it. My router has something similar, when you login you can only see some very basic config options, but then there’s the “expert” menu which allows you to do all sort of stuff at your own risk.

Corry P

Sonos Staff

Hi @superlollo

You have made 3 good points there, and I added them all to the document that will be passed to the people who decide such things. Thank you.

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein

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