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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superlollo

Enthusiast II

Just tested this with Ultra, sub gen3’s, 300’s as rears. It’s a thing. I’m getting both (inside) surround and height audio out of the height driver.

Has Sonos addressed this at all or mention an acknowledgment of this issue?

On regular 5.1 content the outside channel is playing trought the heights. on 7.1 and Atmos content the outside is playing right but inside channel is on heights.

they couldn’t get it more wrong than this even if they tried. I’m amazed at the level of incompetence.

And again, it’s not like this is affecting some 5 year old legacy product, it’s making their latest flagship product sound like crap

does anybody know how we could get this to media attention? Like an email address where we could report this to the verge or some other mainstream media outlets.

i think it would definitely speed things up

S

sixoversix

Avid Contributor I

As a developer, and UX designer - I’m disappointed in the app on many levels. But having this same rear/height channel issue is absolutely inexcusable. This is how your product should work, with or without the app. Fix this.

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rbp25

Lyricist II

I would reach out to TheVerge regarding these issues. They seem to report on a lot of Sonos and have good sources for all their leaks.

Sonos STILL hasn’t set functionality for upside down placement of the 300s when mounting within 2 ft of the ceiling! And this was advertised at launch!

I really hope they do a better job with this.

Corry P

Sonos Staff

Hi @rbp25

Sonos STILL hasn’t set functionality for upside down placement of the 300s when mounting within 2 ft of the ceiling! And this was advertised at launch!

Yes we have. It was only TruePlay Tuning that was not available, but it has been now for at least a month - inverted mounting of Era 300s in surround mode has worked since launch, as advertised.

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

dominikleiAuthor

Enthusiast II

I guess now they can't ignore it or put it on the 'fix it sometime list' anymore. This topic got a wave of posts the last week. And it impacts the sound massively.

I don't understand how this bug could be produced or even not recognize by the engineer who are working on this.

At launch of the Ultra we had the bug that Trueplay doens't work and nerfs the bass performance. Then they fixed Trueplay and didn't recognize that while the process of Trueplay are missing "sweeps" on the Era 300. Should be 3 sweeps per speaker instead of 2.

R

rbp25

Lyricist II

Hi @rbp25

Sonos STILL hasn’t set functionality for upside down placement of the 300s when mounting within 2 ft of the ceiling! And this was advertised at launch!

Yes we have. It was only TruePlay Tuning that was not available, but it has been now for at least a month - inverted mounting of Era 300s in surround mode has worked since launch, as advertised.

That’s good to know, thanks for the response Corry! I guess there’s a lot of misinformation about this particular feature then as people on Reddit seemed to believe that since launch if you mount it upside down the channels would not invert with the inverted mounted 300s.

i wish there was more clarity when I had purchased the surrounds as I had to redo my walls and shift my mounts lower as I was told by many at the time that inversion wasn’t supported at all. Not just for Trueplay.

S

superlollo

Enthusiast II

Hi @rbp25

Sonos STILL hasn’t set functionality for upside down placement of the 300s when mounting within 2 ft of the ceiling! And this was advertised at launch!

Yes we have. It was only TruePlay Tuning that was not available, but it has been now for at least a month - inverted mounting of Era 300s in surround mode has worked since launch, as advertised.

Great, now if we can also have the 300s to work as they should we can finally close the circle.

D

da3wilson

Lyricist III

I wouldn't say that they fixed trueplay as it still fails everytime on android with my Ultra and 300s. This issue is extremely noticeable and definitely should be getting more attention from the devs.

dominikleiAuthor

Enthusiast II

I wouldn't say that they fixed trueplay as it still fails everytime on android with my Ultra and 300s. This issue is extremely noticeable and definitely should be getting more attention from the devs.

My Trueplay is working on Android and iPhone. Clear your cache, this helped me sometime.

P

PizzaPino

Contributor I

Please please fix this. I just got my full arc era300 setup and immediately noticed something was off. I might return this and wait for the ultra purchase until this is fixed.

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