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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K

kimma

Lyricist III

Having this issue as well, just adding it here as well to "register my vote" 😅 Hope it gets fixed soon.

G

GuitarSuperstar

Lead Maestro

I know there is no timeline for when this will be fixed, but I would love to see Sonos consider extending the 30-day return window to 60 or 90 days so users can have more time to test their newly purchased systems after these issues have been corrected. This will help regain some consumer trust and satisfaction too, especially after the app debacle.

"Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you." - Rashi

L

Lewdog129

Lyricist III

Currently having the exact same issue. Upgraded to the era 300’s from the One SL’s and the entire set up sounds completely off right out of the box. Ridiculous that you spend thousands of dollars on a set up for it not to work the way it was intended along with KNOWING about the issue and having no fix or an estimated time frame for the fix. It’s not like it’s a small issue, this seems pretty wide spread. They’re going to rightfully lose an egregious amount of sales during the holiday season because of this. Word of mouth built the company, it can tear it down twice as fast. Almost tempted to return my set up out of principle. What a joke. Paid premium price for this and feels like I’m running a cheap set of bottom dollar Bose speakers behind me. Insane that my one SL’s are out performing my era 300’s.

Yeah I’m positive every person who owns the era 300’s for surround use is affected. It’s an extreme issue that needs urgent attention.

I have until January to return - insane all the people grabbing the holiday deals only to turn on their system that’s broken right out the gate.

Lmao - just absurd. Imagine people opening up their items for Christmas and then setting it all up to only find out that it doesn’t work!

While I agree… 99% isnt even gonna noticed something :P

well, they will notice when its fixed ;) how good the Era 300 ACTUALLY are

Yep! I have had my eras for 1 year now, i miss them.

Also I’m excited how my “new” system will sound with Ultra, Working Eras, 2 subs :D

Just wondering where on the priority list this falls for sonos. Lets hope the top

I would love it if Sonos allowed there to be a weekly “Engineers Engagement Session” where they allow their engineers to discuss what issues the community is having and what they are planning on doing to solve it. Even if they can’t solve something for a while, it would be nice to know they are working on the issue. It might even help with them getting more diagnostics from those in the community affected by the big issues and give the engineers more data to work off of for a fix.

J

j5cent

Contributor I

The Verge has a “contacts” at the very bottom of their website. I clicked on it and it gave me an option for “story pitch”. I left a lengthy explanation and submitted it for a story pitch. I encourage everyone to do the same. I told them “we just want someone to give us a voice”. Might be worth a shot 🤷‍♂️. Sonos clearly has no interest is addressing this issue.

Contributor I

Enthusiast II

The Verge has a “contacts” at the very bottom of their website. I clicked on it and it gave me an option for “story pitch”. I left a lengthy explanation and submitted it for a story pitch. I encourage everyone to do the same. I told them “we just want someone to give us a voice”. Might be worth a shot 🤷‍♂️. Sonos clearly has no interest is addressing this issue.

I also pitched the story earlier today, let’s keep our fingers crossed that Sonos can Fix this soon

S

superlollo

Enthusiast II

Went to the store today, they had the ultra set up with era 100s and it sounded Way better than my 300s currently do….they also had a sub4 in the setup and i ended up buying it.

So there you go Sonos, just threw another 900$ at ya, now Fix the 300s for god’s sake

S

Snoomuffin

Enthusiast II

Went to the store today, they had the ultra set up with era 100s and it sounded Way better than my 300s currently do….they also had a sub4 in the setup and i ended up buying it.

So there you go Sonos, just threw another 900$ at ya, now Fix the 300s for god’s sake

It’d be nice to watch alien Romulus on 4k disc on a working system - waited two months for it lmao.

C

cea2

Contributor I

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

At the end of most legitimate reviews and articles the Authors do have contact emails and are always looking for ‘tips’.

cea002

C

cea2

Contributor I

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

“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.“

Generally with the end byline most reviewers and writers, for legit media, provide at minimum an email contact. They are always looking for a good scoop.

cea002

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