Era 300 rear driver is silent (with Arc Ultra)

Does it fire when playing the rear height test tones on these videos?

https://download.dolby.com/us/en/test-tones/dolby-test-tones_7_1_4.mp4

https://download.dolby.com/us/en/test-tones/dolby-test-tones_5_1_4.mp4

Yep!

Same problem with my setup. Very disappointed, and am considering returning. My friends also purchased this setup on my recommendation and now I look dumb as they ask me what’s wrong with there speakers and I have to say “the company I recommended over Sony actually does not have your speakers working properly”.

Yes this is a problem. I have been sharing dominiklei’s finding for the past week on Reddit and on the sonos community here. 
 

i watched LOTR last night and sounds were just misplaced and it sounds really strange. This problem is affecting everyone I’m sure of it, but it is so subtle to notice that many just don’t even know they have a problem with their system. 
 

Also wanted to mention the waveguide tweeters disable when era 300’s are connected so only the end tweeters of the bar fire. Disconnecting the era 300’s made the waveguide tweeters fire again but then turned off the end tweeters. Why the hell would this be a thing? All drivers should be firing to have ultra immersiveness - not ‘select immersiveness’
 

I own ultra, 2 sub 4’s,  and era 300’s. The amount cash dropped on this system to only not work right out of the box is so glaringly bad. 

they screwed this up so badly, and I’m starting to think they knew about this before release but chose to go to market anyways in order not to miss the holiday season. Really scummy if you ask me and it’s embarassing that after 5-6 weeks this still hasn’t been fixed

This is highly unlikely, especially after the app fiasco they have been dealing with and are still desperately trying to recover from to rebuild consumer trust. The last thing they want to do is create more problems with their speakers.

There is no excuse for these kinds of errors. But most users haven’t noticed this issue, so it is not a big surprise that this went unnoticed by the Sonos team. Even audio professionals/reviewers who have praised the system have failed to notice the issue. I remember when the Era 300 was first released, the Surround Audio level sliders didn’t work for months. Unfortunately, things like this happen.

And I don't get the feeling they are really trying to fix it soon. More like: yeah we will do it some time... 

It is such a big deal imo. The Era 300 perfoming so much less than before.

I also don't get that not a single review mentioned it. Well I guess the most people are overwhelmed by the Arc Ultras performance in comparison to the Arc and just thinking that it sounds just different.

Really frustating. I'm not watching any Dolby Atmos content atm, because it is just a pain...

this issue needs correction before the end of year. It’s been going on for over a month. The mis-routing of sound cripples the system and nullifies the “Atmos” label this system says it has. It is essentially “broken” for Atmos content. That should be concern enough a $2k-$3k system is gimped. 

I don't think it will be fixed this year... But it can't be such a big deal imo. Well, I'm not an app developer but a sound engineer and in my job it is just a click to route the channel to another. Even things like Dolby Atmos.

Lets see how fast Sonos is.

Soon would be good, but soon, when you are as deep in the rough as Sonos is on this update mess isn’t likely to be an option.

Like past issues, I’m sure Sonos will get it all sorted out at some point. Sucks to see them doing themselves so much damage but all they can do is fight through to a solution.

I bet you anything that’s all that it is - just a click away from fixing…

I can confirm the same issue with my Arc Ultra system, fully up to date. The rear surround channels are firing from the upward firing driver. I don't think this was always the case with the Ultra or the Arc, but now I'm second guessing myself. 

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?

Having the same issue with my era 300s with my arc ultra, please let's get an update on this as to when we can expect a fix, this has badly hurt my system.

I hate piling on, because I haven't had many app issues, but this feels a little ridiculous. Spend another $1100 on the ultra from the arc and now my 300s are worse off.

Just feeling like a waste of time and money as this point, but I'll wait to hear from Sonos. I've submitted a ticket with my diagnostics.

Please try to get us some sort of update soon, thanks. 

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

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. 

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. 

Hi ​@rbp25 

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.