ERA's 300 center channel not working if connected as surrounds to ARC/SUB

Yes, thanks for the reply, i was the one talking to @Corry P in the Sonos Era 300 wall mount positioning post.

I’ll add the reply from the Corry here, so it’s clear what is happening with the center channel.

Solution: 👇

@Corry P replied regarding my question in the  Sonos Era 300 wall mount positioning post

In short:

Corry P wrote:

Hi Majo133

The decision was made after extensive user testing and feedback determined no front speaker audio provided the best sound, when the Era 300s are configured as surrounds.The advertising materials state what they state because that is what the speakers have. When not configured as surrounds, the centre channel driver is active, whether the speaker is operating alone or with another in a stereo pair.I hope this helps.

I also asked regarding informing user about this in the app:

Majo133 wrote:

Well thanks for your reply. Wouldn’t be good to inform users about this decision somewhere in the app after ERAs are added as surrounds? I guess i (and few other users who already noticed this) won’t be the last. I get it when the creator decides what is best for the user, but when user is testing the feature and the feature doesn’t work as it should and user is not informed anywhere how it should work, well then the confusion occurs.

So wouldn’t u consider adding this information somewhere to the ERAs surround setup?

Corry P replied with this:

Corry P wrote:

Hi Majo133

Point taken - thanks for your feedback! I’ll pass this along to the product team.

At least if someone searches this topic and comes across this post, they will see the clear replies now 😊

Update:

Just adding this info to this post.

Hello, 

I’ve just asked the same question under another thread but didn’t quite word it as well. 
I have one Sonos Era 300, set up to play music only. Am I right in thinking the one speaker alone will not produce any sound from the front, but just round the sides? 

When not connected to a soundbar, your 300 will produce sounds from all of its speakers including the front one 

@Corry P I wanted to follow up with a few more scenarios related to this, because I'm not sure if all of them are features or bugs. I see 3 unexpected behaviours when using the Era 300 as surrounds:

1. ✅ The centre driver is not used. That is understandable if the other drivers are compensating for this.
2. ⚠️ When running these test tones, the left and right rear surround channels are very quiet and muted compared to the rest. This makes me feel like we're missing out on audio coming from those channels. I imagined that on a full 7.1.4 system like this, test tones should sound the sameish on all channels, regardless of which drivers are doing the work.
3. ⚠️ This is the one that seems most like a bug to me: changing the TV Level inside Surround Audio does not change the volume of the left and right rear surround channels. If we break down the channels of 7.1.4:
   • 3 front channels are fixed.
   • 4 top channels can be controlled with Height settings.
   • 2 left and right surround channels can be controlled with Surround settings.
   • 2 left and right rear surround channels cannot be adjusted. Why? This feels unexpected to me, I can't imagine why those channels wouldn't be affected by changing the surround levels.

Hi Sarah N,

Many thanks for your reply.

I’ll have to double check my settings as there’s still nothing from the front channel for some reason.

Can someone please help? I’m still learning with Sonos…I have an Arc, gen 3 sub and 2 x Era300s set as surrounds in what I call living room. I am quite happy with the atmos when playing blu ray and up to an extent music. However as the centre driver is effectively ‘disconnected’ in this mode can I create another ‘room”’ (living room 2) to utilise the Era300’s to play stereo music only so it utilises the ‘redundant’ channel and be able to switch between the living room and living room 1? If so how do I go about it? Sorry if it sounds like a stupid question…..maybe this poses a problem with trueplay as you effectively have 2 sets of calibration?

thank you