Hi @Majo133
Thank you - I've marked this thread as a feature request and it will be seen by the relevant teams for consideration. Keep the ideas coming!
Adding my plus one to this idea: the performance of the Era 300 as a musical stereo pair is sublime, and I’ve spent quite a few hours trying to debug why the speakers felt significantly less punchy after pairing them as surrounds with the Arc. No amount of trueplaying worked to bring that back.
I understand there’s quite some engineering behind this choice, so not questioning the sensible defaults. I’d love the option to enable the center channel for my particular living room.
You’re right, we should have the option to choose whether to activate the centre channel or leave it inactive. We paid for 6 drivers, then we want all of the six drivers 
100% agree, we use the living room surround Eras for obviously movies (which sounds amazing) and music, but more music to be honest. We need the option between watching movies or listening to music, so we can maximize all of the drivers. The wife wants me to switch back to the surround Ones when we listen to music, it’s that bad of an experience…
I too would like the ability to enable the center tweeter when in surround mode. This should be an option in the Sonos app. Paying over $1000 with stands and not having the center channel is ridiculous. Please implement this.
Gets my vote 
… there’s no doubt they sound wonderful right now but it would be great to at least have the option. Thanks
Very underwhelming speakers for 95% of content out there when using them as surrounds.
Arc+Sub+300’s
Yes atmos content sounds amazing!
but everything else…. fumbled the bag.
Arc+Sub+One’s > Arc+Sub+300
When it comes to non-atmos 300’s are not worth it… unless they active the center channel for non-atmos content.
I would like to see that feature implemented. Buying two Era’300 when the center is disabled in a surround setup for music is no go for me.
I am postponing any ERA 300 purchase until the above requested center speaker function is implemented.
Very underwhelming speakers for 95% of content out there when using them as surrounds.
Arc+Sub+300’s
Yes atmos content sounds amazing!
but everything else…. fumbled the bag.
Arc+Sub+One’s > Arc+Sub+300
When it comes to non-atmos 300’s are not worth it… unless they active the center channel for non-atmos content.
The era’s actually sound incredible when paired in stereo and the center tweeter is utilized, I’m not sure why they decided to limit them so badly when paired as rears. Really hoping they give us an option to enable full functionality soon.
Struggling to understand why you guys miss this every time. We want a surround sound system for watching movies that then turns into a music system when listening to music using the same hardware. Which is kind of its main selling point for hardcore users. It’s just software, it really is. Not saying it’s easy but it’s just the software.
this is like a 6 gear car and it can only go up to 5th gear, in favor of Sonos switching that driver back on, because it sounds weird to me…
This is a great feature request, but I want to amend it. Please reply if you think this is a better or worse suggestion.
For music playback, it would be ideal if enabling main drivers in ERA 300 also made ERA 300 the main speakers (along with the sub). The Arc could be disabled or relegated to “ambient”.
In my opinion, the Arc is not that great at music so I would rather turn around and face the ERA 300 for the music experience.
I wanted to add a +1 for being able to configure whether the front driver fires (in a surround configuration).
Sorry, today I have Era300 configured as surround, am I wrong or does the center channel (tweeter) not work with movies? Is it only for music or for movies as well?
@Zanellato Fabio, users were originally told by a Sonos employee that the center firing driver and the height driver would be used as part of the rear surround channels when used as surrounds. As users have begun receiving them and holing them up, many have found, like you did, that the center channel is completely disabled when used as surrounds - even when playing music. Many are finding this makes for a crippled surround experience.
This thread is being marked as a feature request thread to ask Sonos to enable the ability for the user to choose in the app, whether to enable use of the center firing as driver.
Guys, thank you all for the support, hopefully someone will hear us and even if it would not be added, at least some deeper clarification would be appreciated.
Adding to this request.
Replaced my rear 5s with 300s today.
We listen to a lot of music in this room, as well as watching movies.
A lot of stereo mixed music.
The 300s are great for theatre. They are crap for music with the center channels turned off. Now the music is primarily from the arc, when it used to be from a pair of 5s, set to “full” & +3 for music playback.
I tried the 300s as a stereo pair with a sub mini in another room, replacing stereo 1s. It was a big improvement.
I feel you're missing the mark here, giving us a weird, niche product that is less well-rounded by the decision to turn off the center channel.
I especially feel duped by Sonos not informing their customers of this in a clear and transparent manner, which is an issue Sonos had demonstrated in the past, (ie Moves won't stereo pair on Bluetooth, etc).
As someone heavily invested in Sonos gear, adding another 1k purchase that lacks basic usability is deeply disappointing.
I just want to add my agreement with this request. I was considering adding 300s to my system, but with the center channel crippled, it doesn't make sense for my music-heavy use.
100% agree with this. We should have the ability to turn the center forward facing tweeter back on when they are installed is rear speakers, in a surround sound set up.
UPDATE:
SONOS replied with an E-mail today, so just wanted to let u know guys.
I’m a member of the Escalation Team here at Sonos Support.
Your initial email has been shared with our CEO. Patrick, however, cannot reply to all the contacts he receives and as such a case was created in our customer care system and escalated to a Senior Technician to address your feedback.
Thank you for your feedback on our new products and your cooperation! I can tell you that our engineers are already aware of your community post, but I will make sure to bring your case to their attention as well.
I can't promise when or if this will happen, but we love getting feedback from our customers!
“Peter Pee” -- a big Sonos Products Youtube influencer has done a review on the Era 100 and 300’s.
I left him a message on one of his latest videos. Thought I might share the post here, I’ll report back on his response, if he does:
Hi Peter, thanks for sharing all your experiences and tips with the Sonos Products. Moving forward, have you not experienced the lack of sound coming from the front-tweeters + inside speakers on the Era 300?
Coming from the Sonos One's as my previous surrounds, I've lost rear directional clarity for Music, movies, and the most affected, gaming.
Sono's tech from their community have openly confirmed that when you connect the Era 300's as surrounds, the front tweeter is disabled.
"They" claim disabling the front firing tweeters produced better results during testing. How????????
********It's undoubtedly a necessity to have a sound system that has flexibility. Not every single movie, show, nor song is going to be Atmos-ready, so allow either an option in the Sonos app or auto-detection of things like Dolby 5.1, 7.1, or just plain stereo to turn on ALL of the speakers of the ERA 300.
But instead, the front firing tweeters are completely disabled for any application.
Many have reported back how nice the ERA 300's sound when they are setup solely on their own, or as a stereo pair. But once set as surrounds, it is severely crippled.
Customers are hoping there will be a solution soon as the Sono's Refund window is small.
As a temporary fix, users have been turning the volume up on the surround channel to compensate for this. Very much a band-aid fix as it still does not provide what the Sonos One's did.
Please share your thoughts. Thank you!
I will most likely return mine if this doesn’t get an update. Why the heck did I pay $900 to use these as surrounds when I can’t get all drivers for music playback?
This feels like a huge oversight and an extremely lazy engineering choice. These speakers seem designed to be used as a stereo pair, not surrounds. Sonos should be up front about this so people don’t keep getting disappointed.
Let’s say hypothetically the surrounds actually do sound best without the front drivers. Even in that case, did you really think customers wouldn’t complain about this? There is a negative psychological effect when you pay for something expensive and don’t get full potential functionality out of it. Seems like whoever designed these should have considered this, really not that hard to predict backlash for this.
After replacing my Sonos One’s with the Era 300’s in surround set-up, testing, being less than impressed with anything non-ATMOS, and then reading most of the comments on this forum… here are my findings. Any non-ATMOS input signal (e.g. DD 5.1, DTS 5.1, DD 2.0 pro logic II) will only use the outward facing tweeter on the Era 300’s. So effectively only 1 of the 4 tweeters will be in use for anything non-ATMOS. That is the reason why they sound so underwhelming with non-ATMOS content. While I understand SONOS’ reasoning that the center tweeter should be disabled, for me the bigger issue is that the inward facing side tweeters are also disabled. SONOS should simply have the surround signal be assigned to both side tweeters for a wider soundstage (similar to a Dipole Surround Speaker). One could call it upsampling from 5.1 to 7.1, but with DTS 5.1 this is standard practice to repeat the surround signal to the extra rear surrounds anyways. Except the Era 300 does not do that either. That also explains while the surround level slider in the app only affects the outward facing tweeter. In short, non-ATMOS surround playback with the Era 300 is like using the Sonos One’s (also 1 active tweeter only) being angled away from your listening position. I really hope there will be a firmware fix or option to make the Era 300 more usable for non-ATMOS content in a surround set-up.
Was all lined up to buy Some era 300’s but that definitely won’t happen until this is fixed. Did they really not think people might want to listen to music with these when also set up as surrounds for ATMOS material? Please give us an option to enable center channel driver, because as things stand now, the Era 300’s set up as surrounds are severely handicapped for listening to music.
This has to be implemented. We already get so many features like line-in blocked in a surround setup, that this would be one to many! Thinking about returning them, even though they sound amazing with Atmos movies.
I’m in the same boat. It’s a lot to spend for crippled functionality.
I also agree with this. Please add the ability to turn on the center speaker when configured as surrounds. Not right that it’s disabled. As others have stated, $900 for rear surrounds is a LOT but people felt it was worth it for a 6 driver setup. Now it’s only 5 - and it’s crippled by design. And it also decreases the music listening experience.
I was so excited when we got the info that these would use both the center driver and the height for all surround audio. I was thinking this *is* the surround we’ve been looking for. Now, Sonos has (currently) made the same mistake as companies like Sony who crippled the upfiring rear surrounds. Please, please add this functionality. I was planning to purchase but the recent reviews when used as surrounds had made me press pause (along with some of the others), until this is cleared up. We do watch some Atmos but not everything is in that format. A lot of older TV/movies won’t have it.
Sonos, you’ve listened to people on adding Bluetooth and line-in (and I even sort of understand limiting the use of the latter when used in surrounds, though not ideal). So, you’ve proven you care about what your users think. You’ve also stated you want people to add more speakers to their Sonos systems. Please add a setting where we can turn on the center driver when used as surrounds.
