Home Cinema surrounds and stereo pairing

  • 27 December 2022
  • 3 replies
  • 94 views
W

Hi

I’m sure this has been asked before but I have trawled through and cannot find a definitive answer.

I’m about to buy Arc, Sub 3, 2 x SL’s in a large room 8mx8m and it’s our main room so when we want to listen to music, I want the home cinema to enable the best possible outcome. The two SL’s will be all the way across the other side of the room which firstly I hope will work well as surrounds for the cinema.

When we want to listen to music, I’d like some recommendations on how best to do this please.

My personal view is that I’d like the two SL’s to form a stereo pair and the Sub 3 to provide the bass. 

However, after reading other posts I’m concerned that this isn’t ideal. 

Can I ‘group’ for specific uses that I can swap between easily when I tell Sonos what I’m doing i.E. use the voice services to form the groups automatically as needed.

I’ve read that this is possible however when Pairing and Un-pairing you lose the Home Cinema Trueplay settings? Is this true.

Any recommendation please would be well received before in splurge on £1600 of speakers.

Sorry, one important final point, my wife won’t like anything that requires constant re-jigging so it needs to be as simple as possible :-)

Many Thanks

Andy

 

 

3 replies

Ken_Griffiths

The Sonos Arc contains the front left/center/right and height TV channels and the two One SL’s are used for the rear left/right channels - and the Sub is obviously for low frequency audio output.

When setup as a Home Theatre, all devices mentioned are bonded together as one single entity, or Sonos ‘Room’, which collectively gets tuned to the entire physical room (using the mic from a compatible iOS device). Rear speakers can be switched ‘off’, so can the Sub, but you cannot switch ‘off’ the Soundbar (master device) to leave the rear speakers etc; playing stereo audio from behind. I’m not sure anyone would want the soundstage coming from behind them anyway?

Moving on then from TV immersive surround sound audio. For music, you can play Dolby Atmos Music audio (Available from Amazon Music HD/UltraHD etc.) or you can play the usual stereo music audio (HD/UltraHD) up-to 24 Bit (48 kHz) in either ‘Ambient’ or ‘Full’ mode. See the link Here

It is possible to unbond the two rear speakers using the Sonos App, but as you mention you then lose the Trueplay settings and will need to retune each component - so personally speaking, I would give that a miss and leave everything bonded, as I mentioned there’s little point to having the soundstage behind you anyway. 

In my own personal case, I chose to simply add another pair of Sonos speakers (Sonos Fives set vertical) to the same physical room, placed out in front and will often use those for music instead, but in all honesty the Arc has a wide-soundstage anyway and I think you might be happy with it and the surrounds, playing music in ‘Full’ mode anyway. Atmos music audio is also very good too, that’s if you decide to subscribe to Amazon Music HD/UltraHD.

Anyhow, I hope the little bit of summary info. here, assists you with your purchase decision. 

W

I am so glad you answered Keith - I’ve read a lot of your other answers on this community area and you are clearly the best in the business!! Thank you.

OK - so you’ve answered my question and I also wasn’t aware of Atmos /HD music so I’m going to go for the Cinema system and see how it goes.

I really appreciate you taking the time to answer - top man.

thanks 
Andy

Ken_Griffiths

Ah that’s ok Andy,,. always happy to to try to help out a future fellow Sonos user. I’m sure you’ll enjoy the mentioned Sonos HT setup.

If you do have any questions a little further down the line, then just post back here, as either I, or other community users are usually lurking around and about here, often trying to help.

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