Music in Stereo and Surround Sound on TV

I am aware that you can set the surround speakers to ‘full’ so the rear speakers play in stereo but the beam still plays music in this situation. 
 

I want to be able to play just in stereo without the beam as it sounds way better.

I really thought the era 100s would solve this conundrum of switching by connecting line in to turntable but it doesn’t as the line in gets disabled. 

I have Arc, two Era 300s and Sub Mini.  Currently using as surround system but I would also like to be able to toggle the Arc off in the same way that I can toggle the surrounds and Sub off.  Be great if that was possible then you’d have best of both worlds.  Switching the 300s back to stereo means redoing Trueplay which whilst it isn’t too time consuming I have mobility issues which makes this difficult. Ideally the system would store two sets of Trueplay settings for stereo and surround to allow toggling the Arc on and off.

That would be absolutely ideal. I honestly thought Sonos had solved it with the eta 100s which is why I upgraded them from my Sonos ones. Or they created a line in for them and Bluetooth. 
 

thanks for bringing attention to your mobility issues. It shows that the whole true play timing after every time you switch between surround and stereo  is not a practical or convenient solution. 

Hi @Jaxx75 

Welcome to the Sonos Community!

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!

Hi @Corry P thanks so much for reading this and taking the comments on board for feedback.

Before getting one’s hopes up over a standard reply for requests (Sorry Corry), it’s important to understand what is at work here.  When adding surrounds, the radios are reconfigured to a one-way dedicated 5 GHz connection from the soundbar to the surrounds.  This requires a series of handshakes to get right, which is why adding surrounds takes a bit of time.  The reverse happens when the surrounds are removed.  So therefore, a toggle done with “ease” between the two is not possible.  They could place a hot button that does the add surrounds/remove surrounds at the touch of the button, but that is not going to speed up the actual process, and doesn’t save much from the system menu commands we have today.

An alternative would be allowing one to mute the front device and just play out of the surrounds, which would appear to be easier to do, but I defer to the actual engineers on the practicality of the idea, especially with regards to spatial audio through the Era 300s.   I’m sure switching from sending just surround info to sending a full Atmos audio stream through the surrounds from the soundbar isn’t trivial, and given hardware limitations of the decoder and the way it is wired to the soundbar, may not even be possible.  Maybe in the Arc 2, perhaps 😉?

i have the same issue.  its hard to believe i have to navigate sonos 2 app system settings when going from surround for TV vs playing music.  absurd, i think i will sell it all and buy something else.  The app is just not intuitive either.  

I struggle with the fact that folk want the soundstage behind their seated position in the room, unless they are perhaps turning their furniture around to play music (and rotating back again when watching TV). My own choice has been to add a stereo pair of ‘Five’ speakers and a Sub to the same physical room instead and place those vertically out in front. I just believe the soundstage should always be out in front, but it’s each to their own, I guess.

Although it does ‘muddy’ the soundstage somewhat, grouping the two Sonos ‘rooms’ together, the HT setup and the Stereo pair, actually doesn’t sound too bad either, but I am using a Sonos Arc in my case and that does keep good stereo separation out in front in our lounge/living area. I much prefer using the HT setup in Ambient mode for music playback.

My kitchen is open to my living and the first generation play 5's were great with the playbar.  So I forked up more mula to get the woofer and boom needed new app and new play 5's because woof woof wasn't compatible.... so I'm in it for a lot of dough and it's all a disappointment cause now to make it work easier I should get a pair of play 1s and separate the systems.  I can't even use this forum without pop-ups, sorry I'm grumpy about it all

Really everyone with a surround setup would like this.
I replaced my 2 Sonos Ones for the Era 300 with my Arc.
The sound when I watch movies is truly phenomenal. But the 2 Era 300 as a stereo pair for music is much nicer than in a surround setup with the Arc.

For years, a function with the Arc of Beam in a surround setup has been requested:
- When sound comes in via the HDMI on the Beam or Arc, use the 2 Ones, 2 Era 100 or 2 Era 300 as a surround setup.
- Streaming music via the Sonos app using 2 speakers in a stereo setup.