Music in Stereo and Surround Sound on TV

it is fu**ing joke.. 10 years later and we still don’t have this function..

It should work like this:

• If the signal is 5.1, the rear speakers operate in surround mode.
• If the signal is stereo, the rear speakers operate in stereo mode.

Alternatively, you can implement a switch in the settings.

Wow! Your first post, according to your profile. Where does the “10 years” come from? 
For clarity: are you saying you want stereo tv sound coming from the rear speakers as well as the fronts? Or that if any input is a stereo signal the surrounds should be exclusive speakers? 
When you stream music, the rears do operate in stereo mode, as do the soundbar speakers. 

It means that just because I've never been active on the forum doesn't mean I'm a new Sonos user; I've been using it for 7 years. The mention of 10 years comes from seeing a forum thread about this feature created 9 years ago.

I know that with the music source, the rear speakers work in stereo mode, but this only applies when playing music from the Sonos app, which is, to put it mildly, limited, or via AirPlay. I use Apple Music, and to listen to music with the rear speakers in stereo mode, I have to play it from the Sonos app (lossy) or AirPlay (lossy). To listen lossless, I have to use Apple TV through HDMI but then i have rears in ambient mode. It would be much easier if there was an option in the Sonos settings for "TV Music Mode." Many users are missing this option, but unfortunately, Sonos isn't doing anything about it.
Using the Sonos app is a real pain, searching and browsing feels like a joke. And when I do find something I'm interested in, I can't add it to my Apple Music playlist directly. I have to go to the Apple Music app, search for the track there, and only then add it to the playlist. 

The full music mode works for all cases except when the source is TV.  You obviously wouldn’t hear stereo from the rear when the audio source is atmos.  It’s the last point that makes me think that it shouldn’t be that complicated for Sonos to play stereo from the rear speakers with TV source when the source is stereo.  The system can obviously automatically determine what audio channels to play on what speakers based on source and/or audio format of the source.

I don’t think this is an Sonos problem so much as it’s an Apple problem?  Sonos doesn’t have any control over the audio Apple sends to the speakers, and it does play lossless audio for streaming services that support it through Sonos, as I understand it.  I might be mixing up hi res and lossless/lossy in terms of what’s supported  and don’t feel like researching it right now. Sonos obviously has no say in the audio quality of airplay.

I believe adding tracks to playlists is a feature of the Sonos API, but Apple and other streaming services are not required to implement the feature on their end.

https://docs.sonos.com/docs/add-playlists

Apple might be motivated to intentionally not implement the feature to encourage use of airplay and/or buy their competing smart speakers...but that’s speculation.

Yes please. I feel like this limitation really prevents me from g getting the most out of this system in the main room of my house (TV/kitchen). 

I’m posting this again for the new posters who (obviously) haven’t read the entire thread:

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 this working with the Amp surrounds, I have a speaker select switch between the Amp and the main front left and right passive speakers. With the rears on full music, I can switch off the front speakers.

One question though, when playing stereo music, do the rears reverse the left and right channel? As you look at the screen the right channel at the front, is it left when you face the rears? I thought I would try with the balance control, slid to the right and the left off, went to check the rears and they are both still playing, so balance has no affect on the rears.

I just have to ask - why use the rear speakers with your back to the music soundstage. Would you not prefer to have the stage out in front? That’s like facing away from the artist/band/orchestra. I find it odd unless you are turning to sit and face the rears which, as you ‘rightly’ mention, would have the left/right channels swapped. I would personally rather disable the rears, or leave them set to ‘ambient’.

Haha, sorry, I should have explained. Multi use room, home cinema with projector and office, screen at one end, desk at the other end. I used to have two separate systems, I’ve downsized to just a Sonos Amp and rear Sonos Ones. I was just checking as I want to replace the Ones with Fives but if stereo is reversed I won’t bother.

I have a Beam with two Play:5 surrounds and a Sub. Obviously the pair of Play:5’s (+sub) sounds way better for music than when the Beam is included in the mix as part of a surround system.

I partially solve this issue by setting the “Music Level” on the surrounds to +15 (and “Music Playback” to “Full”). This lets the Play:5’s mostly overwhelm the sound from the soundbar.

It’s not ideal, for two reasons: 1) the beam is still playing some sound, which can be noticeable if you’re dancing close the to TV, 2) when I switch to music after watching TV, I have to remember to turn down the volume or the sound level is ludicrously high.

It would be much better if I could have an option to LOWER the Beam “Music Level”, ideally all the way to off.

Yes, perhaps it would be best if there were two trueplay tunings for each mode, and perhaps they can’t do that. Or to reverse the stereo direction. But let’s not allow perfect be the enemy of good: my workaround sounds way better than doing nothing, and it doesn’t use a second profile or reverse the stereo. Being able to completely mute the Beam and have inconsistent overall volume levels between TV and Music would be an incremental step to make it sound and work even better.

[And yes, as some have noted, the sound stage is then behind the sofa that is facing the TV. Honestly, this is hardly an issue. Mostly music is for playing when I’m NOT sitting facing a TV.]

Sonos team, this would be really nice. And I can’t imagine too hard, given you can already adjust levels differently between TV and Music. Just a “Beam Audio” option with “Mute for Music” toggle. Please?