Music in Stereo and Surround Sound on TV

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 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’.

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? 

Hi @MrJvG 

No update - nor is there ever likely to be one. If we implement the feature, the first either of us will likely know about it is when it is released - assuming it ever is, of course.