No way to get TV dialogue out of surround speakers

  • 20 June 2023
  • 19 replies
  • 2327 views
S
Userlevel 2

I shelled out for Sonos equipment and was exasperated to find that i can't get a drop of TV dialogue out of my two Era 100 speakers, after configuring them in a surround system with my Beam soundbar. Instead, they are just expensive paper weights if, say, I'm watching TV news or another talky broadcast (shows which barely have any surround sounds to emit).

 

In other words, I can choose to set my new Sonos speakers up merely as extra speakers (good for news and talk shows) or as surround speakers (good for movies). But not both, nor with any way to toggle among sound profiles, nor adjust the sound to let dialogue through in surround. Whether by money-grubbing design (to get us to buy more speakers) or engineering incompetence, I simply can't use my expensive Sonos speakers for both surround sound AND dialogue.

 

Do others have the same experience? 

 

19 replies

melvimbe

Do others have the same experience? 

 

 

Yes, this is standard for Sonos, but I don’t have your same feelings about it.  I don’t have any issues with hearing dialog (from audio channels to be more specific) from the soundbar, and don’t really want to hear them from behind me generally speaking.  However, some people like stream stereo music from their TV and have it come through on the rear as well as front speakers.   I think it would be a good feature to to have the system automatically play stereo in the rear channels when the source is stereo (or mono).  This option is available for streaming sources already.

I wouldn’t say I’m that  upset about it or consider the rear channels to be paper weights. More and more sources are using the surround channels, even ‘talky’ content, and I never really cared for sound profile/simulations, although stereo audio from rear channels is a bit different.

Danny
buzz

You could set the TV output to stereo.

”Money-grubbing” or “incompetence” is a matter of opinion. I’ll suggest another: simplicity. SONOS tends to shy away from presenting the user with a blizzard of user options that many users will consider confusing.

This sort of option is available on some traditional 3rd party A/V systems, but usually buried in a long, inconvenient drill down of options. 
 

 

N
Userlevel 7
Badge +18

Surely the point of surround effects speakers is to produce the surround sounds? Speech (unless an off-camera voice) is normally played through front speakers, with the actors on-screen. It doesn’t seem to make sense to have voices coming from behind the viewer when the actors are in front.  

 

jgatie

The definition of surrounds is not dialog coming from the rear, unless the dialog is spoken by someone off screen behind you or to the sides.  The OP is thinking of something different, like 5 speaker stereo or the like.  What that is depends on the DSP applied to the input, but it’s not surround sound, and Sonos is a surround sound setup.  

S
Userlevel 2

Riiiiight, bc it's the natural order of the universe that when you're watching TV, dialogue--no matter where the speaker is--has to come from the front, and music (you know, the biological soundtrack of life)--and wind rustling, stage coach sounds, etc--only come from behind, no matter where that action is. 🤣

 

And what to make of the barely audible but still distracting scratchy sounds you get out of your surround speakers when you're just watching news, a talk show, or sitcom? Where does that map to the ineluctable order of things? 

 

The simple fact is, a lot of people buy extra speakers to hear better the things they need to hear. Like dialogue.

 

And Sonos' settings are already plenty complicated, with adjustments and enhancements for this and that.

 

So I return to my point: If Sonos insistently filters dialogue out of surround speakers, it is making either a bad engineering decision, or a cynical capitalistic one.

 

Hopefully, if enough people complain instead of kiss their asses, they'll provide that functionality. 

jgatie

See, there's more proof you have no clue what surround sound is.  Sonos doesn’t "insistently filter dialogue out of surround speakers", because the dialog isn't there to filter out.  No sound engineer routes screen dialog to the surrounds, they'd be laughed out of the studio. 

Please, study up on surround sound.  You are embarrassing yourself.

 

S
Userlevel 2

You're missing the point: It's not about surround. It's about getting the functionally out of the speakers you need for different uses, bc people watch different content on TV. Here, you have to go through a set up process to make the speakers surround, in which case they're worse than useless unless you're watching a movie, and a remove surround features process to use them as regular or stereo speakers, in which case you lose the surround perks. Are you, with a straight face, going to tell me there isn't an engineering way around that? 

jgatie

You're missing the point: It's not about surround. It's about getting the functionally out of the speakers you need for different uses, bc people watch different content on TV. Here, you have to go through a set up process to make the speakers surround, in which case they're worse than useless unless you're watching a movie, and a remove surround features process to use them as regular or stereo speakers, in which case you lose the surround perks. Are you, with a straight face, going to tell me there isn't an engineering way around that? 

 

No, it's about surround sound.  

buzz

With a 3rd party remote you could probably bring out the TVs stereo output option to a single button.

106rallye
Userlevel 7
Badge +17

That Sonos is geared towards surround, not dialogue is not a secret. If the feature to play dialogue from rear speakers is important to you, you should check beforehand if the speakers can do this. Especially if you have special needs due to hearing constraints.

By the way: I’ve owned multiple surround systems an none of them where able to play dialogue out of the “wrong” speakers.

S
Userlevel 2

That makes no sense and isn't rooted in reality. The speakers have no trouble playing dialogue, of course. Just not when they're configured as surround speakers. 

N
Userlevel 7
Badge +18

The speakers have no trouble playing dialogue, of course. Just not when they're configured as surround speakers. 


And there you have it: when set up for the intended purpose, you can’t -whether intentionally or unintentionally- make the sounds emanate from the wrong source. 
 

If you were to set up a pair of speakers positioned near your viewing position instead, and group them with your Beam, this too will probably not work for you. Sonos is a multi-speaker, multi-room system designed to enable synchronised music play across the system.
 

To achieve this a small time delay is introduced when streaming starts, to give a buffer. With tv input to a soundbar this buffer is minimised to reduce lip sync issues, but Grouping Beam and another room/set of speakers, there will be a delay to the room speakers, resulting in an echo effect. You might find this acceptable; you might not. 

106rallye
Userlevel 7
Badge +17

That makes no sense and isn't rooted in reality. The speakers have no trouble playing dialogue, of course. Just not when they're configured as surround speakers. 

Is this a semantics discussion now? Technically speaking the speakers could do dialogue over surrounds. But the programming does not allow them to, just because they are surrounds. So the end, rooted in reality, is they can’t do dialogue.

melvimbe

I think this is drifting too far away from the point. Sonos, for TV playback, doesn’t have a setting for speakers setup in surround sound configuration to be used for something other than surround sound.  That means that they will play the surround audio as intended by the source material.  If there is no surround audio, they essentially play nothing.  They never play audio that was intended to play from front audio channels by the source material.  Sonos doesn’t do any sort of custom simulation of audio in the rear channels that was never intended in the source channel.

I don’t see it as ridiculous that Sonos uses the surround speakers as intended by source material.

 

That said, it seems reasonable that some people don’t want surround channel audio, but do want additional stereo or mono speakers playing TV audio beyond what the front soundbar or Amp provides.  This could be to personal hearing issues/preference or just because the room or space is large or open area...outdoors for instance.   This is pretty similar to what Sonos already offers with non-TV audio source.  You have the option of stereo playing only on the front speakers or playing from all 4 speakers...where atmos audio plays as intended from source.  So why not offer the same feature for TV audio?

As far as configuration goes, I think you could have just 3 options for the room.  Surround speakers always play surround audio channels only.  Surround speakers play surround when it’s in the source material, otherwise play stereo.  and always play stereo.

 

Just guessing at a couple reasons why…

  • Dialogue might not be as clear as anticipated.  The front speaker setup has a center audio channel, either real or simulated with the amp, which handles most of the dialogue.  Obviously, no center channel in the rear, so dialogue would need to be handled differently.  Maybe the same simulation the amp does, but maybe not.  Not sure it would work as well as you think, but maybe just direct stereo in the rear is good.
  • The feature may lend itself to misuse and a poor experience.  Surround speakers  are communicated to via private 5Ghz network, and works good in most situations with speakers placed in the expected location behind the seating area.  If you aren’t using them for surround, just additional front speakers, then you would think you could place them anywhere, maybe even a different room.  That would have negative consequences on trueplay tuning and wireless performance.
  • It may lead to additional feature requests that Sonos wouldn’t be able to meet.  More volume control for example, or perhaps just a single ‘surround’ speaker instead of two.

 

I personally would be interested in the feature, just because I think it would make the amp a much more useful device for large spaces.  Say you have an outdoor environment with a TV.  Being that each amp can connect 2 pairs of outdoor speakers, a setup where the ‘surround’ will always play stereo for both TV and music sources means that you can setup 4 pairs of  passive speakers as a single Sonos room for that space.  If using the Sonos outdoor speakers that allow for 3 pair per amp, that’s 6 pairs.

 

 

Danny
J
Userlevel 2
Badge +1

‘If Sonos insistently filters dialogue out of surround speakers’ as others have highlighted SONOS do not remove audio from the Surround (and or overhead) channels.

Will you want surround effects played through the Front LCR when there is no active dialogue?

What you could do is put in a Feature request for an ‘all speaker’ stereo mode similar to what Yamaha and others provide in AVR’s.

 

 

S
Userlevel 2

All, I truly appreciate the discussion my post has prompted, and y'all have awakened me to the fact that Sonos may have reasons for limiting speakers set up in a surround configuration to playing only surround channel outputs. I appreciate that too.

 

I think Danny's and Joe's responses are most on point and seem to confirm what i had thought (which admittedly, i could have said nore nicely at the outset): that is, Sonos could be asked to enable different performance out of the surround speakers, ie a basic stereo playback on all speakers, so when we're viewing something that has no sound sounds anyway, we can still get some use and performance out of the other speakers, e.g. helping with louder broadcast of dialogue.

 

I'll make this feature suggestion. Or maybe Sonos reps check these threads.

S

I’m in agreement. Wish the surrounds (era 100s) could have some dialogue setting to help me hear the words from movies!! Thanks OP for posting.

if anything, Sonos should do this for accessibility, not all people have the same level of hearing. 

L
Userlevel 2
Badge +3

The only option for surround and rear full audio option would be to add 2 more speakers and have a separate room (like ‘living room rear’) for the speakers you want full sound out of. And then just combining the rooms when you want full rear audio

Airgetlam

But be aware, if you group any other Sonos ‘room’ with a home theater ’room’, there will be a light delay between the two, but only when playing the TV’s input. When streaming directly, there will be no delay at all. 

Bruce

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