Help! Spent several hours today trying to set up my two new ERA 100 speakers with my existing ARC system and Sub Mini, all playing through a big Samsung TV, with Pandora music in the daytime and evening news and a few streaming or network shows in the evening. I play Pandora music using the app on the Samsung, but the two ERA speakers would not respond with that approach--zero sound from the ERAs. The tech support person suggested using the Sonos app to access Pandora. That works, but that’s not how I want to access Pandora. Pandora has worked just fine using the Samsung TV remote until I added the ERA speakers. But it won’t work that way with the ERA speakers. My tech support person seemed as frustrated as I was. After nearly two hours working with her, I could see that we were getting nowhere by doing down the same paths over and over-with the same negative results. I suggested that she get with someone who could solve the problem which she promised to try to do. So I have a reference number and will call her back after they reopen Monday. I’m pretty tech savvy, but there are so many possibilities I’m stymied. I’ll continue to experiment over the weekend--I really want the “surround sound” the ERA speakers promise, but I’m not there yet. Maybe not even close. Am I missing something obvious? All ideas welcome!
Are your Era 100s set up as surround speakers for the Arc? If so, you should go in to the surround settings, and ensure you have them set to ‘Full’ rather than ‘Ambient’ for music playback. This impacts the speakers when sending music to them, but makes no difference when the source is from the TV set across ARC or eARC. You should not be playing Pandora on the TV set, you should be using the Sonos app.
When playing the TV input from your Samsung, they’ll act as surrounds. When streaming music (not from the TV set) they’ll act as a normal pair of stereo speakers.
I don’t know what you’ve done so far. If you have paired the 100’s, unpair them now. Next, add them to the ARC as surrounds. At this point the 100’s will become part of the ARC ‘Room’ and not be visible separately. Now they’ll play along with the ARC.
Note that when streaming from the Sonos app, you’ll be sending the stream to both the Arc, and the pair of surrounds. There is no way to not do this, although you can modify the relative volume of each, in the same area that you set ‘ambient/full’.
Before reading your post and making no changes at all since the first post, his evening I played a DVD and the surround sound feature worked perfectly. I also played a portion of a movie on Amazon Prime and the surround sound worked perfectly too. But the system still refuses to play music from Pandora with the two rear speakers working--when Pandora plays through the Samsung the are silent. But when I play Pandora using the Sonos app, the surround sound speakers work perfectly. Doing that, however, leaves me with a blank TV screen. I’ll try unpairing and repairing in the morning and report how that works. Many thanks, Airgetlam! 
And thanks to Buzz as well. Your answers are much appreciated by. this Sonos newbie!
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By the way. Connecting speakers as surrounds is called bonding, not pairing, so disconnecting them would be unbonding in Sonos speak. Connecting two speakers as a stereo set is called pairing.
OK, got it, 106rallye. Simply put, It can’t be done. I’d think the Sonos support staff would know that, rather than chasing possible solutions for hours.
Does Spotify work the same way as Pandora on that? In other words, using Spotify for music would not improve my situation, right?
And would using a Bluetooth connection with the ERA 100s make any difference? (I think i know the answer!).
Finally, vocabulary. Working in a business where using precise vocabulary is an essential cornerstone of getting good results, I understand the importance of using the right terms. So bonding and unbonding for connecting speakers as surrounds. Roger!
Many thanks for setting this newbie straight!
The difference is between stereo from a TV source (no rears) and other sources (Spotify, Pandora, anything). So using Spotify won’t help.
The bluetooth connection won’t help - when Era’s are set up as surrounds, the bluetooth connection (as well as the analogue connection) is turned off.
OK, thanks for the good counsel, everyone! I get it, and I’ll take the medicine.
To have Pandora music on all speakers, I need to learn to use the Sonos app, and I’m already experimenting with that.
It’s not as convenient as I’d like, but it’s not as bad as I expected.
MiltB
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