Sonos Arc Ultra center channel too loud

Here was response I received from Sonos Support via email:

”…we have determined the center channel being louder than the side channels is expected behavior.  We believe we are creating an audio experience similar to what the content creators had intended.  With that being said, we will continue to listen, test and make changes to improve the experience.”

with cancellation of Pinewood, hope dwindles of adding separate fronts…unless they decide to port that feature to the Arc Ultra.

disappointing. 

I think the only thing we can hope for is Sonos adding a Center Channel Audio level control feature in the Sonos app sometime in the future.

​@Corry P  I will give this a try. I appreciate that Sonos is listening.

I hope Sonos will please continue push for ability to add separate front left/front right … would solve so many ills, boost sales and make a lot of people really happy. I’d have 2 ERA300s and another sub in my basket in a heartbeat.

Hey ​@Corry P I applied the update but now I can’t log into the app on iPhone. It auto prompts me to login then comes back with Incorrect email or password in red letters...but it doesn’t show me anyway to edit that info or autofill it. I tried uinstalling/reinstalling...suggestions?

Hi ​@D700 

When signing in, the app should be taking you to the Sonos.com sign-in page in a browser - I take it that is where you cannot change your sign-in details?

Please try opening your default browser (the one that opens when you click on a link somewhere in an app) and signing in at login.sonos.com (or just click this link on the same device) with the same account with which your Sonos system is registered. Once logged in, go back to the Sonos app and try signing in again. As it is your browser that is auto-filling the sign-in details, this should get it to switch to the right account. If it does not, you may want to try clearing the stored passwords for sonos.com in your browser’s settings and try again (just be sure you know the password before doing so).

I hope this helps.

The surround sound standard for years is to volume balance all speakers at the listening position. When movies are mixed they are done so with this assumption as a starting point. Period. 

The comment above from Sonos that these speakers are by design not able to recreate this sound field means it is not more than a low end Home Theater product. It should be treated as such. I’m aghast that the ‘reviewers’ just rolled with this volume offset and even praised the clarity of the center channel with dialog. 

Finally, the obvious fix for this issue is to add a user switch to ‘enhance dialog’. I think users are familiar with this idea. Why in the world this isn’t yet adjustable is insane - but I’m guessing this product didn’t have a smooth road to the market and some idiot PM at Sonos decided he wanted it to act like a Vizio.

FYI, I migrated to Sonos from a high end AVR, traditional speaker system because it was a reasonable compromise on sound and WAF. If this is the new path I won’t be buying more Sonos. I look forward to seeing the announcement on a software fix for this at some point. 

​@jubjub23 I talked that out with the L3 person when we were running through the test video, they are definitely aware. While the agent didn’t go into it at length, from what I’ve read, there’s not a 1:1 match between speaker and channel like with traditional systems. Sound for each channel comes from multiple speakers (hence the recent change to rear surround adjustable “speaker” volume.) So adjusting channel to seating position would have to apply changes to multiple speakers...and might not be clean way of getting the right speaker adjusted. I could see they’d quickly have to get down to the driver level to do it scientifically...but if the mix changes with content and/or volume, then even that is thrown out the window.

I suspect that the real solution for my situation comes with ability add dedicated fronts and put the Arc Ultra into dedicated Center/Height duty. With Pinewood cancellation, I’m hopeful they port that feature to their soundbars..I understand it was in beta testing a few years ago and was widely liked, really hope they enable it.

Hello everyone! I'm here to complain again... This loud center channel is really starting to get on my nerves. I've noticed that with the Ultra, I hear horizontal sound movement much less frequently. How do other users not notice this? They are barely audible. The central channel or speaker volume literally eats up the horizontal space in the content and draws all the attention to itself.  

Why does the Ultra sound so narrow? Even the old Arc and Playbar didn’t sound like this. It’s frustrating.  

All the reviews I read and the videos I watched highly praised the Ultra for its clear speech and dialogue—how crystal-clear and articulate the center channel sounds. But it seems the real "magic" was just an overwhelmingly loud center channel. Sonos could have simply boosted the center channel volume on the old Arc, and voilà—you’d have the same clear speech and dialogue. On top of that, they even added three levels of voice enhancement. I have no idea how deaf you’d have to be to use all of them at once.  

If you watch movies in dubbed or non-original voiceovers, it gets even worse.  

Honestly, I’m about ready to give up on Sonos if this is their idea of "normal"—something that contradicts common sense and even Dolby’s recommendations.  

Yes, I’ve had other soundbars and a full AV receiver system, and I’ve never experienced anything like this. I ordered a Samsung setup, and in the same movies, I can clearly hear sound movement in the horizontal plane—it just sounds wider, even though it's worse for music. But I returned it for now, hoping Sonos will fix this. I’ll wait until June.

I’m thrilled to have found this post and thread, as I genuinely thought I was going crazy when watching TV shows / movies (generally streamed), and found it so weird that it was much less atmospheric than when watching compared to my last Beam Gen 1 setup, as dialogue was SO loud and yet the backing music was so quiet…

As per some previous commenter’s advice, I have factory reset my Arc Ultra and started from scratch, reconnecting my Sub 4 and not adjusting any internal settings (EQ / Trueplay), and leaving as default. 

It’s noticeably better than before, but still not perfect - I’d still like to turn down the dialogue and ramp the music. 

I find the Sonos support response that it’s how the creator’s intended to be completely false, given the night and day difference in tension / atmosphere / emotion that’s triggered by actually being able to hear the music / soundtrack! 

I’m sincerely hoping What Hifi or another HiFi reviewer gets hold of this and they downgrade the review, which would force Sonos to do something about this!