Sonos Era 300 Drivers Not Working

Are you using them as surrounds with an arc?

Yup

Moderator edit: removed quoted spam link

Thought I'd come back here and update. 

It's 2 days later and I haven't received an email from Sonos to set up an appointment with tier 3 tech support, as I was told would happen.

I've moved my 5s back into my home theatre setup as surrounds. I put the 300s in another room for music listening, stereo paired & connected to a sub mini. (In this room the 300s replace a pair of 1s).

Here's my experience:

5s as rears:

In the HT setup I played Dolby Atmos mixed music through the Sonos app. The 5s are set to “full” for music & "+3”, but they still sounded muted. I then played the same track directly from Apple music via airplay, (hence no Atmos, but stereo mixed). Then the 5s were louder and fuller, in keeping with their settings in the Sonos app. This is better than relying substantially on the arc for playing music, for obvious reasons. 

I watched an episode of Star Wars Andor. They were fine as rears, what I was used to before buying the 300s. But they lacked the directionality and ability to represent object movement that the 300s did as rears.
 

300s as stereo pair with sub mini:
I played the same track through the Sonos app in Dolby mixed. The front tweeters and the upward firing tweeters are now working, but the inside tweeters are still not working. Both woofers work. 
 

I then played the same track directly from the Apple music app, thus no Dolby. It sounds different in stereo mix, but I have the same amount of drivers firing: all but the inside tweeters. 

So regarding the 300s playing music:

 In stereo configuration I get 5 out of 6 drivers working, (the inward tweeters aren't working),

In HT as surrounds I get 3 drivers working, the 2 woofers and the outside tweeter. The center, upper, and inner tweeters do not work. Even in Atmos mixed music. 

And I've gotten no follow through from Sonos tech support. 

Same story here. I do have an ARC, 2x Sub (gen.3) and replaced 2x One’s with 2x Era 300’s (as surround speakers). Any non-ATMOS input signal (e.g. DD 5.1, DTS 5.1, DD 2.0 pro logic II) will only use the outward facing tweeter on the Era 300’s. So effectively only 1 of the 4 tweeters will be in use for anything non-ATMOS. That is the reason why they sound so underwhelming with non-ATMOS content. While I understand SONOS’ reasoning that the center tweeter should be disabled, for me the bigger issue is that the inward facing side tweeters are also disabled. SONOS should simply have the surround signal be assigned to both side tweeters for a wider soundstage (similar to a Dipole Surround Speaker). One could call it upsampling from 5.1 to 7.1, but with DTS 5.1 this is standard practice to repeat the surround signal to the extra rear surrounds anyways. Except the Era 300 does not do that either. That also explains while the surround level slider in the app only affects the outward facing tweeter. In short, non-ATMOS surround playback with the Era 300 is like using Sonos One’s (also 1 active tweeter only) being angled away from your listening position. I really hope there will be a firmware fix or option to make the Era 300 more usable for non-ATMOS content in a surround set-up.

Hi @Mattymoo1 & @sidereal1 

If either your inside- or outside-facing tweeters do not seem to play, I recommend removing the Surrounds from your Home Theatre device and adding them back on again. Settings » System » [room of HT] » Remove Surrounds

I hope this helps.

@Corry P 

Hi Corry, 

Thanks for getting back with me. I saw your message in the other thread from this morning. 

I have disconnected and reconnected the 300s as surrounds without it bringing the additional drivers back. (no upper or inside tweeters [or center obviously] when playing music, including Atmos music from Apple music via the Sonos app).

All drivers work normally when watching movie content.

In the stereo paired configuration for music I don't have inward facing tweeters. All other drivers work. I've unpaired and repaired then as stereo pairs without it correcting the issue. 

I had a 2 hour phone call with tech Thursday afternoon. I understand I should receive an email from tier 3 to set up a phone appointment. It's now Monday afternoon, (east coast time, GMT -5). 

What's the usual timeframe to hear from tier 3?

Hi @sidereal1 

I think there has been a lack of information and managing expectations toward you from our side of things. Your case has been escalated internally, however not for the sake of a call back to you. What is being done is that the information you’ve provided will be looked into together with the information from other customers to form a thorough understanding of what’s going on (this is the escalation).

This issue you’re experiencing is not something that can be solved over the phone. I believe it may require a software update, in which case all we can do is wait. In case there is indeed something you can do yourself, you will receive a call or at least an email with further instructions.

With all that said I’m sorry for the misunderstanding, and you should not expect a call back from us at this point. I’ve also let our teams know about this to make sure that we set the right expectations going forwards.

I hope this helps.

@Corry P 

Thanks Corry, that definitely changes my expectation. And I appreciate that. Appreciate you cleaning up the other thread. Sorry for my part. 

Do you think Sonos as an entity will issue any statement acknowledging these performance issues and outlining an approach to solutions?

As a separate question, and just generally speaking, while I know I'm not alone in some of these strange behaviors, is it a very small cohort of users having these experiences, or is it broader user base?

The reason I ask is, if it's a rare phenomenon than it will be harder to diagnose the causes and rectify, and there's less incentive to dedicate significant resources to it.

I want to make sure my return window doesn't close if there's no official statement of position, acknowledgement of issues, or rough timeline of expected full functionality.

Hi @sidereal1 

I can’t really answer any of those questions, though I understand your concern over the period in which you can return your items. All I can recommend is that if you are not satisfied with the Era 300 as they are at present, return the products for a refund and perhaps come back to them at a later date.

When playing NON Atmos music on a HT System with 2 ERA300 , will the option “highter the surround” volume compensate the not enabled “central driver”???

Other question:

SonoS in aware of these “compalints” but do not gives us any information on “if” they will take considerations or less?