Sonos Era 300 Drivers Not Working

@Corry P 

Thanks for getting back to me. I appreciate your efforts, as a Sonos employee, to help users and provide what clarity you can. 

I also appreciate the situational context from which you're operating, as an employee. I'm sure it's tough. 

I will want to share, and hope it gets run up the flagpole:

Including this pair of 300s we own 17 Sonos speakers throughout our house. We're big supporters. 

I am returning these. They're not worth a thousand bucks. They clearly weren't ready for release when they were dropped at the end of Q1. The non-working drivers were withheld from consumers - (curiously unmentioned by tech reviewers who had units to review prior to the embargo being last-minute lifted).

Considering they were released anyway, coupled to the lack of organizational acknowledgement & transparency around whether fixing them is even in the works, I'm left with a really bad impression of Sonos as a company. 

Hi @sidereal1 

Thanks for understanding, and for your feedback on the speakers - all feedback, good and bad, is very important to us.

They should make this a high priority . Just replaced my ones for era300 as surround speakers, but this sounds worse than the ones.

€1000 for this? Never expected this from sonos. 

Outside tweeters only work, front disabled by default  😆 

Movies are cool, but even with the Apple spatial audio it is terrible comparing with ones. 

Give us the option or do something about it please.

Kind regards

But still.....no reply from SonoS…

Would be very appreciated if they could tell us:

-we will enable the front driver with a SW update soon (and people that have purchased them could keep them instead of returning them)

-we think the sound is better as they are

- we can't solve this issue with just an SW update.

Come on SonoS , lots of people here are waiting a reply/ please do understand us and do another extra mile customer service...please!

Hi @flybyme 

I don’t know if this decision has been made yet.

We do. After extensive testing, it was determined that the sound was better with the front-facing driver not working while in a surround configuration.

We can, but as I said, I don’t know if that decision has been made as of yet. What’s more, it will take some time to turn a feature from something that just happened into something that can be configured as an option in the app.

I hope this goes some way to answering your questions.

Thank you endeed Corry.

Would be really great having the “center driver” enabled when listening to music and not in “TV audio” when in surround mode.

We really hope this feature will be implemented  and announced soon.

thanks for the fast reply ;o)

Still, when is listen to music it auto stops the inside and front firing speakers?! Thats not the way you should experience music. 

If youre watching a atmos movie they sound great. When playing atmos music onze de outer drivers work as for normal music too. 

I think this is a Total scam. 

They could use the inside firing speakers to create more depht in sound, make the transition between the even smoother, fade out on de left side inner speakers, en fade in on the right inner tweeters and to the outside again. This would create a so much beter sound stage. 

Or Atleast give us the option to use all of the drivers also when using them as surround speakers. It shouldnt be that hard. They made the choice to turn them off, now make the choice to turn them on again. 

I think its a pretty ** move. I payed for the whole Package not Just one side of it. 

They should update this asap. Many forums and video's can be found complaining about this issue, make it like the highest priority in order to keep the premium sonos feeling 

*Moderator Note: Modified in accordance with the Community Code of Conduct.*

Correy (from SonoS) has replied that:

-they are aware of customers complaining

-they have not enabled that front drivers because after several tests they decided that the sound “when paired in couple in a surruond system” is better without the central driver

-they are not sure, at the moment, if they will up date the SW so to give us the choice to enable it.

As you a listen more to music than Amtos movie/music and I would really like to have that central driver enabled.

They give us 2 options:

-return the ERA300 and wait to see if they will make that up date

-keep it like this…

WOuld be apreciated they have listened to our request and announce that they will up date it ( so we do not need to send back the speakers)….

I just posted the below in another thread but found this specific thread afterwards so will post the same thing here as I see this was a topic raised >2 months ago.

I just upgraded my Play 1 surrounds (paired with an Arc + Sub) to the Era 300’s a couple days ago so haven’t had a chance to fully test out everything (time for such things is hard to come by when you have a 13 month old baby in a NYC apartment). 

I know the front drivers are disabled when using them as surrounds, which I’m fine with as I have them right behind my couch and always felt the Play 1’s sounded too in my ears given proximity. When I play Atmos music everything sounds pretty great and it’s a nice upgrade with all 5 other drivers firing.

When playing non-atmos stereo music from Apple Music however I notice only the 2 outer firing drivers on each of the 300’s are used. The inner facing side and top firing drivers are not used at all. So only 2 of the 6 available drivers are used. 

Is this a design decision by Sonos or is this not expected behavior? I suspect it’s the former but would like others to confirm theirs behave the same. I’m assuming the idea is to emulate a right and left speaker but why not have the other drivers utilized? After all doesn’t the Arc still use the upward firing and other drivers to spread the stereo sound around? Not sure why the 300’s wouldn’t do the same.

Hello Starlan,

have a better look, it seems weird.

I uese them as surround and:

-never the center front driver is activated (hope they will implement this option on the next SW update)

-the lateral and upper driver are firing althougt with non Atmos music.

Try the “Atmos sound test” you can find on line….

Keep us up dated.

Good luck