Contributor I

Surround sound remix

13 replies
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I’m a very satisfied user of Sonos, having a surround system with a Beam and two Era 100, plus two other Era 100 in other rooms. BUT… there is one thing that annoys me very much with the TV surround setting. There is no way to choose for a setting where the sound would come out in the same way from all the speakers. This means that when you look at TV shows, sometimes the sound comes only out of the front center Beam speaker when there is mainly speech, and then all of a sudden there is some background music in the show and then only it comes out of the rear Era speakers. Even worse when I listen to a music concert on TV, the speech (singing) comes only from the front center speaker (with some music) and only music is coming out of the rear speakers. Sorry but for me this is very disturbing and not at all the right music experience. So my simple question is to Sonos: just foresee a setting for TV sound where the sound comes out of all speakers unprocessed or unfiltered in the same way out of all speakers. I’m not a technician, but I assume this should not be too difficult to program? Thank you, would appreciate very much and advocate even more Sonos to friends and family.

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Triticale

Prodigy II

Thank you for your extensive response, I appreciate it. But I don’t agree and I’m not hard from hearing. I still find it not natural to hear speech only from the from the front center speaker. In a movie theater, it’s also not like that. But apparently I’m the only one having this feeling, so I rest my case…

It has been like that in all my previous HT setups. Dialogs always come from the center speaker (if the characters are in first place). Try with the dialogues enhancement if you need to hear them more clearly.
But, talking about a naturally way, you usually hear the voice of your speaker in front of you. Although I hear my wife from every direction. Specially when she yells at me 😅.

Stanley_4

Grand Maestro

No matter your preference it is the responsibility of the mixing engineer, not Sonos.

I do not want Sonos mucking about with this sort of thing as a primary listening mode, although the Sonos Ambient setting for stereo streaming isn't bad. Prefer Full or no sound myself but having the option is fine.

So maybe Sonos could look at optional settings for multichannel that folks could select. I could even see a down-mixed "party mode" with all speakers in mono being useful.

Z

Zielwolf

Avid Contributor III

Look, this is what Google AI says, I think better explained than me 😅:

Yes, a Sonos home theater system can emit sound from rear speakers for 2.0 content, but it's a simulated surround sound effect, not true surround sound. The system will up-mix the stereo signal to send ambient audio to the rear speakers, though the volume will be much lower than for true 5.1 content.

How Sonos handles 2.0 content

Up-mixing: When the source material is stereo (2.0), Sonos will up-mix the audio to create a simulated surround effect.
Ambient sound: The rear speakers will play ambient audio, such as crowd noise or background effects, from the stereo mix.
Low volume: The audio from the rear speakers will be much quieter than what you hear from the soundbar, as it is an ambient effect and not a separate, discrete channel.
Adjustable settings: In the Sonos app, you can adjust the level of the surround audio for stereo content, which is often found under "Surround Audio" or "Music Audio" settings.

What to expect

Not the same as 5.1: The effect will not be as immersive as watching content that is encoded in 5.1 surround sound, which provides a true, distinct surround channel.
Different from music: For music, you can often set the rears to play at the same volume as the front speakers (setting "Music Playback" to "Full"), but this setting automatically reverts to a lower "ambient" mode for TV content.
Best for specific content: This feature is most noticeable during action scenes in movies or TV shows where there are background sounds to spread through the system.

OMG Google AI referenced this reply and sent me to your reply to explain how my Arc Ultra is processing stereo in the Era 300 tears. This is it, it's all over. AI feeding on itself. Who knows where this ends. I give up, Truth is dead lol.

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