Trending Lyricist I

Answered

Two pairs of surround

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Hi all,

I have a Arc soundbar, two Era 300 and a Sub Gen 3, I feel missing something in front like no power or big sound, is it a good idea add one or two Sonos Five in front and is it possible ? Thanks for your advice.

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RhonnyAnswer

Prodigy III

No, you can’t add two lots of surrounds, the function doesn’t exist. The only additional speaker you can add to the home theatre setup would be another sub.

You could add two paired speakers at the front, and group them with your home theatre setup, but that will completely ruin any surround sound work your other speakers are doing, as those two extra speakers will just play all your TV’s sound in stereo - plus they will add a 75ms delay to the sound, creating an echo. (Correctly-added surrounds are bonded to the soundbar via its own 5ghz network to keep the surrounds in sync - adding extra speakers will be outside of that, creating a lack of sync.)

So in short - no.

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RhonnyAnswer

Prodigy III

No, you can’t add two lots of surrounds, the function doesn’t exist. The only additional speaker you can add to the home theatre setup would be another sub.

You could add two paired speakers at the front, and group them with your home theatre setup, but that will completely ruin any surround sound work your other speakers are doing, as those two extra speakers will just play all your TV’s sound in stereo - plus they will add a 75ms delay to the sound, creating an echo. (Correctly-added surrounds are bonded to the soundbar via its own 5ghz network to keep the surrounds in sync - adding extra speakers will be outside of that, creating a lack of sync.)

So in short - no.

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HimMichAuthor

Trending Lyricist I

🙏 Thanks for reply and the good explain, perhaps Sonos in future allow do this.

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Rhonny

Prodigy III

Extra: strange you’re not feeling the power of the Arc and Sub. Maybe you have your surround level too loud in the Settings - if you turn that down a little and increase the TV volume overall, you might get a more powerful experience at the front, with surrounds kicking in when they need to at a reasonable level.

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HimMichAuthor

Trending Lyricist I

The Sub is, the two Era 300 ok to but the Arc is little under, it’s just a feeling, I will try your setting, thanks again, thats why I think also add only one FIve in front but not in suround but you say we can’t, thanks again for help.

jnelly

Enthusiast I

Actually, you can add a stereo pair, in a group with the Arc system, to the front (this is not a surround pair, technically).

My set up:

Arc / Sub3 / Pair OneSLs: “Main Room”
Era 300 Stereo Pair Front: “Stereo Pair Front Room”
You then group 1 and 2, above. There isn’t much echo or delay, both for TV or music, which can be controlled with the room volumes, but
Turning the TV dialog sync to +2 or +3 in the “Main Room” or Arc system does trim this considerably.

This YouTuber lays it all all out in an S2 App view, at the below video #1, with #2 for additional context:

#1

#2

Moderator edit: We do not recommend this at all - it will likely sound bad with all channels coming from the “front” speakers.

Stanley_4

Grand Maestro

I can’t tolerate the echo/delay when grouping non surround Sonos to a TV source. 75 ms isn’t much but it really bothers me.

There should be no delay for music streaming but there will be if listening to music through the TV connection.

jnelly

Enthusiast I

I can’t tolerate the echo/delay when grouping non surround Sonos to a TV source. 75 ms isn’t much but it really bothers me.

There should be no delay for music streaming but there will be if listening to music through the TV connection.

Understandable, @Stanley_4. Interestingly, I only notice it a bit with the TV input, and using the sync setting mentioned above eliminates it. Playing music, from within S2 on apple music evidenced no echo/delay, I was really surprised. Nice to hear the front driver in my E300s, for the first time, lol.

Schlumpf

Virtuoso

Yes, I can confirm that „tv dialogue sync“ option can eliminate the delay and that the resulting lip sync delay to video isn’t remarkable.
But… imo such a setup just makes sense for stereo audio. As someone said before using that for multichannel audio ruins the whole channel separation, because the front stereo pair also includes the center, rear and even high channel information in a stereo downmix signal. So you would get these channels double… from their expected direction AND from the front.
For me personally a no go.

Ralf