Wide Sonos soundstage

The trouble with this is it’s really hard to ‘beat’ the 75 ms delay between the TV’s input on the Beam, and the grouped room of the Era 100s (or frankly, any grouped room with any Sonos home theater input).

Delighted it’s working for you. It would be a non starter for me. If I wanted a wider ‘frint’ soundstage, I’d go with a Sonos Amp, connected to my own speakers and placement, and let the Sonos create the interpolated center channel.

Or, conversely, go with a non Sonos / soundbar solution. 

I’m not ‘grouping’ them.  They’re all part of the same “system” so there is the minimal delay. 

The sub, the arc, and the era 100’s are all joined together.  So effectively no delay.

All I did was make the era 100’s ‘FULL’ rather than ‘Ambient’ in the app

Make sense?

In that configuration, that Era 100s will only play full audio with music only. For TV viewing, they will only emit the surround audio when available.
 

IMO, this does not make a wider sound stage. It brings surround audio to the front, where it is not intended to be. 

That’s not correct.  I do all my audio through Airplay, so all the audio is treated as ‘music’.  It sounds absolutely stunning.  That’s the point Im making - bypassing the ‘surround’ movie audio and juist playing music or movies via airplay (with the era 100’s set at ‘full’) is a remarkable experience with my setup.

So, let me elaborate further:  I play all my movies through the Apple TV device.  So all the audio is through airpllay.  Also whenevver I play music on my system, all the music is from my iphone or ipad, or apple TV device … also through airplay. 

Thus … All the sound is treated as ‘music’.  

And even with movies - yes … it sounds absolutely amazing, with a wide soundstage.

This only confirms what I wrote.

Glad to hear you are having a great experience.

no it doesn’t.  the era 100’s are not treated as ‘surrounds’.  Which is what you said.  They’re instead treated as additional full speakers in the same sonos ‘system’.

What aren’t you getting?

To clarify further, in the Sonos app, you can make the so-called surrounds either ‘ambient’ or ‘full’.  When you set them to ‘ambient’ they are like surround speakers, and only give out aspects of the sound meant to come from behind you.  When you set the era 100’s to ‘full’, they then play the full spectrum of sound, mimacking  the audio from the arc and sub.  

When configured all together, sonos see’s them as all joined together and does the crossover work from the arc/era’s to the sub.

My point is that in that setting, you get amazing sound with an epic soundstage in front of you.

​@Robeddie 

Aren’t you forgetting to mention that you are using your iPad or iPhone to stream the video over Airplay to your TV?  

Hello Robeddie, I experimented the same and it's a good ultra-wide experience but I support Bruce, if you like it so much (so you always use the home theater config like that) you can buy a Sonos Amp and a high-quality speakers such as a pair of Klipsch (I don’t remember the model but are 250 watts/peak 1000w) or a pair of Era 100 or better a Five's or you can also try a odd configuration that just came to my brain; use your home theater as normal but also pair another pair of Era 100 as another group (the thing here is that they will be delay) and they put 5 feet from your Arc (as you commented) and now you have an odd (and no very recommended) configuration ultra-wide with also real surrounds.