Introducing Era 300

I would imagine the overall stream reverts to stereo, which is similar to how Amazon Music Dolby Atmos works when the Arc is grouped with a non-Atmos capable speaker; it changes to stereo when grouped.

As the Era 300 will not support SonosNet, when used as surrounds will they still make a direct wireless connection back to the Arc or Beam Gen2, or will surround traffic be over WiFi as well?

Can you use Era 300 (or for that matter, Era 100) as surround speakers for an Amp connected to a TV or projectors? The Shop FAQ only mentions sound bar compatibility.

Era 300 requires an Arc or Beam (Gen2). Era 100s can be used as surrounds with an Amp.

https://support.sonos.com/en-gb/article/surround-sound-guidelines-and-limitations

Thanks for the link; however, interesting that it doesn’t note the Era 100 incompatibility with the Playbar and Playbase.

You can bond Sub Mini with Era 300’s, yes.

7.1.4

Together with Arc’s side-firing speakers, the Era 300’s will virtualise side channels for a 7.1 track. 

Era 300 will be available for pre-order on sonos.com today, and globally starting March 28 2023 for $449USD, £449, €499 and $749 AUS. For more information, please visit Sonos.com

Oh, I didn’t realise the Era 100s weren’t compatible with the Playbar and Playbase as surrounds!

My assumption would be as the Amp is S2 only they would work as surrounds with it, but the support pages need greater clarity around this.

With the Era series we are slowly moving away from SonosNet as modern home networking is getting so great that SonosNet’s 2.4GHz network is simply too slow for the demands in data throughput we are starting to see.

They will make direct connections to the Arc/Beam just as with previous surround speakers. 

Given that the Era 100 and 300 have USB-C ports (which are digital), wouldn’t it be possible to connect these speakers to a TV ARC port using a HDMI-USB-C cable?  The Sonos 5s only had an AUX line in which is never ideal because of audio lag.  

To Sonos:  A lot of people live in apartments with only 1 living room where they watch TV and listen to music in the same room.  Some prefer to prioritize music for audio more than movies.  That is why many like to use their stereo speakers also for their TV.  It shouldn’t be difficult.  Sound bars are nice enough for TV but will never deliver the sound stage of a dedicated 2 stereo speaker set up for music.  

So why not up gun the SonosNet radios and network to match? With home automation increasingly putting more demand on the network, would the imperative to shift Sonos onto its own mesh be greater not less?

The lag isn’t entirely cause by limitations of the 3.5mm analog jack requiring conversion to digital, but also the requirement for a buffer to be created to keep the multi-room audio synchronised. I presume that hasn’t changed.

@Mr. T Is correct - only Era 100 can be used with Amp or Beam (Gen 1), and neither Era model can be used with Playbar or Playbase.

I’ll get the page updated - thanks for flagging.

Really? So Dolby Atmos continues to play on the Era 300s?

so there are 2 steps for the 5s.  But a sound bar has the one step (as what would be the case in the set up I described) - if you classify the speaker pair as “TV” then it should function the same as the sound bar does then.  Should be a straight forward software tweak, surely.  

The USB ports on Era models cannot be used as digital inputs at present.

The entire group would revert to stereo playback.

Apologies - I had to seek confirmation on this and there was a misunderstanding.

Playback would continue in stereo for the entire group, including the Era 300s.

If a line in source needs the Sonos adapter, what does the on body USB socket do on its own with no adapter?

@Corry P, can you confirm this?  When the USB-C is used for aux input, will it have the standard 75 ms delay that other aux input (Port, Amp, Five) currently have? 

What is the delay for bluetooth input?

Without a dongle/adaptor, the USB-C socket doesn’t do anything, presently. 

It it appears the answer is...nothing.  I can see why people would be annoyed by this, but for me personally, I’m perfectly fine with this.  I won’t be using a line in or ethernet port, so in a way, I’m not paying for something I’m not using.  The same goes for anyone who intends to use the Era 300 as rear surround speakers, since you can’t use the line in and no need to use an ethernet port. 

You could argue that you therefore aren’t paying for what you’re not using, and it’s wasteful to have ports that many are not going to use.  You could also argue that Sonos is just forcing you to buy more stuff and that dongles are wasteful.  Eh.  Just take it for what it is.

Ok, so what the adaptor does is replace the bulkier and more expensive Port/Connect; still a very useful feature, especially for the more budget friendly 100.