Meet Sonos Beam (Gen 2)

Thank you ordered. Expensive month, after just adding the second Sub for surround  setup in TV/Games room, and now upgrading the Beam 2 for the surround setup in the bedroom.  

So the question for me becomes, speaking of upgrading. Does it make sense to move my Beam G1 to my family room to replace a Playbar and get a new Beam G2 in bedroom. Not seeing the benefit of such even if my bedroom tv has eArc. Especially seeeing that all 3 will get hd music. Am I missing something?

The playbar isn’t compatible with Amazon Ultra HD, which I think is the only thing you’d be gaining by switching it with a Beam Gen 1.  IMO, I think I would rather have a playbar in standard definition than a Beam in HD, especially if I use the soundbar mostly for TV.  The question really then comes down to whether or not the playbar can be grouped with another room playing Ultra HD.

How about backporting DD+ support along with DTS to the Beam/Playbar/Playbase…

and its not explicitly mentioned, but does the Gen 2 Beam with eARC support TrueHD Atmos and LPCM  5.1/7.1 like the Arc or only DD+ Atmos?

Sonos Arc and Beam (Gen 2) only

• Dolby Digital Plus
• Dolby Atmos (Dolby Digital Plus)
• Dolby Atmos*
• Dolby TrueHD*
• Dolby Atmos (True HD)*
• Multichannel PCM*
• Dolby Multichannel PCM*

*Requires an eARC connection

https://support.sonos.com/s/article/4945?language=en_US

My understanding is that DD+ can’t be transmitted over an optical connection, so playbar/playbase would not be possible.  I think it’s possible with Beam Gen1 via ARC.  Perhaps Sonos didn’t want to complicate things by making it the only device that can do DD+, but not atmos.  Then again, then can add DD+ to the Amp too.

This looks like an excellent update, earlier than I expected. Added to this release knowing DTS is being added to Beam mk1, Playbar and Playbase is outstanding and shows real commitment to keeping customers by adding requested updates.

Intersting. I’ve always held the belief that DTS couldn’t be carried on optical, and yet wikipedia disagrees with me. 

Should be interesting to see how the slower CPUs on those relatively ancient devices can hold up. 

This leads me to believe that Sonos will only support lossy DTS Digital Surround and not lossless DTS-HD Master Audio (and certainly not DTS:X) which is widely used on most Blu-ray and UHD discs. Hopefully lossless DTS will be supported on the Arc and Beam (Gen 2) over eARC eventually.

As I remember DTS has been carried over optical dating back to the nineties. If you recall the DVD player wars between DVD and HD DVD the audio signals were sent over optical from the disc player to the 5.1 stereo Amp decoder with L/C/R, rear surrounds and sub. The video was sent via component RGB from the player to the CRT aka TV (LOL). My God…wires, wires, wires they were everywhere. There was even a hybrid player that supported both formats.

As you know after the dust settled DVD won. Which incidentally was Sony’s first major victory (that’s still around today) since it’s Beta Vision format player lost to VHS.

I for once made the right decision and spent my money on the DVD player. I had several friends who went with HD DVD that eventually became expensive paper weights .

To continue on…the Audio formats of Dolby Digital 5.1 vs DTS 5.1 became very heated and forced the consumer to buy players that supported both formats for an obvious premium. The cheapest player I owned was the Sony ES DVD player at a then high end price of $999.99 The average player sold around $350 - $500.

Back then the TV had nothing to do with processing the digital audio signal as it was contained on the DVD. I suspect as time progressed TV manufacturers sought only to bring optical audio as PCM to the stereo amp to be played on the L/R speakers as there was no streaming of Dolby Digital yet along DTS.

With the advent of HDMI, ARC and now eARC.. TV manufacturers I suspect had very little onus to incorporate more bandwidth into optical. However, that may be changing to offer more audio connection options.