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Whenever I get a new speaker my test is always Bjork, Hunter... this track is brilliant because its really punchy with lots of layers but the beats flow from left to right at the start of the track. Listen to this on a stereo paired play one and youll be amazed, they fly across the room and you wamt to move your head to follow the beats...



Received my beam yestersay and after it was all set up and i did the trueplay etc i gave it a go, there was no feeling of the music going from side to side at all, just felt like it was all coming from the middle. Quite dissapointed in this to be honest after reading reviews suggesting that the playbar has speakers on the sides which does a good job of this. Maybe it will get better once trueplay tunes a bit more? But i doubt it...



Any chance a software upgrade could be applied in the future to fix this do you think?
The only soundbar I know that does this trick reasonably well is the Yamaha DSP series; it uses reflected from wall sound for left and right channels, with auto computed delays to make up for the extra distance the sound has to travel. Sonos, as far as I know, does not do that in the Beam and will therefore never do as well as a separated play 1 pair running in stereo paired mode. And this remains a limitation for movies as well, where sound has to be heard panning from off screen left to off screen right, for example.

Although some reviews claim that this is addressed in the Beam...I am not so sure it is.
I tend to agree - even playing an obvious stereo track like Pink Floyd's Money doesn't feel that dramatic. I now have my two old Play:1s as rear speakers, so will see if that makes a difference...
I tend to agree - even playing an obvious stereo track like Pink Floyd's Money doesn't feel that dramatic. I now have my two old Play:1s as rear speakers, so will see if that makes a difference...



If imagine it will do, i have a playbar im the front room and the two rear speakers make a huge difference. My beam is in the conservatory though so the rooms really not big enough for rear speakers too 😞
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