SONOS Era 300 stands and stereo placement advice

The vibration issue directly relates to the entire device's mass versus the voice-coil/cone mass. A heavy speaker cabinet and light cone/coil will have little cabinet vibration given the relitive masses.

A heavy stand has some impact but compared to speaker mass the impact is reduced by the lever the stands pole acts as. There is also a vibration reduction from being braced on the floor (hence the carpet spike idea.) 

Vibration of the stands column depends on the stiffness of the column, more flexible allowing more movement at the top but less at the base, reducing the effectiveness of a solid base. My Play 5 stands, while hollow, are stiff enough and the base is large/heavy enough I see no room for improvement and haven't experimented.

My recommendation is to buy a stand you like, one with good reviews, and if there are problems treat them as you would any other audio issue. There are unlikely to be any.

So I just setup my second era 300 as a pair. I moved the first speaker into a stereo right position. They are currently sitting on two metal ikea computer tables. However I am noticing less immersion than a single speaker… does that make sense? Or is it the positioning? It’s sitting a little higher than usual but not as high as the stands would be.

That does seem unusual.  When the single 300 was used where was it positioned?  Is the stereo pair closer to the front wall than the single 300 was?  Were you listening to Dolby Atmos at the time?

Height is always going to have minimal impact when compared to positioning for stereo. For Atmos height channels it matters a bit more.

Are you setting the 300s up as two points of an equlateral triangle with your listening position at the third?

Did you run Trueplay, quick or full, to adjust the 300s to the room?

Stereo or Atmos content?

Both my 300 Pairs work very well, wasn't as impressed when Grouped, the more even sound didn't offset the positioning loss.

This is not a knock on anyone in this post. JMHO.

I think the term “immersive” is somewhat overused or in some cases out of context.

If I’m using a single Era 300 the music is going to be more “in my face” when seated dead center to the speaker say 6 - 8 feet away. If I add a second Era 300 and position them 6 feet apart and my listening position is dead center between them at 6 -8 feet away the sound is less impactful to my face. However, the sound stage is wider which may give the impression that I’m getting less than with a single speaker.

Immersion is going to be impacted by the quality of the recording as well as stereo vs Dolby Atmos (spatial audio) not to mention the room and its furnishings. In some cases TruePlay can be an improvement regarding a single speaker vs a stereo pair or the opposite.

Finally, immersive may not be the proper descriptive term 🤔

Yes I was listening to ATMOS tracks via Sonos app.. the single speaker was positioned lower than the current setup. and center. stereo pairs are closer to the side walls now since they are spread apart 8ft. There’s about 8” on either side as recommended. They are each angled slightly to the middle. 

roughly equilateral triangle this is next to my bed as was the earlier single speaker. They are angled inward. I did run the advanced true play tuning. content is Atmos I have them playing on app. I felt like the artist was singing at me when I played on the single speaker. Now somewhat. Not as intense as before. 

That 8 inches is not recommended, that is the minimum that will function.

I tried 3 feet in on one Pair, decided 4 feet gave a better Atmos image even though my seating positions is now technically too close. Other Pair is space constrained but still 2 feet in from the side walls.

Angled in is controversial for stereo, maybe for speakers that lack horizontal dispersion, somthing that Sonos doesn't suffer from. For Atmos angling the 300s disrupts the side channels imaging, I'd avoid doing that.

Depending on the track you shouldn't get the in your face feeling, the artists should appear to be coming from specific locations. This is an old argument, one I remember (I'm old) when the audiophile bunch were telling us stereo was awful and only mono was acceptable.

The ERA 300 pair will not focus a singer as well as the Sonos 5 pair will.  The side & up-firing drivers in the 300 tend to affect laser focused imaging. A normal pair of correctly set up speakers, particularly two way stand mounts, can laser focus a singer to the point where you think he or she is in the room.
 

What the ERA 300 pair does really well is give you a larger stage.  Particularly with Dolby Atmos music the stage can be enormous.  I listen to a lot of modern orchestral music in Dolby Atmos.  The size of the orchestra when using Dolby Atmos compatible speakers is more realistically large.