Era 100 and Arc connection

Are they added as surrounds? What exactly are you playing? If you stream music, do you hear any audio from the Era 100s? Are any of the speakers wired with an ethernet cable? What model TV do you have?

If you attached the ERA 100s as surround sound speakers, then you will not hear content unless it is setup for ATMOS. So first check is make sure that you are receiving Dolby ATMOS content. A good example would be Avatar on Disney+. Make sure your TV is connected via eARC or ARC and is set for Dolby ATMOS output. In the SONOS app turn your surround Audio to TV Level+8. Wait until copters or vehicles move from side to side on the screen and you should hear the surround sound kick in.

This isn’t accurate. You can hear audio from the surround speakers when playing Dolby Atmos, 5.1, or most stereo audio.

@GuitarSuperstar I am adding them as surrounds. I have a Vizio tv, and the arc bar is connected to HDMI ARC. I also have the Sub connected and the Era 100 speakers are not wired with an Ethernet cable. With everything hooked up I’m only getting sounds from the arc bar and the sub, but nothing from the Era speakers. 

@Kholness all I can tell you is that I have the Era 100 speakers hooked up just as you have and no sound on Era 100s from most TV shows. One local news station does use ATMOS with surround during the broadcast and I can hear their transitions on the Era 100s. The program is in stereo and I can hear the right and left channel from the SONOS unit in the front. I can switch to Disney+ and watch the movie Avatar and clearly hear the surrounds kick in on scenes. So they work when the content is there. I never hear any sounds on the Era 100s when it is only stereo content on my system.

@GuitarSuperstar I don’t hear anything coming from the speakers when I stream from the Sonos app. I know the speakers are working because I can use it to manually adjust the tv volume, and I can hear them when I set up the trueplay feature
 

@grestep when I tried content with the dolby atmos I still don’t hear anything. 

@Kholness In the Sonos app, go to Settings > System and post a screenshot of the list of Products in your Sonos system.

@GuitarSuperstar …here goes

@Kholness That does look OK. Is the Family room set to “Full” for playing music? What does the app say your system is playing when watching TV? Dolby Digital 5.1, PCM stereo, Atmos?

@grestep Same question for you. Are you sure the local news station you’re referring to broadcasts Atmos? Atmos is mostly for movies and much less important for TV - so having a news station invest in Atmos (or even 5.1) seems strange to me.

NBC in San Diego has invested in putting effects into their sound track. Not sure why they did it, but when they go to weather for example, there is a swoosh sound on the surround speakers. It is the only station that does this. The Tivo is set to Dolby ATMOS instead of PCM which doesn’t send the effect through to the surround sound speakers. No other station in San Diego has this effect in their sound. I have the SONOS using the eARC. I did increase the default surround sound level to TV+8 to get more surround effect. I don’t think this is a phantom surround effect as it is very consistent on just that NBC station and only with local news. According to NBC San Diego’s website it is using ATMOS. My guess is that only the transition effects are done with surround sound and not the dialog as I never hear the surrounds when the anchors are speaking. 

One additional item, NBC San Diego shows up on the SONOS app as Dolby Digital 5.1 and every other local station shows up as Dolby Digital 2.0.

I happen to watch the NBC San Diego news, and have noticed this as well…it’s somewhat distracting, and makes me think their sound engineers don’t understand what they’re doing. 

On the other hand, if I remember properly, the CBS station in Austin Texas would use a Dolby Digital signal all the time. But when they played preseason football games, the signal was only stereo, being carried on a Dolby Digital carrier, so the center and surround speakers were fed a zero content data stream, and the commentary always seemed muffled on the left and right speakers. I tried communicating with them about it, but they claimed that the signal they received from the Dallas station was in stereo, but they had a mandate to broadcast in Dolby Digital. I couldn’t make them understand why people paying attention would recognize it as an issue, like I had.  

The simple fact is there is no guaranty that the signal encased in the carrier matches. 

Having trouble getting my two era 100's to set up as surround. They are all on my network wirelessly. They all show in my system but when I click the playbar and then click add surrounds it shows the message attached in the pictures.. Any help would be great. 

When I look at the FAQ on the sales page, it says:

What soundbars will pair with Era 100 for surround sound?

You can connect two Era 100 speakers with Arc, Beam (any generation), or Ray for surround sound. Era 100 is not compatible with Playbar or Playbase.

Thank you

I had this exact same issue after setup - no sound from ERA 100’s at all, despite all appearing to be connected fine.  I removed the surrounds, then rebooted the ARC and the ERA 100’s, then added as surrounds again.

This solved the problem, hope it does for anyone else puzzled by the same issue.

I have the same issue with my era 100 It was connected as a surround with my arc and sub, but when I use Netfix and you tube the sound from the arc is louder than the era speakers .I would like to adjust the volume of the era to make louder but I dont know how?

First of all, 95% of YouTube content is stereo only, regardless of what it is listed as.  So don’t judge from YouTube content.  Second, you can adjust the surrounds level by going to Settings > System > (Room Name) > Sound > Surrounds Audio and adjusting the TV Level slider. 

Thanks for the reply, at first, I dont know how I did but when I played you tube or Netflix on my tv I got the sounds that I really liked it is loud and when I played Netflix it feels like you really watching in the cinema, then when I changed our internet then it changed. The sounds mostly come out from the arc the era speakers are like back up speakers you can hear it but very minimal sounds, I’m not sure if it is from the tv set up or from the sonos app.