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Hi Sonos Community,

Moving to a new house and looking at what’s possible in our great room for surround sound. My wife is open to the idea of adding speakers to the walls in our casual dining, but I don’t want to do anything hideous that would ruin the aesthetic in the room that’s supposed to be for enjoying time with family.

I have the following components:

  • Arc SL
  • Sonos Sub (Gen 2)

I am evaluating purchasing either of these options for surrounds:

  • Architectural Speakers (QTY 2) with Sonos AMP
  • Era 300s (QTY 2)

Problem Statement:

The ceiling in the room will be high at almost 20 feet and the room is very open. My first thought was to go with adding two Sonos architectural speakers on the back wall in casual dining, but my chat with Magnolia at Best Buy yielded a negative response as my estimation is that primary viewing would happen roughly 14 feet away from the speakers on the back wall in casual dining, which would be too far for those speakers. 

We could also do (2) white Sonos Era 300s and raise them up a bit further (8-10 ft up the wall) and direct them at the couch. Best Buy liked this idea, but I am not crazy about two giant speakers hanging off the wall in a family room. Aesthetically, the white versions could blend better with the surrounding wall and we’d have an electrician hide the wiring.

Questions:

  • Does the Sonos Architecturals really not make it that distance to the couch? Side note: I’d be surprised if that’s true. I have Sonos Play:1s as surrounds in my current living room and they can crank up quite well about 6 feet away from the listener.
  • Would the Era 300s be ugly if we had to go that approach? We are not interested in speaker stands with dogs and kids running around -- these would be mounted and up the wall.

Here is the great room layout + pictures for reference:

 

 

This is a similar issue I'm having. I have high ceilings like yours. The speaker wire is already installed as it has existing speakers there but they are sony. I'm wanting to switch to in ceiling Sonos cause you can actually tilt the in wall ceiling versions downward, but wasn't sure how'd it sound. To be honest I'm not an audio junkie so I'm not even sure if we'd care if it was this insane movie theater quality. We were thinking the in walls for the front of the TV and the in ceiling for behind us, since again it's really high up our wall behind us. If you go with this let me know in a response. Would love to see what you think of it. 


@Aviator21, advice I received from a nearby theater company was that architecturals would be very difficult, if not impossible due to that wall being an “outer wall” and difficulty getting access for the installation of speaker wire. You may be in a much better spot with pre-existing wire there.

 

I am going the Era 300 route and bought them during the Father’s Day sale. Current owner was using One’s and said it sounded great just on the window sill.