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Hi.  I’ve just had an LG C1 series OLED TV wall-mounted on a full-motion bracket in my living room (see pictures below), and I have ordered a Sonos ARC to mounts below it — but I’m having second thoughts about my decisions.

1) The TV is a little bigger than I’d like for the space (though we’re going to try watching a movie on it tonight for the first time so the jury will be out). My main reason for choosing the 55” instead of a 48” was that I wanted to get the best sound solution, and the Arc appeared to be the best product for home theater (and I love my Play:5’s).

2) Doing some further reading, I suddenly realized that my very open, very TALL living room setting may not even allow me to enjoy all the benefits of an Arc sound bar, as I won’t get the vertical sound bouncing off my ceiling? Would that be true?

3) So I am weighing the option of swapping the TV for a 48” version and buying the Sonos BEAM Gen3 instead.

4) In either case, my intention is to pair my two Play:5 speakers (which I currently use for music) with a Sonos sound bar and a SUB (Gen3) for a complete surround-sound set-up.  Is that a good plan?

5) Given my room space and my plan for pairing the three other speakers with whichever sound bar I buy, could I expect the ARC to deliver a substantially better home theater sound experience?

6) I will also be using the system for music without the TV — would the choice of bar have a substantial impact on the quality of the music experience?

Thanks for any wisdom on this!

Albert

 

You are correct about the ceilings. You will most likely not hear any height channel effects when watching Dolby Atmos content because your ceilings are too tall. But because of the large size of the room and TV, the Arc is probably still the better option because it is a much larger sound bar with more drivers that will produce a wider soundstage than the Beam. Also, if you are planning on using the Play:5s as surrounds, the Arc would be a better match than the Beam. A pair of Play:5s would overpower the Beam unless you significantly decrease the surround audio levels.

If you plan on using the smaller TV, a Beam would still be a good option. The Gen 2 model is known to perform much better with dialog than the Arc, and from the reviews I have read, it does a decent job with Dolby Atmos content even without using upward firing drivers. If you want to add surrounds to the Beam, I would consider using a pair of One SLs instead of the Play:5s.

For the best music setup, it’s really a toss-up between the Arc and Beam. It’s basically personal preference. But using the Play:5s as surrounds would sound much better with music than using One SLs. Just make sure you have the Music Playback setting set to Full instead of Ambient under the Surround Audio settings.

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