Question

Sonos Ones or Fives as Surrounds for Arc

  • 12 August 2020
  • 4 replies
  • 2218 views
S
Badge +1

I have an Arc, two Ones for surround, and a Sub Gen 3 in my open plan living room and kitchen area.

The room’s about 39 feet long by 21 feet long and about 70% of it has 18-foot ceilings. The Arc located against one lengthwise wall about 10 feet from the couch, which is in turn about 13 feet from the surround speakers behind it. 

I’m wondering whether to replace the surround Ones with Fives. (I have two rooms that each need a single One anyway, so I’m going to have to buy something.)

 

I have three common usage scenarios:

  1. Listening to music passively and will moving around at volume 2.

    It sounds great for this. My system spends the most hours doing this. 
     
  2. Watching TV and movies. 

    The Arc and Sub combo is incredible, but the placement of my surround speakers is 12–13 feet behind my couch, at the entrance to the kitchen area, so I don’t get the full surround experience from the surround speakers. 

    I accept this tradeoff because I sometimes sit at a table between the living room couch and kitchen areas, and I get great sound for both TV/movies and music when I sit there. (There also wasn’t a natural place to position my speakers appropriately around the couch and I didn’t want to crowd my room with speaker stands.)
     
  3. Rocking out. 

    It’s pretty good for this—the addition of the Sub yesterday helped—but I have to turn the volume to 70–80% to really feel it, and even then I could use a little more impact. 

 

I’m wondering if the Fives would help the surround a bit for scenario #2 (TV), when I’m farther from the surround speakers, and if I’ll get the impact I desire for #3 (rocking out). 

I don’t want to lose the great sound I get for #1 (lower-volume passive listening), so if Fives would create a compromise there, I might just stick with the Ones. 

 

I’d really appreciate any input on this. 

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4 replies

J
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I’m currently trying to figure out something very similar, but with Play:1s & Play:3s….both of which I have on hand.  We know that the Arc pulls out low-freqs from the bar when a sub is used, which lets the Arc supercharge the mids and highs without distortion of having to render the low-end.  I’m trying to figure out if the low-end is also pulled out of the surrounds when using a subwoofer.  If so, there maybe no reason to use anything greater than Play:1s, ONEs, or One SLs in a surround role.  I’ve had some discussions with Peter Pee on YouTube about this since he’s been testing Sonos equipment using a frequency analyzer.  He will be releasing a video soon about how the Fives perform in the surround role, and if they might be overkill. Check out some of his other great Sonos videos, too!

-JR

Edit to add:  I’m sure Fives sound great as a surround… I’m just not sure that it’s a good ROI.

 

S
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Thanks, JR, and fair point on ROI...just curious to hear about the strengths (and weaknesses) relative to the Ones for my usage scenarios. Appreciate the connection to the Peter Pee videos—they’re great and I’m excited to see the video about Fives in the surround role. 

L
Userlevel 5
Badge +10

I had Ones as surrounds with my Playbase and Sub. They were great as surrounds when watching movies, but I felt they were lacking depth and volume when it came to listening to music. My surrounds are only 3 or 4 feet behind the couch though at head height when seated.

I replaced the Playbase and Ones with an Arc and Fives, and the music experience is miles better. Mostly from the Fives in my opinion. They are overkill as surrounds though, but come into their own when playing music. The only downside is that they are located behind us when listening to music, which screws up the stereo sound stage. That being said, I still prefer the sound quality to the Ones.

In an ideal world, I would like to set up my home theatre using Ones as surrounds, and have my Fives in the front purely for listening to music, and then to easily share the Sub across both set-ups depending on which audio source I am listening to. This is something that has been requested by a few Sonos users, but I have no idea if it is something Sonos are working on. For now though, I am happy with the Fives as surrounds.  

Have you tried using Truepay or increasing the surround speaker TV Level in the Surrounds EQ settings to boost the level from the rear speakers to help with Scenario #2? 

S
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Yes, I use TruePlay. I have tried increasing the surround speaker TV level and it does help, though I am concerned I’ll be pushing the Ones pretty hard when watching TV (above 5 at the Arc/TV level plus the additional volume for the surrounds).

 

At a practical level most of the value will be for #3, and maybe a little for #2 in that I won’t have to drive the speakers as hard. 

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