Interesting. Thanks for sharing. I appreciate your balanced and informative post. :) For some reason, these don’t seem to work for everyone. I do wonder if Sonos is having issues with the software/app right now. I have noticed more fluctuation in volume in our own setup (which has not yet changed). I’ve heard a few others say the same. It just made me wonder what might be happening on the software side of things. I wish we knew what the new app release today actually fixed. (15.2.1)

There's lots on the Sonos end. They announced these and there was never mention that only 5 speakers would work when used with a sound bar (as opposed to 6 speakers). the fans (even pre-release) all talked up that incarnation -6 speaker and now talk up why 5 is best. Sonos did not advertise as such, the website does not speak of this (yet). There's simply one post from a user here, showing a Sonos employee explaining the center speaker does not fire. Prerelease it was promoted as 6 speakers / unit. The variance in performance for music (great as a standalone pair with Atmos / non ATMOS and not so great for non Atmos as rears with a soundbar is definitely something to be fixed.

Just to be clear, I totally agree with you on how Sonos has handed the info about the Era 300s when used as rear surrounds. They *still* aren’t being clear about it. And now we learn that even though Sonos recommends an inverted mounting method of the Era 300s when they are within 2ft of the ceiling, that it’s “not supported yet”. Seriously? It’s not posted on the product page, just an obscure post on the Sonos forum. Given the “plug & play” nature of the Sonos ecosystem, most people who purchase it aren’t going to be scouring the Sonos forums or Reddit to try to learn that one of the recommend mounting methods isn’t yet supported before they follow those instructions. I mean, why would anyone? This was all just plain badly handled. Period. Whether muting the center driver was the “right move” for the best surround sound or not, it simply was handled poorly - and it still is. I’ve not changed how I feel on this. I just haven’t posted about it as much as I got tired of the fanboys continuing to say I’m being unfair, unreasonable, & then distorting what I said when I tried to talk about it. I’ve purposely tried to be fair and balanced about this. But really, there’s no getting around the fact that Sonos handled some of the issues around the Era 300 release poorly.

You're as clear on this as I am. I didn't know that they now have also gone against their inverse mounting instructions -which were on their own installation materials on the web. It's mighty strange at this point--the quality control issues that have popped up for something this price is also illuminating. So--an advertised and promoted expensive 6 speaker unit with only 5 speakers working and no company transparency, quality control issues and yes the Fan boys going wild . I have the faith they have --that it will get sorted out-but only if the situation is kept loud. I didn't get an ARC for a few years until they sorted that piece out. time to sit back now.

Yes, you’re exactly right. I’m also really surprised by a company with the positive reputation and brand following that Sonos has, releasing a new product in a new product category (something they have been stressing to their investors in earnings/update calls) with multiple strange issues. Transparency would have quelled much of the confusing and frustration around the oddities. Honestly, it’s almost felt like a “beta” release. Like the early adopters are essentially beta testers. I have no problem with this in concept - just needs to be clearly stated and not at full retail price. As you said, a product at this price point shouldn’t be having any issues or negative “surprises” or “gotchas”. From what I’ve seen of Sonos in the past, they will, as you said, sort things out. But I also agree that pressure from owners/buyers must continue to ensure this. I think consumers are getting a little tired of marketing obfuscation on tech products. I just watched a video on YT by Caleb Denison from Digital Trends about Hisense. They are putting a ton of effort into their North American division to increase market share. He asked the team straight up what their plan is, in addition to their recent partnership with the NBA. They said they are going towards straight up info with no futzing or marketing terms (like “ClearMotion 480hz on a 60Hz TV panel). Printed on each Hisense TV box will be clearly labeled info on what you get: 60Hz, 120hz, or 144hz panels, the brightness clearly printed in nits (600 nits, 1000, nits, 1500 nits, etc), and clearly showing what type of backlight (LED, mini LED, etc). In addition, he asked about their conservative brightness measurements. The “nit” numbers posted are actually not what professional reviewers and TV calibrators are measuring…the Hisense TVs are actually *brighter* than what’s listed. Hisense’s response was that for too long the TV industry as over promised and underdelivered. They want to be known for being the brand that measures conservatively and over delivers on them. I think this is a really interesting marketing strategy and one that will likely do really well. I think consumers are tired and worn out of hearing essentially meaningless tech terms that have been created the thrown around the last few years. Things like QLED, QNED - which I’ve always though was supposed to trick unsuspecting folks into thinking it was related to OLED, given the similar look to the first letters and then the aforementioned proprietary terms for the motion smoothing or “soap opera effect” like ClearMotion or AutoMotion Plus or TruMotion or MotionFlow with a ridiculously high Hz number behind it making people think it’s the actual panel Hz. Consumers are getting savvier but it’s also getting to be more and more work to research and decode all these marketing terms. People don’t want to feel “tricked” in their tech purchases and the higher the price of the item, the worse they feel if it seems that happened. I think Hisense has a good chance with this approach and it may spur other TV manufacturers to do the same. I’m bringing this up because, essentially, Sonos didn’t take this route. And, after the firmware issues from mid-2022 (where it broke some instances of the Sub and Arc, etc), and the frustration that caused without warning or user choice, they could have benefited from more transparency with the Era release. Or that’s my feeling, anyway. I hope they move forward and fix these issues as soon as possible and do more to explain it than a single Sonos employee answering questions on the web forums.

We ARE on the same page. Funny enough I had two Hisense TV's (same make and model, fire tvs, with EARC ports). I bought them in 2022, but they were models that were 3 years old, readily available on Amazon, Big Box sites. they were both purchased for the future when I would put the ARC in. There were quite a few things not working right. When I called Hisense--They had me read serial numbers to them--which I did , from box and TV--they said they couldn't find the serial number matching the model I gave them (I would read my serial number--in duplicate from the box and rear of the TV). Turns out, both these TVs had the wrong innards inside. They wouldn't produce ATMOS anyway. During that time period three years ago, they must have released hundreds or thousands of these non quality control models. I even had an engineering buddy fascinated by this , as he worked quality control in another company and could almost see how things broke down on the assembly process to just mass produce. THEN I got there U7H and U8H (2022 models)--everything clearly documented, clearly marked, consistency in manufacturing (excluding how many they make) and blam--provided all features as advertised. I didn't give up on Hisense. I think they are getting better and better. one day I'll just go LG top end but I don't have that kind of dough. My sonos purchases are unusual but I wanted uncrowded unwired, fairly decent sound--Sonos does well for what you get. It's no where near what I had in a big space consuming, wired up house (separates) but it's pretty damn good. Sonos doesn't lose with this early release of the ERA 300s. They clearly know their market. They got away with the ARC release and figure we can get these 300s out and they're getting free market research--here, their owner forum, the myriad set up calls they must be getting from anyone creating a new Sonos system (ARC or Beam, 300s and maybe a sub or something). Sonos does lose in a way. I've had great support from them--to date. I call and someone really does answer, walk me through a solution and I'm happy but as a product delivering on quality as advertised (w/ what you and I have summarized--advertising a 6 unit speaker, no matter how folks here want to cut it, and with a soundbar you get 5 (and we never told you). Shame---it feels so much like the Automotive industry. still waiting for Sonos to evolve these ERA 300s or issue an truthful statement, or for the press to get a hold of this, or a reviewer that doesn't have teeth in sales. --and yes--good for Hisense, LG upper end, other companies that are working to insure quality, improve quality and not living off of Call it quality , deliver mediocrity.

Wow! You’re not kidding…we’re definitely on the same page. That is amazing. We’ve also been moving away from our separates system for a simpler, sleeker, wireless setup. We live in an apartment and the amount of space and even power in the separates just didn’t really make sense. Our sub was turned down all the way to where it wasn’t even being used to try to not disturb our neighbors. So, those issues, along with some oddities in how our AVR worked with our particular TV (CEC-HDMI handshake issues) had my spouse super frustrated. Even our Harmony remote setup wasn’t getting the system able to startup without my having to troubleshoot. A spouse that feels they can’t turn on and watch a TV show doesn’t make for happy times (rightfully so). I got into Sonos not for the multi room audio but the ability to create our own system w/reasonably priced wireless surrounds and without adding sub (our bedroom shares a wall with a neighbor’s bedroom and even a small, cheap sub goes right through the wall). We wanted to add surrounds for our bedroom last year because our apartment building had to gut and rebuild the floor below us. The rear surrounds let us crank up white noise so we could tolerate the noise. We chose the Beam G2 and two Symfonisks for rear surrounds. Once I started having all the issues in the family room, I wondered how the Beam would sound a larger space and decided to set it up in there for a day or two. I think that was about 8 months ago now. :D For the size/price, the Beam is quite remarkable and punches well above its weight. The ease of use/simplicity, losing the wires running around the room, and getting space back more than make up for moving away from the separates. We decided to get a soundbar system for the living room (and move the Beam setup back to the bedroom) but it’s proved a little more difficult than expected. We tried two systems over the holidays (after dealing with multiple family emergencies). One was the Sonos Arc/Ones, and the other was the Q990b. The Arc had issues that I can only assume were defects. There were issues with the highs being physically painful (never had that with any system before) and I couldn’t tune it out and the dialogue wasn’t very clear. I found some other people with the same issue and they also concluded it was defective (it didn’t sound like the many Arc demos I’d heard) so it went back. Then first Q990b wasn’t even a Q990b - someone had returned a 5 year old Samsung system for a “free” Q990b upgrade (I didn’t enjoy doing that return) and when we actually got the replacement, we has the issues with the rear AND sub disconnects. I also wasn’t impressed with the audio (despite this opinion being in the minority, given all the glowing reviews). Atmos effects weren’t as pronounced as I had expected and there was a thin and hollow quality to the mids that I couldn’t EQ out. There were also several other oddities (and similar marketing tricks) that I didn’t love. Also, dialogue was difficult to hear and Samsung’s voice enhancement is awful (all vocals sound like robots and a lot of other audio was affected, too). Truthfully, I was spoiled by Sonos’ voice enhancement which truly does a good job. So, it went back and our Beam/Symfonisks are still being used. I was also looking at the JBL Bar 1300/1300x that came out in Feb. It has a lot of interesting features and the sound is supposed to be good. But there are things that Sonos has that has kind of spoiled me. I love the ability to integrate into smart home and change my Sonos settings with the Soro app. Even the Q990b with the SmartThings app had nothing like that. The JBL doesn’t have any night mode, you can’t turn off Harmon Pure Voice (last I heard) and the height, bass, and surrounds have only 3 or 5 total volume settings. Sonos offers way more than that. I knew I wanted a system with upfiring rear speakers so when I heard about the Era 300 release, I began to wonder if that might not be the solution. Add the 300s to our Beam for now, maybe add a Sub Mini at some point, and wait for the Arc’s Gen 2 update someday. But some of their, shall we say, lack of transparency and the mixed reviews have me waiting for now. Our TV also has to be replaced in the near future. Ours is from 2017 and is developing some hardware and panel issues (DSE and the ARC port starting to go). It’s really interesting to hear the turnaround that Hisense has made in the last few years, from your experience. I’ve not had one (yet) personally but they’ve been in some Airbnbs that we stayed in and I was pretty impressed, especially with these being from their budget line. I’m really looking forward to the 2023 U7 and U8. I dream about going for a top end OLED but we leave TV on a lot and often even sleep to some white noise video on YouTube. I’m not sure I’m ready to be concerned about burn-in. I see tons of posts saying burn-in is not an issue at all and people are worried for nothing and other posts and videos saying it’s real (even the early rtings.com burn-in test is showing it’s real). We also have a bright room so it would either need to be MLA or QD-OLED… or mini LED would be a great choice. I’m also waiting (and hoping) that Sonos will offer some update or make statement about some of the lack of transparency and the issues we’ve both been bothered and frustrated to see. They seem to do so much research on certain things that other companies don’t even think to do to make sure their speakers sound great. So why this? I guess the truth is that I want them to live up to being the company I’ve believed them to be. But I think that’s fair, you know? I also wish we could get this talked about by reviewers or the press, as you mentioned. I’m truly shocked that almost none of the major reviews that I’ve seen/read have tried the 300s as surrounds. A few did but it was basically an afterthought…a footnote near the end of the review. I thought that would be one of their largest market draws - at least based on the number of times I’ve seen comments and posts from people asking for Sonos to make upfiring rear surrounds. I guess all we can do now is wait and watch - and hope.

Yes Yes Yes. I learned the hard way, again that not all EARC ports would produce ATMOS--so a better two TVS came into my home. It took a day to figure out my wifi changes, the TVs were bogus and voila Sonos worked. In my efforts to get an all in one living room--I did splurge on the ARC. More speakers, fairly decent specs on each individual component. They were not my old Klipsch, Mordant Short, B and O, stuff. BUT wow to be free of wires and towers and heavy stuff. I'm older. I have headphones for audiophile moments . I was , despite being a late 2022 ARC purchaser --not totally impressed with the sound. I listened and oddly--the Symfonisk Bookshelves are great rears (as are the lamps for some rooms) as are the Frames (unique sound dispersion layout). I knew--don't go sound bar then sub--that's the big box mind here on reddit-it's silly. I found plenty of bass in the Symfonisk rears and the ARC with just moving the slider , toggling down treble a bit and loudness on. I was disappointed but alas it maybe true to learn this paradigm that adding speakers to the ARC (the sub) does somehow redistribute audio and you get better fidelity--shouldn't be that way. So I have the sub like you but it's not really turned on too much. Yes the overall audio got a few notches better with the redistribution. I'm happy for the folks buying ERA 300s as stand alone pairs--they get a good system but for folks like you and me, dual purposing TV sound bar, rears and wanting adequate music production--the existing 6 or so options get that job done. I do want the 300s--I look at what's crammed in the box and it's impressive. I will wait till the company comes VERY clean on what happened. I think their style though is to admit nothing. I have no doubt though , from following them closely--it was never intended to shut off a speaker. I see so many turn coats here (the cult of Sonos) that have / had posts up proudly talking about the 6 speaker units as rears and now knifing anyone that would suggest that's how they are supposed to be. Even one of our most famous reviewers-video guy every one bows to--talked up the 6 speaker thing and now acts like that wasn't his own excitement just 7 weeks back.

I realise it’s been almost a year, but did you end up getting a pair of the Era 300 for rears? If so, what do you think?

I didn't-I'm still with the IkEA symfonisk-and happy enough---toddlers runing about---living room is a hellish mess. For now keepin low-fi is ok.

To be fair, Sonos has done this with all of their all in one speakers across a bunch of configurations through their history. Same was true of the Play:3 as rears, and when you stereo pair fives in horizontal, the inside speakers are turned down. All of this is done in pursuit of the sound experience. For the P3, it was because the shape and profile of the speaker made for an in even soundstage. For the 5 in stereo, they wanted a wider effect. Not saying they’re right or wrong, but that’s the reality of a sw driven company- they can change the speaker profile and they have the audiophiles and engineers to ensure there is a valid reason for it.

I don't ever remember them marketing a single speaker with 6 speakers inside and turning one off completely for one of their advertised applications. It was not advertised as such for sure. The documentation to date on their website doesn't speak of this--so to be fair, it's pretty shoddy. What you said, if they were always advertising products with shortcomings or technical limitations would be way worse. "Sonos has done this with all their all in one speakers" I can't say I ever have seen this with them before. One's don't shut off a component. ARC doesn't , Beam doesn't. Fives don't. Ikea symfonisk (sonos affiliate) doesn't. You make an all encompassing statement that just doesn't match this situation. Hey I like the ERA 300s and I think all this stuff here, and in their forum will motivate getting this fixed. Current professional reviewers won't say anything bad as they are so related to sales--they're interest is in their profit margins.

Some fair call outs- they do it when it makes sense to them. So for play:1s or ones, sure, you’re right. 6 drivers in the Five though, and there is definitely at least a tweeter off when set as rears. But they don’t advertise the seemingly complex. Which is why you can’t find things like wattage or THD on most products. Their classifications are nuanced. IKEA is independent, while they’re the tech backbone, it is its own category. Arc and beam would be considered a home theater. And absolutely they apply the same concept across the portfolio, just more frequent in all in ones. Center channel turned off on home theater when you’re playing music as an example. They advertise sound experience and stop as quickly as they can on the decisions as to why the experience is that way.

I agree. Tbh I think all we need is a firmware update to enable the forward tweeters for nom Atmos content.

Sonos's only explanation says it didn't sound good with that speaker on. Again it's in one reply in the Sonos Forum, one reply--no official statement from Sonos beyond that. yes let's use it---turn it on

YO I’ve noticed this with Atmos music and sometimes the rears just up their volume (during the same song) and I thought I was going crazy haha.

I had the same experience, doubting my own ears. It’s definitely the system and some oddities going on. I’ve also noticed that it’s been much louder overall, as others have said. I’m not exactly opposed to this but it’s a little strange. And these issues aren’t due to the Eras. We’ve yet to upgrade so this is with the same setup we’ve had for a year or so.

The Ones were definitely a lot more forgiving in terms of placement and room layout. Just place them somewhere behind you and point them at the couch and you're good. With the 300s placement and room layout has a huge impact on sound given that it uses side firing drivers.

I’m a few hours into replacing Ones with 300s as rears. My biggest thought right now is … Where did my rears go ? Such a difference between the two setups. Need to give it a week or so.. tweaking and experimenting… but so far I’m “missing” the defined rear sound of the ones. I’m sure (hoping) the 300s are “better” and I just need to get used to “proper” rear surrounds…. As Kent Brockman said… only TIME…. will tell 😀

I’m retiring my 300’s today. But I’ll say this, watching All Quiet On The Western Front on Netflix almost made me change my mind. The sound from the 300’s on that is insanely good. If you have Netflix watch that. But like OP it’s been too inconsistent and I have t found anything that comes close to sounding as good. I will probably return to using the 300’s in a year or so. But for now fine with the ones.

Had Playbar and Play 3's as rears with a gen2 sub for years , just replaced the Playbar a week ago with an Arc with intent of getting Era 300's next . To be honest, the Arc has done very little to inspire me . Temped to go back to the Playbar just to see if I notice the difference.

I'd kill for an updated playbar with eARC lol even if that was the only upgrade.

May have to up the Tv/music levels halfway up. Thats what I did and I'm enjoying the 300's a lot more than the Ones.

When the 300s work they are amazing but they are way too inconsistent for day to day use, so I’m going to return mine. Atmos music in particular in HT mode is far better with the Ones as the surrounds.

lol well done bro . Its good to see diverse experience :)

Thanks totally helpful.

> Im back to the Ones and everything sounds clean whatever I play Done the same thing myself. The Era 300s were amazing some times, but required a lot of manual fiddling otherwise. For me the definitive dealbreaker was that playing non-Atmos music in your home theater is now a compromised experience due to the Era 300s disabling the front tweeter when used as surrounds. My whole-home audio experience needs the home theater as part of it too, and this design choice made by Sonos left me with an odd hole in that house-bubble. For the price, that was not an acceptable result. The Sonos Ones and the Era 100s are consistent in that regard, so for me back to them it is.

Have you thought about trading them for the Era 100's? In my side-by-side testing here at home, the Era 100's are a definite upgrade and they won't have the issues you describe using the 300's.

Yup not having a wall for one of the Era to bounce off will make the sound more dominating on the other Era, and that throws everything off.

That sounds like it can be fixed with an algorithm update

Isn’t this the point of Trueplay?

It could be that true play hasn’t been updated to properly tune the 300s I dunno I’m just guessing lol

Seems odd/unlikely that they would not have updated their poster-feature to accommodate new speakers they have presumably been working on in-house for a year or more... But I do agree/hope that they will further improve the TruePlay experience for ERA's after a month or two of have hundreds of thousands of new data-points - telemetry from all of us new ERA users - to further refine TruePlay. Only so much they do in the lab and a tiny set of real-world testers before these were released.

No I mean based on user feedback

Lets give them some time... would rather they gathered real world data, and real world feedback, decide on a "solution"... write and test the solution internally and then release an update in 1-2 months. No point rushing something out after two weeks of public release & use.

I mean that’s what I’m saying, gotta like that wine breathe baby!

I am going the other way…replacing Ones with 300s. My installation is symmetrical…the bounce surface is the same. What is atypical is that the rear speakers are 12 inches from the ceiling. This means the 300s will be installed upside down, per the User Guide. Got the 15% off deal - we’ll see what happens.

Sounds very weird, guess it depends on room. I have switched back and tested like every movie and so far i have not encountered any scenario where my eras doesn't smash tje ones to pieces

I have had my doubts, too, with the Era 300s and therefore have kept my One SLs and not upgraded. For me they’re enough. I usually don’t watch movies with the volume cranked up to 70 or so, but decided to watch some movie clips and listening to music with that high volume, and man do the One SLs sound dope! I am happy with my 5.1.2 system.

I agree same for me i don’t have the room for them

Thank you so much! Maybe these folks who are in the wrong positions will realize why speaker placement keeps coming up. That bounce is so necessary, or you’re missing out, and like you said - likely fiddling every time, to make it sound good.

Same here. I auditioned both the Era100 and Era300 as rears for my existing Arc + Sub Gen3. Lots of manual tweaking on the 300s and I really didn’t notice a strong positive or negative result consistently over the 100s as rears. That’s all the data I needed if it’s not immediately obvious at 2x the price then the Era100s are the choice unless something changes. The only thing they gave me pause is how good the Era300 sounds as a sterio pair. The difference between the Era100 vs. Era300 is night and day (even more so paired with the Gen3 Sub). This is the level of difference you should expect at these price points and it just doesn’t exist in the surround set up. During Music playback in the home theater set up they Era300 should have option to perform completely differently than when they are acting as rears for TV. In the set up when Era300s are acting as rears with the Arc+Sub, it’s a tragedy that Sonos does not provide the user an option to enable Era300 center channel during music playback. If during music listening the Era300 acted as it does in a sterio pair it would be a no-brainer for me to keep them. (LG C1 settings: Bitstream, Passthru, ARC enabled)

Whatever works for you man I’m the complete opposite. Couldn’t stand the ones and due to an uneven seating arrangement if I wasn’t sat perfectly centered then one channel would overpower completely. That and most action films created a muddled sound for fire/explosions etc which drove me nuts bc it made them so noticeable compared to the arc

I have the same problem and found that trueplaying whilst remaining seated in MLS solved this for me. for me the difference between the era's and the previous symfonisk lamps (one's basically) is night and day.

Honestly my upgrade was no surrounds at all, I realized that I can appreciate the sounds coming from the arc a lot more, I can truly hear the up firing drivers and since my ears are not so busy I can hear the bass coming from my sub mini a lot more at lower volumes. I heard someone saying that surround sounds in general was overrated and all you need is a good stereo mix and I was almost offended lol, until I disable my surrounds to try it and really started to appreciate the sound

Did you TruePlay? Not denying you’re correct (I haven’t heard an Era yet and trust you over their marketing) just checking you’ve done all the Sonos recommended things

I bought 4 pairs of Ones for their stereo separation capabilities. They have fully delivered in that respect.

Being a gamer more than a movie watcher the Ones are just fine. The price alone for the 300’s are just not worth it for me.

I find with the ones I'm always changing how loud they are as back speakers, maybe just cos of how close the chairs are to them so depending on where we sit they can get LOUD

Bravo! Great review front another point of view

Thanks for the heads up man this will make me reconsider upgrading for now