Own A Sonos Soundbar? I Made 3 Easy Adjustments To Instantly Improve The Audio Quality

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ZDNET's cardinal takeaways

• Your listening room's layout has a immense effect connected your soundbar's Dolby Atmos performance.
• There are respective audio features that tin thief amended speech clarity.
• Building retired your Sonos location theatre tin thief pinch audio clarity and robustness.

Sonos' webpages and celebrated reviews are afloat of specs, but respective real-life factors impact your soundbar's capacity much than you'd think. Factors specified arsenic placement, your content's audio format, and your room's size and furnishings each impact your soundbar's output. 

I usage my Sonos Arc and Arc Ultra soundbars, Era 300 speakers, Sub 4 subwoofer, and Ace headphones daily, but achieving complete restitution required immoderate adjustments. I'm yet fresh to stock nan secrets.

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Start pinch your soundbar's placement. Regardless of whether you person a flagship Arc aliases Arc Ultra, aliases a smaller Beam aliases Ray, location matters. Ensure your soundbar is arsenic adjacent to oculus level arsenic imaginable and centered connected your TV. If you tin thief it, support your soundbar retired of a cabinet; you want sound to disperse passim nan room alternatively than beryllium confined wrong a space.

1. Problem: Dolby Atmos doesn't sound immersive

The reason: A deficiency of height

Dolby Atmos is an object-based spatial audio format. However, movie theaters get it correct because they person speakers embedded successful nan ceiling, adding tallness and achieving an immersive acquisition that mimics sounds coming from supra you. You don't person ceiling speakers, but your Arc aliases Arc Ultra has upfiring speakers to create this illusion astatine home.

The fix: Increase nan tallness transmission volume

This 1 is nan astir difficult. If you person vaulted ceilings aliases your soundbar setup doesn't let for overmuch abstraction betwixt nan soundbar and your TV, your upfiring speakers will struggle. However, you tin summation nan measurement of your Arc aliases Arc Ultra's tallness channels to effort to make them louder and much noticeable. 

The caller and awesome Era 300 is cleanable for medium-to-large rooms.

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A group of rear speakers tin thief importantly grow nan horizontal level of your Dolby Atmos experience, and nan Era 300 has an upfiring tweeter for added tallness effect, if your abstraction tin accommodate it. 

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Neither nan Sonos Ray nor Beam (Gen 2) has dedicated upfiring speakers, but their guardant and side-facing channels thief pinch expanding your content's soundstage. Either compact soundbar is an upgrade from your TV's bladed speakers, but nan Beam (Gen 2) is nan champion compact action from Sonos (when it's connected sale).

2. Problem: Dialogue isn't clear

The reason: Toggle Speech Enhancement, Night Mode, aliases Loudness

There are respective ways to reside this problem by playing pinch a fewer audio features. Starting small, you tin move connected Speech Enhancement, which decreases bass and increases mids, which is typically wherever speech resides. You tin besides move connected Night Sound alongside Speech Enhancement to further trim bass. 

Ensure your soundbar's Loudness characteristic is off, arsenic it tin besides amplify non-dialogue sounds. If you're still not proceeding arsenic intelligibly arsenic you'd like, you tin trim nan soundbar's bass consequence successful its EQ settings. You tin find each these features successful nan Sonos app.

Jada Jones/ZDNET

From my experience, rear speakers and a sub, particularly a subwoofer, mitigate this problem entirely, since nan further audio channels let nan soundbar to attraction connected mids and nan sub to grip bass. 

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If you're this heavy into nan Sonos ecosystem and want to watch TV without bothering your housemates aliases neighbors, see buying nan Sonos Ace headphones. They are compatible pinch nan Sonos Arc, Arc Ultra, Beam, and Ray, and play nan aforesaid audio format arsenic nan soundbar's output. 

3. Problem: Something conscionable sounds 'off'

The fix: Re-calibrate TruePlay

TruePlay is Sonos' acoustic tuning characteristic that helps your speakers execute to their champion by accounting for your room's size, furniture, and layout. If you're for illustration me, your rooms aren't nan cleanable quadrate pinch minimal furnishings for illustration nan exemplary rooms connected nan Sonos website. 

You'll want to tune your speaker pinch TruePlay to relationship for nan walls adjacent your soundbar and nan sectional-sized obstruction successful your listening area. If you ever rearrange your listening area, whether that beryllium nan speakers aliases nan furniture, tally a caller TruePlay calibration.