Sonos won't tell you this, but these 3 free tweaks dramatically improve its soundbars

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ZDNET’s key takeaways

• Your listening room’s layout has a huge impact on your soundbar’s Dolby Atmos performance.
• There are several audio features that can help improve dialogue clarity.
• Building out your Sonos home theater can help with audio clarity and robustness.

Sonos’ webpages and popular reviews are full of specs, but several real-life factors affect your soundbar’s performance more than you’d think. Factors such as placement, your content’s audio format, and your room’s size and furniture all affect your soundbar’s output. 

I use my Sonos Arc and Arc Ultra soundbars, Era 300 speakers, Sub 4 subwoofer, and Ace headphones daily, but achieving complete satisfaction required some adjustments. I’m finally ready to share the secrets.

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Start with your soundbar’s placement. Regardless of whether you have a flagship Arc or Arc Ultra, or a smaller Beam or Ray, location matters. Ensure your soundbar is as close to eye level as possible and centered on your TV. If you can help it, keep your soundbar out of a cabinet; you want sound to disperse throughout the room rather than be confined within a space.

1. Problem: Dolby Atmos doesn’t sound immersive

The reason: A lack of height

Dolby Atmos is an object-based spatial audio format. However, movie theaters get it right because they have speakers embedded in the ceiling, adding height and achieving an immersive experience that mimics sounds coming from above you. You don’t have ceiling speakers, but your Arc or Arc Ultra has upfiring speakers to create this illusion at home.

The fix: Increase the height channel volume

This one is the most difficult. If you have vaulted ceilings or your soundbar setup doesn’t allow for much space between the soundbar and your TV, your upfiring speakers will struggle. However, you can increase the volume of your Arc or Arc Ultra’s height channels to try to make them louder and more noticeable. 

A set of rear speakers can help significantly expand the horizontal plane of your Dolby Atmos experience, and the Era 300 has an upfiring tweeter for added height effect, if your space can accommodate it. 

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Neither the Sonos Ray nor Beam (Gen 2) has dedicated upfiring speakers, but their forward and side-facing channels help with expanding your content’s soundstage. Either compact soundbar is an upgrade from your TV’s thin speakers, but the Beam (Gen 2) is the best compact option from Sonos (when it’s on sale).

2. Problem: Dialogue isn’t clear

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

There are several ways to address this problem by playing with a few audio features. Starting small, you can turn on Speech Enhancement, which decreases bass and increases mids, which is typically where dialogue resides. You can also turn on Night Sound alongside Speech Enhancement to further reduce bass. 

Ensure your soundbar’s Loudness feature is off, as it can also amplify non-dialogue sounds. If you’re still not hearing as clearly as you’d like, you can reduce the soundbar’s bass response in its EQ settings. You can find all these features in the Sonos app.

From my experience, rear speakers and a sub, especially a subwoofer, mitigate this problem entirely, since the additional audio channels allow the soundbar to focus on mids and the sub to handle bass. 

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If you’re this deep into the Sonos ecosystem and want to watch TV without bothering your housemates or neighbors, consider buying the Sonos Ace headphones. They are compatible with the Sonos Arc, Arc Ultra, Beam, and Ray, and play the same audio format as the soundbar’s output. 

3. Problem: Something just sounds ‘off’

The fix: Re-calibrate TruePlay

TruePlay is Sonos’ acoustic tuning feature that helps your speakers perform to their best by accounting for your room’s size, furniture, and layout. If you’re like me, your rooms aren’t the perfect square with minimal furniture like the model rooms on the Sonos website. 

You’ll want to tune your speaker with TruePlay to account for the walls near your soundbar and the sectional-sized barrier in your listening area. If you ever rearrange your listening area, whether that be the speakers or the furniture, run a new TruePlay calibration.