Sonos makes incredible home theater speakers, but you’re never going to find them entirely packaged together into a surround sound system. Occasionally, you might see one of their soundbars bundled with a subwoofer, but if you want the real deal, you have to piece one together from separate Sonos speakers.
That makes it a pain if you’re the type to always and only buy deals. Sonos’ Arc or Arc Ultra soundbars may be on sale, but then the Sub Mini or Sub 4 subwoofer isn’t. Or maybe you luck out and both a soundbar and subwoofer are on sale, but the rear speakers aren’t.
All the stars have to line up just right. Now that the Sonos Era 300 speakers are on sale alongside Sonos’ fantastic Arc Ultra soundbar and Sub 4 subwoofer, you have all the elements to piece together an entire home surround system setup out of Sonos’ best speakers.
adding rear speakers
It’s exceedingly simple to position two Era 300 speakers behind and on either side of your couch and then pair them with a Sonos soundbar and Sonos subwoofer. You have a killer surround sound system from one of my favorite audio brands.
Unlike the Sonos Era 100, the Era 300 are compatible with Dolby Atmos, a premium audio format common to high-end TVs. There’s no real point in paying big bucks for a Dolby Atmos-compatible Sonos soundbar and subwoofer and then cheaping out on the rear speakers, so spring for the Era 300s.
Inside the Sonos app, all the Sonos speakers sync seamlessly. It’s simple to set up Trueplay, a fine-tuning tool accessed through the app that effects spatial audio.
Spatial audio creates a sort of three-dimensional map of your room so that it knows just how to bounce sound around and off the surfaces, creating more of a feeling of the listener being within the audio, rather than having it fired straight out of the speakers at their face.
Trueplay works well enough with just the Arc Ultra soundbar, but with a pair of Era 300s and a Sub 4 in the mix, it can work wonders.
On the subwoofer side, the Sub 4 uses opposed drivers that face each other, with the promise that they impart all the necessary deep, stomach-rumbling bass while canceling out the unwanted vibrations that rattle the pictures off walls and piss off neighbors and roommates.
I’m always skeptical of marketing when it comes to big promises, but alongside some deeply satisfying bass and rich audio, the Sub 4 shook my apartment noticeably less than the more conventional but less powerful Vizio subwoofer it replaced.
The post You Can Build a Sonos Surround System Out of These Speakers–and They’re on Sale appeared first on VICE.