Sonos Rules Dolby Atmos | Sonos Era 300 Review With Arc, Sub

this review has not at all gone according to plan and I am not mad about it [Music] welcome back everyone I'm Caleb Dennison and it may seem like I'm a little late to the party with this review because well I kind of am the new Sonos era 300 speakers featured here actually came out a couple of months ago and along with them A Rush of reviews mostly wildly positive absolutely singing their praises including our own Simon Cohen whose opinion I trust a great deal a lot of game changer headlines out there but I wanted to do something a little different I wanted to check out the era 300 for myself sure but what I really wanted to do was add them as surround speakers in conjunction with the Sonos Arc Dolby Atmos Soundbar and a Sono sub to see what the ultimate Sonos home theater would sound like not a lot of takes out there on YouTube for such a setup surprisingly well that was the plan anyway and I will be doing that here but frankly I'm so taken aback by the era 300 speakers themselves that I need to spend a little time talking about them and the various configurations I put them in because folks for all the Fanfare these speakers have received I don't think it's enough I actually have some observations I haven't seen elsewhere too so I want to get my take out there and make a few suggestions as to what the right Sonos setup might look like for you whether you want a high performance smart speaker multi-room audio system a clean speaker system for your TV or a full on Dolby Atmos home theater rig and hey guys if you like what you get out of this video do me a favor show me your support with some clicks on the appropriate buttons below this video also I love reading and responding to your comments so drop me a line I look forward to seeing you there I can't respond to everyone but if you keep trying I'm gonna eventually get to you okay buckle up folks this is gonna be fun let's do this [Music] so it's been a while since I set up a Sonos speaker and I'm super pleased that getting them up and running is just as breezy as I remember it seriously folks Sonos app it's user interface is a big part of why Sonos is so well loved I plugged in one of the era 300 speakers the app found it connected it to my Wi-Fi without asking for the password because it's already stored in my phone and then prompted me to run true play which is Sonos absolutely Stellar sound optimization feature you walk around the room waving your phone around and true play reads the room through your phone's microphone and optimizes the speaker's output and guys it just works extremely well the sound profile with true play for me is significantly better than without it you can toggle it on and off to here for yourself so I started with just one era 300 speaker because I think a lot of folks are likely to have just one of these in a room now you've probably already seen this sort of hourglass shape that folks were quick to hate on when they first saw images of it but it is actually a classic example of function leading form the speaker is shaped this way to accommodate a series of drivers that shoot sound out of the sides and the top of the speaker as well as straight out of the front and that's all in service of spatial audio and by extension Dolby Atmos audio both of which we are going to spend a significant amount of time talking about here because while you might expect the era 300 to sound good because it's a Sonos speaker and Sonos speakers are known to sound very very good you might not expect the spatial audio aspect to work as well as it does because folks I was astonished at how well this one speaker can pull off the atmospheric effect of spatial audio now to get spatial audio you have to listen to music or movies that have been mixed for it you can get spatial audio music from Apple and Amazon's Music Services we'll get to TV and movies in a moment and you need to make sure that the track or album that you're listening to is available with spatial audio not all music has been optimized for it yet but if you want to try it out you can use the search function in the Sonos app to find music in spatial audio Apple actually makes it pretty easy to find now I'm going to take a quick sidebar here and say that the spatial audio version of the music that's available is not always the best version just because it's been mixed for spatial audio doesn't mean it necessarily sounds better that way this is not a comment on the speakers here or any spatial audio system for that matter this is a comment on the spatial audio mixing itself what I found is that sometimes it's awesome and sometimes it actually takes something away I'll talk more about that in a moment but going back to this single era 300 speaker it sounded outstanding with both spatial and non-spatial audio tracks the base output of this speaker is remarkably good especially for the speaker's size it's the least forced or fake sounding bass I've heard from a relatively compact speaker before and that's saying something compared to the homepod which is admittedly less expensive the era 300 is a substantially Superior sounding speaker and when the spatial audio mix is good the spatial audio performance of even just one era 300 is outstanding it's kind of unbelievable honestly but you know what's even better than the era 300 two era 300s Linked In Stereo plug in another era 300 the Sonos app finds it you add it to the same room mine is called media room and it will ask you to identify the left and right speaker and boom you have a stereo pair folks this is when my opinion of the era 300 skyrocketed if one era 300 sounds very very good then two of them in Stereo is just superb and I don't just mean for a powered smart speaker I would put a stereo pair of era 300 against any number of high performance bookshelf speaker and amplifier combos that cost way way more money I put them against klipsch's the fives the sevens and yeah even the nines too the sound is just it's remarkably good everything is better with the pairing the bass is just outstanding it's tight and the resonance is just right the intonation of the bass was spot on I listened to Oscar Peterson's we get requests which features Ray Brown on upright acoustic bass and his unmistakable iconic tone was reproduced so Faithfully that I had to dig deep into my memory to think of a time when it sounded better and if it has sounded better it came from a system that cost at least four times as much as a pair of these speakers in Stereo mode again and not spatial audio mode was Stellar with pinpoint Center Imaging a Sound Stage that spread well beyond the outside edges of the speakers and was seamless across the front of the room no holes anywhere transients were super clean Dynamics were quick and arresting and then you kick in with the spatial audio I mean forget about it the Dome of sound you might be looking for it's right here the spatial audio was exponentially better with a pair of these speakers oh and I felt no need for a subwoofer when listening to music I mean I did get a son of sub so I added one in and while it's true that the sub adds authority to the lowest octave it just gives stuff a bit more heft it's super helpful for movies and TV I honestly feel the system sounds better without the sub for music listening not because it isn't a capable subwoofer but because the era 300 provided more even bass since there were two of them running full range when they're on their own but they get crossed over and lean on the subwoofer quite a bit when the sub is added and you just have the one sub all of this to say if music listening is your priority you can just skip the sub two era 300s sound awesome and if you really want the big bass just go for it and get like two Sonos subs two will definitely be better than one it's just that that adds a significant cost that I know most folks are just not gonna want or need to put out now before I move on to the full surround system with the Sonos Arc Soundbar and the sub I want to talk about the idea of using two era 300s as TV speakers this is something I did with the home pods when the second generation came out and I was super impressed with that pairing so can the era 300 do it too well technically yes so there's no way to pump uncompressed sound out to these speakers via HDMI without a Sonos Arc or Sonos beam because the era 300 don't have an A HDMI input on them they fall short of being a direct replacement for something like klipsch's the five sevens or Nines in that particular way at least for now see the air 300 have a USB input that allows line input but I suppose that Sonos could also create sort of like an HDMI to line input dongle and maybe they could do it one day right now though they don't they do however support AirPlay too so if you're using an iPhone iPad Mac or Apple TV 4K box or a TV that supports AirPlay 2 output then you can use the era 300 as TV speakers and they sounded really good at that job but for some reason even though they offered a lot of sound and very good Atmos effects they didn't have the pinpoint Center Imaging for dialogue that I was hoping for I got that out of the home pods and I'm not sure why that is it might be that the home pods get a special signal because they are app Apple Hardware connected to Apple Hardware I've actually asked both Sonos and apple about this and I haven't gotten a response yet so I'll have to do the thing where I update you by pinning a comment in the description when I do hear back anyway it's more than passable sound it's actually very very good I just I wish dialogue was anchored towards the center of the TV screen a little bit better but really if you want a home entertainment system if you want a full-on Dolby Atmos 7.1.4 system then what you should do is get a Sonos Arc the Sonos sub and use two era 300s as surround speakers I did that and holy Toledo folks this system beats out almost every Soundbar surround system I've ever tested the Nakamichi Dragon being the one exception you'll pay for it I mean we're talking about a twenty four hundred dollar system here that's the street price not MSRP that's well more than you'll pay for Samsung's outstanding top of the line Dolby Atmos sound bar system but the performance is significantly more convincing when it comes to the Dolby Atmos effects and the overall Fidelity of the sound is better too even though the Samsung system does sound remarkably good for what it is the real feather in your cap with a Sono system like this though is the flexibility it offers see the era 300 can live in other rooms of your house providing multi-room audio and then you can place them in your TV room and use them as surrounds when you want to they can pull double duty like that also the new era 300 have Bluetooth connections if you want to use that you can take them anywhere you want to plus you can run anything into them that you want to as well you could use a turntable with a phono preamp and plug them into the back of one Sonos era 300 and spread that turntable sound through any other Sonos speaker in your house if you wanted to that kind of flexibility and functionality is not something you can get out of most Soundbar based surround systems so yeah Sonos is a luxury good and it's gonna cost you a chunk of change but a pair of era 300s is honestly one of the best deals in home audio right now you can't get spatial audio sound like this from anything less expensive than 900 which is what you'll pay for a pair of these I've checked the least expensive Klipsch bookshelf speakers with Klipsch Atmos modules and the least expensive Atmos AV receiver is gonna run you at least nine hundred dollars and isn't likely to sound quite this good Plus speaker wires a pair of Home pods does get close for less but if you're willing to spend a little more you'll be treated to world class sound paired with one of the best user experiences there is in home entertainment thanks as always for watching guys don't forget to like And subscribe drop me a comment down below I'll see you on the next one and until then here's two other videos I think you might like foreign

Channel: Digital Trends

Views: 474,403

Keywords: sonos era 300 review, sonos era speakers, dolby atmos, spatial audio, era 300 sonos, sonos era 300 test, sonos sub gen 3, sonos cinema system, sonos home theater, sonos atmos speakers, sonos home theatre, atmos speakers, sonos speakers, era 300 review, sonos era 300 surround, sonos era 300 surround speakers, era 300 vs homepod, era 300 surround, era 300 sonos review, era 300 home theater, era 300 surround sound, era 300 with arc, era 300 vs homepod 2, sonos arc soundbar

Id: 2vkffQN8x20

Length: 13min 1sec (781 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 07 2023