A long time ago, I paid, I think a whopping, £100, for my 5.1 Surround Sound System and an AV Receiver slash amp to drive them all.
And since then, I’ve traded up through an Onkyo Amp, Yamaha, and around, maybe 5 years ago, a Denon Amp.
From my first ever home, to our now forever family home which, very fortunately already had the wiring for 5.1 speakers in the walls, and through those years, I have kept the same speakers.
Over time I have seen Sonos release soundbar after smart soundbar, and wireless speakers like the Sonos Ones, the Fives, and more recently the Era 100’s and 300’s.
And I found myself wondering - should I replace my old and, kind of tired, cheap traditional 5.1 system? And should I upgrade to the much more modern, shiny, smarter, AND, Dolby Atmos supporting Sonos System.
Honestly, I’ve spent so much time researching and Googling for the answer.
Everyone I spoke to said ‘Well, OBVIOUSLY, a ‘proper’ wired system is going to be better’. But still, I kept finding myself drawn towards the Sonos system.
Maybe it had something to do with this guy…
Around 1 minute into this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnjR3rwPr_s
What actually happened, and much to the dismay of my wife, is..well, I got both.
Act 1 - Sonos
OK, so this really didn’t pan out how I thought it would.
Because what happened next was just, sheer luck. Sonos themselves actually sent out their Premium Immersive Set with the Arc Ultra Soundbar.
So that’s the Arc Ultra, a Sub 4, and a pair of Era 100’s for the rear surrounds.
But, BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY - Because this guy is OBVIOUSLY going to be nice about Sonos because they sent me a whole freaking setup, I’m not sure if they’ll send me another one after this post...
Firstly, there are issues. Issues that have actually made me NOT keep the Sonos.
Like the sound dropping out randomly mid-watching. And secondly, there was some weird confusion because it was Sonos US that sent over everything. Which meant they all had these weird plugs on them that don’t work here in the UK…. so that was fun.
And because I wanted to do a proper comparison, I actually managed to jump on a call with Sonos and A) Get them to send out UK power cables, which happened literally last week, over a month after they sent the speakers out.
And B) They also sent out a pair of Era 300’s, and a Sub Mini, because I wanted to actually compare and HEAR the difference between them.
So there’s a lot to unpack here.
Unboxing & Setup
Unboxing and Setting up the Sonos is kind of an Apple-esque experience.
The boxes are REALLY well designed where you have these clips you slide, the lid comes off, and then you can easily get to the speaker.
It’s pretty cool - but you will totally forget about this after a day or two of using them. But yeah, it’s a really nice over-engineered design.
On to placing them, and this is where the Sonos really shines, because they are “Wireless” - even though they still require power, you can kind of place them anywhere you want.
With the Arc Ultra, that’s probably going to be underneath your TV.
My Problem, and this is very much a ME problem, is that I bought a Samsung TV with the OneConnect box. Which means I can connect all of my sources, my Apple TV, Games Console, into the OneConnect box, and then have a single cable going from the OneConnect Box, to the TV.
So the OneConnect box sits on top of my shelving unit and it’s here, because when I bought the TV, I was under the impression that they’d make a OneConnect cable longer than just 3 Meters… which, they don’t.
And I know, because I bought, and then returned ALL of them.
Now, all the Soundbars use ARC over HDMI, which means I need to feed a HDMI Cable from the OneConnect box to the Sonos Arc Ultra. Which means I had to buy a super long HDMI and PowerCable.
Which I did, but again - very much a me issue. Most people will probably have Power and be able to wire directly into their TV’s ARC Port.
The Sub is also pretty simple, plug in wherever you want it to go. I did play with it being right next to where I was sat on the Sofa, but after some playing around I decided to put it on the left of the TV.
And then with the rear Era 100’s, I actually bought some cheap stands for them off Amazon and placed them at the edge of the Sofa and angled in.
Ideally these should be behind the Sofa, but that’s all the space I have in the room I set this up in.
App Setup
Setting up was pretty straight forward. Fire up the Sonos App - add the Soundbar, add the Sub, add the 2 speakers as a Stereo pair then add them to the Soundbar and now you have your Dolby Atmos system all ready to go.
And of course, don’t forget that throughout this whole post, one of the things going for the Sonos system is that it integrates with the rest of the Sonos Ecosystem to give you full, house-wide music in every room of your house where you use a Sonos speaker.
We even had a battery powered Sonos Move speaker outdoors and it sounds incredible.
Sound Experience
And what an experience it was watching my first movie.
That Sub 4 is GIGANTIC compared to my previous sub. It really makes you feel a lot more of whatever you’re watching.
And between the Arc Ultra Soundbar and the Sub 4 - I was REALLY, REALLY impressed.
And this is how we watched our TV for the next month: Movies. Series. Bluey.
I used the App almost daily, and honestly, up until the point of writing this - I didn’t really have any issues with the App. I know that’s been a BIG issue recently with Sonos.
So much so that the CEO actually stepped down because of what a disaster it’s been recently.
And I read all the comments.
Speakers would drop off the system, then wouldn’t be found when trying to re-add them. One phone would work fine whilst a partners phone wouldn’t find the system at all. It’s just been a huge mess, and I’m not going to downplay that, because a LOT of people are still having those issues today.
And so when I came to write this, I tried removing the Era 100’s and re-adding the Era 300’s into my system, and they just wouldn’t connect. Or rather they’d connect, and then just, not work - and the App just said to switch it off and on again.
And even when trying to tune the existing speakers which ARE working, that also failed. So - Not great.
But, there are OTHER smart features that are available to you on Sonos, that aren’t on others - which we’ll get to in just a moment.
Issues
And there are other issues.
- The Sound Dropping Out is probably the biggest, and most frustrating issue that I’ve had. There you are, enjoying Severance, and then - every 10 seconds or so. Nothing. Just. Nothing.
The WHOLE SYSTEM cuts out. And you might think well, that’s because it’s wireless. Except it’s not. The Arc Soundbar is physically hard wired into the TV via HDMI.
I could understand if the Surrounds and the Sub dropped out due to Wifi issues. But the Arc Ultra definitely shouldn’t.
No reason why, and it happened multiple times. To the point where it was just not worth using them at all if they can’t work reliably.
Other Speakers
So in terms of whether it’s worth going for the Era 300’s over the 100’s
The Era 100’s are more forgiving with their position.
But the Era 300’s really are designed to be mounted directly behind you and facing towards the opposite wall - because they are speakers that support Dolby Atmos which the 100’s don’t.
But for my situation, unless I move my sofa, or couch, forwards a few feet. I can’t do.
So for me, the Era 100’s work better for me. But if you do have the space for the 300’s to be positioned properly - then absolutely, go for the 300’s if you can afford them.
I didn’t find a way to pair the Sub Mini with the Arc Ultra, it just tells me that it’s not supported. So instead I put that in my games room with the Sonos Beam and that works great. But, hard to compare with the Sub 4 when it’s on a totally different system - the Sub 4 is definitely a major step up as far as I’m concerned.
Pro’s
But what I do see, is that this system does, sound incredible.
And being Sonos, the pro’s are of course that you can place them anywhere that you have a power point.
That means the sub CAN go next to the sofa, and you don’t have to worry about running speaker cable around your room to get a wired system working.
I also liked that in the App there is a toggle switch for Night Mode, which reduces the sub and low end frequencies so you can still enjoy a decent audio experience late at night, without annoying your neighbours or waking your kids up with the Sub.
Oh, and I can’t lie - the Sonos speakers look GREAT. My Wife wasn’t keen on the White, but - we got what we were given, I think they’re nice.
Homey
Before we move on, another benefit of Sonos, as I mentioned, is the whole Smart Home piece.
Homey, is in this really interesting place in the market right now.
You see - most people, and myself included, start out on something like, Apple or Google Home, and then when we outgrow those systems, maybe because we want to do something a little more complicated, or you’re just using products that either platform don’t support, then you jump all the way to using Home Assistant.
I’m running it on my Mac Mini at the moment, as a Virtual Machine. Before that it was running on a NAS. You can run it on a Raspberry Pi, or in Docker.
All of which, sound complicated to the majority of people.
And I’ll be honest, I’ve given up on a few things with Home Assistant because at a certain point, it literally requires you to write your own code to make certain devices or automations work.
So Homey has really surprised me, and it basically sits in between these 2 different platforms.
It supports way more products than Apple or Google Home, but requires way less technical skills than Home Assistant.
All of it runs on one Box, and it has everything you need to talk to any device, no matter what technology it’s using. Z-Wave, Zigbee, Matter.
Take my new fancy Unifi Doorbell that has a tiny and really quiet speaker that goes off when someone’s at the door.
With Homey, it’s SO simple to Create a Flow Automation, that says, When Doorbell Pushed, Play a Sound of ALL the Sonos Speakers in the House. Maybe even pause the TV, flash some lights.
No joke, I tried doing this in Home Assistant.
New Automation - Device - Doorbell - Trigger… and there’s no trigger for the doorbell actually being pushed.
Cue the internet forums suggesting to debug the problem, or coding your own sensor to listen to the doorbell and… this is exactly what I mean.
I love home assistant, but sometimes it’s frustratingly overly complicated.
Homey is just simple, yet it’s wide coverage of basically every product I currently own, really makes me consider if this is could actually completely replace my Home Assistant system, with something that’s just - a simple box.
There is no maintenance required. If we have a powercut, I don’t have to worry about whether my Mac boots back up, and then starts the Home Assistant Virtual Machine, and whether the Z-Wave USB Stick has lost it’s mapping to none of my z-wave devices work whilst I’m away on a trip somewhere, and my wife’s home regretting every moment she agreed to let me computerise my home.
As you can probably tell, I’m REALLY into my smart home tech. I just never know if this is actually something that anybody but me cares about - so yeah, let me know in the comments if you do!
Act 2 - AV Receiver
So a few weeks after the Sonos system went in - and, kind of because the audio drop-out issue was happening, I decided that I was definitely going to go ahead and upgrade my existing system. Whilst trying to spend around the same amount of money. So for the System that includes the Era 300’s, that’s around £2,500.
In the end, after a lot of research, I picked up a pair of KEF Q7 Floorstanding Speakers.
A USED SVS 2000 Pro Subwoofer.
A Polk S35E Center Speaker.
And a pair of KEF Q150 Rear Surround Speakers.
Which, all in all, came to around £2,300.
Now, just to note here, that in my situation, I already had a suitably capable Amp, which is a Denon AVRX3300W. Which, if you bought one used today, would bring the total cost of the entire system to around the same, maybe a little over the cost of the Sonos System, depending on discounts, and once you’ve factored in the cost for things like speaker wire, if you were building this out for the first time.
Note here - that I say the words, Building this out. Whereas Sonos is very much just, plug it in and you’re done.
I placed the KEF Floor standing speakers to the side of the TV, the Subwoofer to the opposite side of the Sonos Sub and the Center Speaker I had to pick specifically because it’s one of the only ones that would fit on the mantlepiece underneath my Samsung TV.
And the Q150’s then simply replaced my existing rear speakers, albeit with some much larger wall mounts.
The Notable omission here, is that there are no Atmos speakers.
Which, I really wanted to do, because the Sonos Arc Ultra does have atmos upwards firing speakers that kind of, bounce it off the ceiling. But the additional cost of atmos speakers, especially the KEF atmos speakers, I just couldn’t justify.
Anyway, every professional audio person I spoke to whilst designing this system told me that a GOOD 5.1 system would absolutely blow the Sonos out of the water.
So I wanted to put that to the test. With everything wired up, I jacked up the volume a little, because, like the Sonos, I really wanted that Home theatre like, cinema sound system experience.
And oh my good lord, does this system deliver it.
However, this is the problem - because it’s difficult to explain, and impossible for me to really show you through a blog post.
The Sound Quality of what comes out of these speakers, just sounds much clearer, more defined and less muddy than the Sonos Speakers.
And it has this much wider sound stage, because well, everything is wider. All the speakers are separated. You have the voices coming from the centre speaker with everything else coming from the fronts, the rear’s putting out surround sound, and the sub picks up everything that should be sub frequencies.
Yes, you do lose out on the Atmos sound of things flying over your head. But honestly, movies like Top Gun when all the action is happening, it just makes you feel like - holy sh*t.
Everything from Bluey, to shows to movies, Wicked just came out and that end sequence just punches with the new system in a way that the Sonos just doesn’t come close to.
Issues
But, as with everything - this system, also, has it’s issues.
Wiring
You have to run wires to every speaker. Which, whilst it’s not expensive, can be time consuming or just not practical depending on the rooms layout.
Whereas with the Sonos, it’s just find a nearby power socket and you’re practically done.
The whole app experience is notably bad.
Although I guess you could argue that at least it works.
The Denon Amp has it’s own App which is clunky, and the SVS Sub has it’s own separate app. And whilst you can switch on a Night Mode or just lower the sub’s volume in the SVS App - it’s not as easy as on the Sonos.
And although the Sonos system has the whole Sonos ecosystem, you can still use the smarts from the Denon Amp to do things like Airplay, or Sonos to play Music on the system. It just won’t be tied to other systems around the home.
The thing that was really pushing me towards a Sonos system - is the fact that you still require a HUGE AV Receiver and Amp to drive all of the speakers.
I still can’t understand why in the now two decades of me using Amps and AV Receivers, they haven’t developed smaller and more efficient components.
We can now squeeze incredible computing power into something as slim as a Macbook Air. I don’t need my amp to also have multiple HDMI Inputs, because my TV has multiple inputs. I just need an Amp to do the Amp stuff.
I’ve found over the years, is that with TV’s and games consoles getting better and better. 4K, 8K, 120hz, 240hz, these Amps are either slow to catch up, or just become yet another expensive thing you have to upgrade along with a new TV or gaming device.
There is also too much choice for new buyers, and when I was asking multiple people for their advice. Two audio visual stores, and a professional installer who installs these systems daily, none of them could agree as to whether I should have a matching KEF but slimline dedicated centre speaker, or a more powerful but different brand centre speaker, or just not even use a centre speaker at all and let the two floorstanding speakers create this, fake centre channel.
They all said different things.
Online help is garbage (Audiophiles)
And then there is the online help. And my god, do I love Reddit for countless posts and advice on what to do. Where to place speakers and which speakers to buy.
You also enter in to the realms of Audiofilia? Is that a word? Home Theatre, Home Cinema, Home Audio, attracts a unique kind of person.
The kind of person who told me that I should totally re-arrange my family living room, into rows of seating, like a cinema, because that was the only logical place that I could put my speakers in their ideal positions. And that I was basically an idiot for considering anything otherwise.
Because sure, when we have friends over we want to stare into the backs of each others heads when chatting and staring at a black rectangle that’s not even on.
Look, there is some great advice out there. But at some point there is a certain reality that we don’t all have dedicated space for a Cinema Room in our houses, and that space does need to serve other purposes, particularly with a young family.
Starts you down the path of a very expensive hobby.
And the follow on issue from going down this route, is that it does put you on this dangerously expensive path of yet another hobby.
Starting with, which speakers get the best sound for your budget.
But now that’s in - I’m like, well now I need to think about the source material. Because now I have a decent surround system, you realise that streaming content from Netflix and Apple TV aren’t going to be as good as a proper Blu-Ray version.
But I have a PS5 which can play blu-rays, however it’s not at the same level of quality that a proper blu-ray player can play.
And so you start on this path of what can I upgrade next.
Whilst putting this system together I also picked up some Kef LS50 Meta’s for the desk in my Studio along with a Wiim Amp. It just, difficult to not get drawn in.
Pro’s
But honestly, for me - the Pro’s outweigh the Sonos System. For me.
It sounds WAY better.
Since it’s a wired system, I’ve had ZERO dropouts in sound.
And the huge benefit of this more traditional wired system, is that you can upgrade each component as you go. You don’t HAVE to do it all-in-one.
And over time, maybe I will add the Atmos speakers. If, I can eventually decide on which ones to buy, and where to place them without upsetting the whole of Reddit.
Act 3 - Choice
And so ultimately, it comes down to choice.
Your Choice. Do you want a system that’s Plug and Play, that might suffer from glitches and software issues, but ultimately, is vastly easier to install than a wired system, depending on your room.
A system that has lots of smart home integration features built in, with a slick app that has some great features - when it works. If so, Sonos is great.
Because IF you are going from either nothing, or, like me, an old and very tired home cinema system, to a new Sonos Arc Ultra, Sub and Surrounds, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.
Providing it works.
Or do you want to really get the best audio experience for your money, even though it may be a pain to wire in initially. Perhaps you enjoy doing all of the research and maybe even visiting local audio stores to hear the difference between speakers.
Then a more traditional, wired, home cinema system is the best for you.
In some situations, Sonos wins. In others, it loses. It’s just about finding what is right for you.
So for now, I’m sticking with my KEF System, and the Sonos System will be going into my much smaller gaming room. Which will be massively overkill for the size of the room. And hopefully over time an App Update will fix the issues I’ve been having.
But until then, see you next time.
