Audio: Listen to this article.
My new ATMOS living room system meets the following requirements.
- I do not want to apologize for the sound quality
- Anyone in the house can use it with almost any device
- Visitor access using AirPlay and Bluetooth
- No Remote to lose
- Support local music playback
- Flexible streaming service selection
- Streaming ATMOS playback (currently Apple and Amazon)
- Subwoofer support
- Built-in Room Correction
- Voice Assistant support
- Multi-room playback support
- No additional subscriptions
- Home Assistant integration
- The total system costs around $2500
I dreamed about this system in 2016 when I last worked at Audio Consultants. In 2023, it is here!
The initial system I acquired is as follows:
- Two Sonos ERA 300 Speakers
- One Sonos Sub Mini
- One Pair of SANUS Elite stands for the ERA speakers.
After 48 hours of listening and fussing around, the SANUS stands had to go. They are unstable at the top, and the speakers move around. I returned them!
I replaced them with Monolith 28-inch tall speaker stands from Amazon at $55 each. I got the ones with the wood columns to fit in with the decor. I have Herbies fat dots under the speakers.
This support strategy provides a noticeable improvement in sound quality as the speakers are not moving around while playing!
The Sonos Sub Mini has four rubber strips under the speaker, and the power cord exits the bottom. If you look at the picture below of the power cord, this is a hazard; it will break over time. On the carpet, this could be a real problem. I raised the subwoofer with four Isoacoustic mini-pucks for better isolation and to avoid damaging the power cord.
All this fussing makes me want to try the big Sonos Sub, but the $799 cost is too much for this design. In the end, there is an improvement in bass performance by using the mini-pucks. It's tighter and faster.
The ERA300 is the first speaker I have seen with a USB-C Input dongle! So, For another $20, I have a line input for my existing CD Player. It works just like it should; when you play the CD, the input is alive, and music plays.
AC Power
As many of you who have followed my writing should have observed, I am a huge fan of cleaning up the AC power to the system. I have purchased three Audioquest NRG-X2 (C-7) power cords for the speakers and subwoofer.
Audioquest has provided three of its power distribution systems for evaluation. I am starting with the PQ303.
It will take me some time to evaluate which is the best fit. Besides, I also want to try the PQ303 on the 7.1.4 system!
One of the issues I have with the Sonos Sub mini is the location of the power cord socket on the speaker. It points down. When on the carpet, I worry about catastrophic failures. I have placed the sub on a porcelain tile with the Mini-pucks:
Enumerated costs
2 Sonos ERA 300. $853
1 Sonos Sub Mini. $430
2 Monolith Speaker Stands. $120
(This is my first upgrade)
1 Sonos line in Dongle $20
1 Teac PD-501HR CD Player $????
1 Tributaries 3.5 mm to RCA $???
(This is my second upgrade)
3 Audioquest NRG-X2 (C-7) Power cords $270
1 Audioquest PQ303 power line filter $460. ***TBD***
4 IsoAcoustics pucks under the subwoofer $100
Total $2253
SONOS App Visual Tour
Sonos has both desktop and mobile apps for their systems. I have a fondness for the iPad mini as my control device. Goldilocks strikes again; it's just the right size, and the iPad version feels better to operate than the iPhone one.
Here is a 5-minute tour of the Sonos App on my iPad mini 6.
The Sonos app is one of the best in the business; the Era300 system wakes up almost instantly when you press play in the app. Volume control is smooth. The ecosystem of supported music playback services is very robust. Playlist management is good.
There are multiple areas for improvement in the management of local music files. I have created a separate transcoded library to match Sonos to avoid most issues. The app does like the 54,000 tracks I have, and it complains about playlist space even though there are no playlists in my library.
How does the system sound?
As a reminder, run the full true-play correction setup before you start listening. I use my iPad mini 6 to operate the Sonos app. Yes, this EQ’s the system; it works!
As the photos show, my seating position is near-field when listening. I also found a magic number of 44 in my Living Room on the volume scale with this system. At that point, the speakers and the room come alive. At 52 or so, the place is hopping, and the ears get tired.
I am using Apple Music: “Made for Spatial Audio.” Playlist as an entry point for ATMOS listening.
As of writing this, there are 283 tracks in the playlist across several genres of music and several decades as your taste test of the ATMOS experience! I do not want to play favorites on this massive playlist, but here are quite a few tracks that catch my ear or my heart. You should fire up the playlist and let it RIP. Apple is better than I am at picking tracks.
Do not miss out on VOGUE, Time After Time, Daughter, September, Get Lucky, Harvest Moon, Take On Me, Push, Shallow, Money, Heart Of Gold, Fir What it’s Worth, Stay with Me, Spew Oddity, What a Wonderful Life to name a very few.
The Room
My Living Room is 12ft x 20ft with an 8ft ceiling. The room is carpeted and has soft furniture in it. There are large openings to the dining room on one side and the front hall at the rear. The system is located on one short side. I use a rocking chair to move as needed when sitting down and listening. The seating location is critical since the ERA300 uses a bounce system to construct the height sound field. In my listening sessions, I found the best ATMOS field expression to be between four and six feet away from the front of my speakers. Near Field!
While the primary goal is ATMOS, there is a lot of two-channel music I want to listen to!
I have no direct comparison system, but I have lived in this house with a stereo in my living room in that exact location for a long time, and I feel I can work through the handicap. For comparison, I keep an Apple Music System Evaluation playlist:
One of the most outstanding things I have noticed is vocal clarity. The imaging is rather good, and in ATMOS, very, very good. The system plays the room smoothly with the subwoofer filling in and the True Play tuning run. A few ATMOS tracks rattle the china in the dining room buffet. The speaker stands are on spikes in the floor, and I get some lower frequency transfer. I have avoided that with more complex and ugly stand systems. Classical music exhibits good layer separation, and the players sound like they are sitting in the right places. Small ensemble music is lifelike, and you can have fun with rock and roll. It even does a credible job with House and Drum and Bass tracks. Love BT!
Well-recorded music is a joy to listen to, and the bad stuff needs to be abandoned.
The bottom line is that you cannot get this much value in an ATMOS speaker system in any other way.
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