The number of drivers (woofers and tweeters, in this instance) will make a big difference to how audio spreads across the room, as well as the system’s ability to virtualise spatial audio formats, such as Dolby Atmos. Sonos describes its Era 100 speaker as its most versatile, while it says the Era 300 is the go-to choice for the ultimate Dolby Atmos experience at home. Sonos does offer a few other speakers, such as the Roam and Move, but these models are designed primarily as portable speakers and can’t be used in surround systems. You have a few options at this point: the Sonos One, Sonos One SL, Sonos Five, Sonos Era 100, and Sonos Era 300. Next, it’s time to pick which speakers will be used as your surrounds. You’ve chosen your starting point, whether that be a Sonos soundbar or the Amp. Sonos Era 300 and Sonos Five speakers (Image credit: What Hi-Fi?) The Amp offers two pairs of speaker terminals, a subwoofer output, a stereo analogue input, and an HDMI ARC socket. The Amp could be a great pick if stereo sound is your primary focus and home cinema / TV sound is secondary, whereas it's the reverse for the soundbars. Moving onto the Sonos Amp, this could be an ideal starting point if you would like to use a combination of your own wired passive speakers with a pair of Sonos speakers as surrounds, giving you greater flexibility and potentially better stereo performance. The Ray can’t be upgraded to support height channels and only an Arc-based system can support seven ear-level channels and four height channels. The other big thing to consider when choosing your starting device is how far you ultimately want to take your system. Which bar you choose to start your system with will be determined by your budget, desire for audio fidelity, and also the size of your space – the Arc is harder to accommodate than the Ray, of course. Measuring in at 114 cm (almost 45 inches) the Arc is a big bar, and will pair best with a TV screen that's 55 inches or more. The Arc is Sonos’ flagship soundbar, packing in eight elliptical mid-woofers and three angled tweeters. This bar measures 65 cm (just under 26 inches) and earned a full five-star rating in our in-depth review. The Beam Gen 2 is a step up from the Ray and features four mid-woofers alongside a central tweeter. We gave the Ray a solid four-star review when we tested it out. The Ray is Sonos’ entry-level bar, offering two mid-woofers and two tweeters, and measures 56 cm (almost 22 inches). Let’s take a look at what separates each bar. We would recommend you start things off with one of Sonos’ soundbars – the Ray, Beam Gen 2, and Arc – or the Sonos Amp.Īs we mentioned, Sonos describes the Arc as a 5.0.2 system, the Beam Gen 2 as a 3.0.2 system, and the Ray and Amp as 3.0 systems, so this is worth considering depending on how many channels of audio you want or desire. When starting your Sonos home cinema system, a few products should be considered first as the foundation of the setup. Sonos Arc, Beam, and Ray soundbars (Image credit: Sonos)
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