I’ve been looking for a high quality soundbar for my desk - Sonos, unfortunately, doesn’t make one. Would it be possible to consider adding native USB-C input and volume control to the Era 100? It would make a fantastic desktop computer speaker. There are so many bad speakers in the PC world - it would be great to ingest PC audio into the Sonos ecosystem this way.
Best answer by melvimbe
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I think this is the thread you want to look at.
In short though, you can use a soundbar for your desktop. Era 100 can connect to a PC via the analog audio adapter, but you would not want to use that due to audio delay inherent with the speaker for multiroom audio buffering.
Input delay would not be good for conference calls. Too bad. My search for a good soundbar continues.
Again, Sonos soundbars can play audio without delay.
I was hoping for USB-C connectivity. The soundbars ingest audio via Toslink or HDMI ARC. Ideally USB-C would provide delay-free audio and volume control from applications running on the computer.
I was hoping for USB-C connectivity. The soundbars ingest audio via Toslink or HDMI ARC. Ideally USB-C would provide delay-free audio and volume control from applications running on the computer.
It can’t. First and foremost, Sonos is a multi-room audio system. In order to sync between rooms and floors, a buffer must be built up in order to maintain reliability. The TV devices (Amp, Arc, Beam, Ray) don’t need to extend to other rooms, so the buffer can be smaller, allowing it to be sync’d with the video on the TV. Even given that TV devices and their subs/surrounds are in the same room, it still requires a one-way, direct 5 GHz connection from the main unit to the subs/surrounds to maintain video sync.
“The TV devices (Amp, Arc, Beam, Ray) don’t need to extend to other rooms, so the buffer can be smaller, allowing it to be sync’d with the video on the TV” I don’t understand this. I have a couple of beams and a ray. I can ingest TV audio into any of them and put that audio anywhere I want - without creating an audio sync issue on the source TV. Why would a USB-C source be any different?
Sonos should offer a larger input complement on all of their devices. It would increase the possible use-cases of their products.
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When you use the grouping function to group other speakers with a surround set up, the grouped speakers will have a 75ms delay. This is the same delay
Sonos have chosen to make the TV the hub of all things connected, not the soundbar. They must have thought about this and weighed the cost of adding inputs against losing sales because of this decision. So I do not see them change this anytime soon, but I’ve been surprised by Sonos before.
“When you use the grouping function to group other speakers with a surround set up, the grouped speakers will have a 75ms delay.” This might explain why I do not see this 75ms a/v sync issue. None of my soundbars are connected to surrounds.
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I should have been more precise. Using the words “surround set up” I meant any set up using an Amp or Sonos soundbar for TV-sound.
Even if you only use a soundbar, if you group another speaker while watching TV, the grouped speaker wil lag behind 75ms compared to the soundbar. Some people are more sensitive to this than others. More distance between the speakers will make the effect less suspicious.
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