When you connect your Sonos speakers to the Sonos app, you can fine-tune them through a feature called Trueplay. It works surprisingly well to create a spatial sound that bounces the sound around the room and mimics a true surround sound system.
Trueplay automatically syncs all your compatible Sonos speakers to one system. It’s smart enough to recognize that a complete surround system requires more fine-tuning than a bunch of disparate parts. It will even automatically make changes if it detects that you’ve mounted the Arc or Arc Ultra soundbar to a wall via Sonos’ soundbar wall mount.
There are two options when you go to setup. Let’s start with the obvious: custom. It asks you to walk around to different areas of the room where your Sonos surround sound system is located. On-screen instructions through the Sonos app will guide you through the process.
Using a series of sounds that are played, recorded and measured at each location, Trueplay creates a three-dimensional map of your space so it knows how to bounce sound around and off surfaces, which in turn creates a more three-dimensional feeling that the listener is surrounded by the sound, rather than having the sound shot straight out of the speakers in their face.
However, with the Sonos Arc Ultra soundbar and Sonos Sub 4 subwoofer, I had better luck with the simplified version of Trueplay, titled Quick. When I retried the setup through the simpler version that don’t do using custom readings, the Sonos system sounded noticeably fuller.
I’m not the only person who has had better results using the simplified Trueplay setting than the more involved setup that scans the room to create a custom setup.
So if you’ve also been scratching your head over your Sonos results, where Quick sounds better than Custom, you’re not going crazy.
