I’ve been on the lookout for good computer speakers. I started with an old Philips music center and then moved on to the Sony HT-A7000 soundbar. The Sony was great but way too big for my desk and took up a lot of space. I like a clean desk, but I needed better speakers for my computer.
I checked out a bunch of speakers for computers. I really wanted surround sound, and I kept hearing good things about Sonos speakers. Then Sonos released the Era 300. People were saying it was as good as the HT-A7000 and other top speakers. The sound quality was supposed to be amazing, better than other speakers.
But when I got two of these speakers, I ran into some problems:
Bluetooth Issues: When I connected the Sonos speakers via Bluetooth and played music from YouTube while using another browser, the sound would stop for a second or two. This kept happening. I contacted Sonos support, sent emails, made a video to show them the issue, and even talked on the phone. They finally said they could replicate the problem on both PC and Mac, but they didn’t have a fix. They are trying to find a solution, but how long it will take, nobody can say.
Audio Delay: There was a big delay in the sound when watching videos. The words didn’t match up with people’s mouths. I’ve never seen anything like that before.
Adapter Problems: I bought an adapter to connect with a 3.5 audio cable directly to my Mac. The sound quality was terrible with both Sonos Era 300 speakers.
AirPlay: Using Apple AirPlay to connect to my Mac Mini wasn’t practical. Every time I opened a new browser tab, I had to choose AirPlay again. It’s fine for a phone or AppleTV, but not for a computer.
Weird Calibration: Calibrating the speakers with TrueSound was weird compared to the Sony HT-A7000. I had to use my phone and walk around the room, which felt unnecessary.
The sound quality of the Era 300 was okay, but not much better than my old Philips music center. They’re heavy and pretty big. The wall mounts are solid and made of heavy metal.
Sonos Era 300 might be good for listening to music or watching movies on TV, but they don’t seem great for computer speakers. Sonos support even said their speakers aren’t really meant for computers.
I’m thinking about getting a Sonos Arc and connecting it directly with HDMI to see if that fixes the delay. The Arc can also be mounted on a monitor. But I’m not sure if it will work at all with a computer connected through HDMI. My Sony HT-A7000 works fine with HDMI and doesn’t have any delay with Bluetooth.
Update (12.2023): I found out that if you connect Sonos speakers to a computer via HDMI, nothing happens. They cannot be used in this way and Sonos speakers are not meant to work like this. Instead, you need an expensive HDMI splitter that separates audio and video, for example, an HD Fury 8K VRROOM 40Gbps, which costs 500€
I’m pretty disappointed with these speakers and not sure what to do with them now. I don’t think Sonos will fix these issues anytime soon.