After getting the second sub added to the Arc with Sonos One SL’s for surrounds, we could not wait to test it out. It turned out, in this room, the difference it made was huge!
The first clip we tried was from the latest Midway film during the bombing of Pearl Harbor. With one subwoofer, there was plenty of bass, but the bass definition and effortlessness of all the special effects just took a big jump up in audio quality. Explosions had far more impact with much better definition.
We then moved to a Netflix series called Inhuman Resources that had been on our list. There is a scene in one of the episodes where there is an upright acoustic bass in the soundtrack. This one was even more impressive as to the difference with one versus two than the explosions in Midway. The difference in the tonal quality of the bass with two was just astounding. You could hear the body of the bass resonating far better with just one sub.
Another example similar to this is the musical score at the end of the comedy series Schitt’s Creek. The soundtrack is big and full and with two subs it just sounded far more like an orchestra was in the room than with one. Bass tones not only had more weight, but sounded airy and open.
Summary
In summary, our experience with adding a second Sonos Sub to a Sonos home theater system is exactly what we have experienced many times in the past. In almost any system, two subwoofers are going to give you a big improvement in sound. It is not just the fact that you have more bass. The whole system just becomes more effortless sounding with a far better definition of the lower tones. Now, we wonder what would happen if Sonos let us add a Sub for the rears 🙂