There are also some EQ controls you can mess about with, but they’re very basic and they only apply to the input as mentioned before. Open it and select the option to output audio to 6 channels (the Beam’s 6 speakers) so it knows to output 5.1 audio when presented with it.
With the drivers for the DAC installed, you’ll see an icon in you icon tray that looks like this: The input does not apply the affects, but note that both do not apply the effects when DD5.1 audio is being decoded and outputted to the speaker. The effects only seem to be applied when the audio is stereo.
The input applies effects configured in the DAC’s driver to the sound before it’s outputted. Note that the DAC splits your beam into 2 playback devices (the ones with the speaker icon, which I’ll call , and the one with the transmitter icon, which I’ll call - I recommend renaming them while editing the sound setting above). (Note: Ignore the “Dolby” Tab, you won’t see that unless you do something that I’ll get into later). Once the DAC’s drivers are installed, make sure to open the windows start menu, search for “change system sounds”, open the application, navigate to the the “Playback” tab, double click on the “USB Multi-Channel Audio Device” playback device that doesn’t have the speaker icon, navigate to the “Supported Formats” tab and select “Dolby Digital”.
Plug the Beam into the HDMI ARC to S/PDIF adaptor, then plug the adapter in the the optical out port of the DAC (not the optical IN) and plug the DAC into a USB port in the PC. The drivers for the DAC comes in a CD (another relic of the past) and is hard to find online, but I managed to find it after some googling. I recommend you buy it if the £400 price tag of the Beam has already drained your wallet, but still left you wanting surround sound. I initially connected my Beam to my Fiio K3 DAC (which only outputs stereo sound), but since I wanted my beam to output Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound (which it’s capable of outputting), I bought this cheap 5.1 surround sound DAC (CMedia CM6206LX). A lot of people seem to suggest that you either to buy a soundcard (yes, one of those ancient redundant artefacts) like the one in this video or buying an expensive DAC like this, but it seems like any DAC with an Optical Out Input will suffice if you want stereo sound (thought some DACs may give you better sound quality and drivers - but not by a whole lot).
Thankfully, the beam comes with an HDMI ARC to S/PDIF (AKA - TOSLINK or Digital audio cable) adaptor, which you can plug into a cheap PC DAC (or your motherboard if it has an optical out port). I’m ganna share what I’ve found out so others don’t end up wasting a huge amount of time trying to configure the speakers.įirst of all, your PC will likely have HDMI ports for outputting videos and audio, but those ports are unlikely to be HDMI ARC ports - which you need to plug the Beam into for it to receive audio (you can get some hardware that adds ARC ports I think, but the ones I found online seem to only output stereo audio).
It’s been 2 months since I bought my Sonos Beam and I’ve spend many hours diving into the audiophile and surround sound rabbit hole, learning about the technicalities of sound and scouring audiophile forums to figure out how to make the speakers work at their optimal on a PC.
They definitely work on PCs, but to use them to their full potential, you need to make some extra configurations and invest a little bit more money and time. As many of you may have realised, sound bars like the sonos beam aren’t really tailored for use on PCs - they’re made to be used on TVs or Media players that have HDMI ARC connectors.