Connect to existing amp and speaker.....help!

  • 27 July 2018
  • 3 replies
  • 976 views

I have been using Play 1 and Playbar for years but recently bought a house that has 8ohm Speakercraft speakers ceiling speakers in every room.

.

Being hooked on Sonos I want to be able to have the same control over these speakers. They are all connected to an existing amp

and have volume controllers in each room.

The challenge I have is the wiring coming from the amp is 4-wire so I am not sure how to connect it to Connect.




Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

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3 replies

Userlevel 7
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You didn't include a picture of your existing amp or how the wires were connected to it so a bit of a guess here.

It looks like the second picture down is an impedance matching distribution device. If that is the case you don't need a Connect but a Connect Amp. The white, green, red and black wires are marked at the terminal board so just connect them to the matching Connect Amp terminals.

I can't be sure but it looks like you have 9 or 10 speaker pairs, that might be a bit much for a Connect Amp if you want to play them very loud. In that case a higher power (than 55 Watts) amp might be in order along with a Connect to drive it. For amp size I would look at at least 10 watts per speaker (on a channel) so for 10 speakers a 100 Watt amp, minimum. Going for 20-25 Watts @ 250 Watts total would not cost that much more and would insure you were not unhappy, don't think you'd need anywhere near the 1000 watt maximum or that the impedance matching device would tolerate it. The Speaker Craft CRS ones are rated at 5 to 100 Watts each and show as 8 Ohm units.

A better photo of the device in the second picture, showing any markings, brands and the like would be a big plus to getting you headed the right direction.
Stanley thank you for your reply and the helpful info. There are unfortunately no other markings on the device other than the what is in the picture.
@mmaurath. You wouldn't be able to attach speaker wire directly to a Connect. There should be an amp that has left and right RCA type inputs similar to the outputs you see on the back of the connect. If there is no amp in your setup that has that, then you are missing an amp. You could use a Connect:amp, but as Stanley pointed out, it likely won't have satisfactory power. It would be best to a get a bigger amp and sonos connect:

You could also consider getting multiple connect:amps and/or amp+connects if you want the ability to play different audio in different rooms. In that case, you could probably scrap this board and connect the speakers directly to the amp(s). That's going to take more effort and knowledge though.

BTW, looking at your pics, once you do get an amp(2):

white= L+
green = L-
black= R-
red = R+

Not sure if that was part of your question.