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Easy way to turn 5.1 surround sound into full sound

  • 15 January 2022
  • 6 replies
  • 233 views

My wife and I currently have a 5.1 setup with a Beam, two One SLs, and a Sub. My wife would like to buy a move to replace one of the One SLs. Her goal is to be able to take the Move into another room to listen to TV or music that's going on in the living room. Is there a way to do this? I've read to make the surrounds "Full" but I'm only seeing that as an option for music.

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Best answer by Mr. T 15 January 2022, 23:41

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6 replies

Userlevel 7
Badge +22

I don’t think that would be possible.

Instead why not simply add the Move to the Livingroom Group and listen to it in the other room that way? Just add it to your current system and call it Bedroom, Kitchen or pick any other name.

You could also un-Group it and listen to a different audio stream than what is playing on the Livingroom 5.1 Room if you wanted to.

Userlevel 7
Badge +18

I don’t think that would be possible.

Instead why not simply add the Move to the Livingroom Group and listen to it in the other room that way? Just add it to your current system and call it Bedroom, Kitchen or pick any other name.

You could also un-Group it and listen to a different audio stream than what is playing on the Livingroom 5.1 Room if you wanted to.

To make sure I've got this straight; I can set the Move up as my Bedroom speaker, then pair the Bedroom room to the Living Room room. That will keep the 5.1 active in the Living Room, but have just full sound coming out of the Bedroom?


Yes.
 

There will be a slight delay (approx 70msec) to the Bedroom but if you can’t hear the Living Room speakers that won’t be a problem. 

To make sure I've got this straight; I can set the Move up as my Bedroom speaker, then pair the Bedroom room to the Living Room room. That will keep the 5.1 active in the Living Room, but have just full sound coming out of the Bedroom?

 

Not to nitpick, but in Sonos parlance, "pairing" is when you semi-permanently pair two of the same models to pay in stereo.  What you want to do is "group" the two rooms.  Groups can be done on fly, are dynamic, and will play the same sources in perfect sync in each room (except for the delay on a TV source).

I don’t think that would be possible.

Instead why not simply add the Move to the Livingroom Group and listen to it in the other room that way? Just add it to your current system and call it Bedroom, Kitchen or pick any other name.

You could also un-Group it and listen to a different audio stream than what is playing on the Livingroom 5.1 Room if you wanted to.

To make sure I've got this straight; I can set the Move up as my Bedroom speaker, then pair the Bedroom room to the Living Room room. That will keep the 5.1 active in the Living Room, but have just full sound coming out of the Bedroom?

Userlevel 7

You cannot replace one of the One SLs with a Move for two reasons.

  1. Surrounds must be the same kind, you cannot mix and match different speakers as surrounds
  2. The Move is not capable of being a surround speaker (even if you had 2 of them)

I’ll add that the Roam is also unable to be used as surrounds in case you decided to consider 2 of them instead.

The “Full” option relates to the sound output from the surrounds when playing music. ‘Full” matches the Beam, “Ambient” is where the surrounds take a lesser role, similar to how they perform when watching TV

Simplest option is to buy the Move and group it with the living room as previously suggested.

When rooms are playing music and Grouped, time alignment will be within 2ms or better. If you Group to a sound bar playing TV, there will be a delay between the TV sound and other members of the group. In any case sound travel is rather pokey at about one foot per millisecond. If you can simultaneously hear a distant speaker and a nearby time aligned speaker, the distant speaker will be perceived as ‘late’. An observer near the distant speaker will claim that your nearby speaker is ‘late'. Both of you will be correct.