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Hi there,

 

My office moved into a building recently that has a huge projector screen and a projector.  We are able to project visuals from any laptop via a cord that connects the laptop to the projector’s HDMI-in port.

The office also has a set of four Sonos One (or One SL, not too sure of the difference) that we have set up wirelessly in each corner of the room.  Our goal would be to get the sound from the laptops/projector to the speakers.  The projector has an audio-out port via auxiliary, and the office also has a Sonos Amp.  So we bought an aux to RCA cable - goes from the projector’s audio-out port to the amp’s RCA audio-in port in hopes the amp would send the sound coming from the projector to the speakers.

Ideally, I thought this would work logistically.  After messing around a bit, I was able to get it to work, but the sound would only go through ¼ of our speakers and there was about a 3-5 second delay from the video on the projector and the sound from the one speaker.

Can anyone assist with setup? Is there even a reason for the amp to be present - is what we are trying to do possible?  Obviously the location of the speakers and the fact that we want them all to play sound at the same time dismisses the idea of hardwiring them specifically. I am pretty seasoned when it comes to IT problem solving, but this has my head scratching (particularly because I am not too familiar with SONOS). Let me know, thanks!

Yes, and no. Since you don’t have a Sonos TV enabled product, there’s a limit to what you can do. 

No matter what you do, without purchasing additional hardware, you’re going to have that delay. There’s always a delay on an analog (RCA) input, such as on your Sonos Amp. However, since you’ve paid that delay already, you should then be able to sync all four speakers ….by just grouping them. Not sure how many “rooms” they are, I’d hope it’s just two stereo pairs, or possibly four mono “rooms” in the software that you need to deal with. 

If you could feed that Amp an ARC signal (rare, but not unheard of from projectors) you could get rid of that delay….but only on the speakers that the Amp is providing power to. As soon as you “group” rooms with the Sonos Amp, you’ll have that same delay from the speakers in the grouped “rooms”. Or you could strip off the audio using a HDMI switch with an optical output, that would feed the Amp’s ARC input using the adapter that Sonos provides...or go the even more expensive route of an HD Fury Arcana or Feintech VAX04101 to create the ARC signal to feed back to the Sonos Amp. All of these choices aren’t overly complex, and shouldn’t need to be messed with once they’re set up, but they could be a pain for an IT person who’s not familiar with the data path. 

Using the Sonos system, there’s really not an ideal way to use the four Sonos Ones (or Sonos One SLs, doesn’t matter) as speakers for your projector. You could conceivably use two of them, bonded with the Sonos Amp, as surround speakers, but that wouldn’t be what you really want in an office environment, unless you’re only watching TV/Movies. My guess is that isn’t what you’re trying to do. 

Ah, missed the possibility of sending an AirPlay 2 signal from an Apple device to all of the speakers, since they’re AirPlay 2 capable, but I am not sure how easy that would be, nor do I have specifics on any delays that might be involved. 

Thank you so much for all of that!  It is a weird set up.  Our new office has an odd setup - its an old church that was restored into an office building by the company before us.  So upstairs - we have this balcony with all this seating over looking a huge room with a projector screen on the opposite facing wall.  

 

I think I attempted the AirPlay, but I cant remember if it was just a horrible delay and/or if you can’t simultaneously display visual from your mac via HDMI and airplay the audio. 

 

Unfortunately - the projector seems quite old and the outputs on it are limited.  In face, I think the only output option on the thing is auxiliary - so the ARC idea wouldn’t work without getting an audio extractor or one of the fancier/expensive routes you mentioned along with the Sonos optical audio adapter.  I think we might look into the extractor/adapter route - I believe its out only hope lol.  Thank you so much for the insight and the direction - really appreciate it!

Yea, Sonos just isn’t really designed for what you’re trying to do, unfortunately. Lots of “well, I could force it this way, but it’s fragile” kind of stuff, but there aren’t any real solutions that I’d heartily endorse. Probably why Sonos markets it as a whole home music system. Lots of positive aspects, when used per the intent, but things can get weird quickly, I fear, when trying to force it into another role. 

Yea that is what i’ve learned quickly over the past week lol.  I’m not familiar with Sonos at all, but as the guy with IT experience in the office I was quickly (and happily) delegated the task of figuring out the setup.  Unfortunately, I think we will have to go another route.  Thank you for replying to my post and for the in-depth explanations, much appreciated! 

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