Sonos - Arc and Amp - Easy Way to Optionally Choose to Play through Both or Just Arc

There are a couple of ways this can be achieved, the easiest is with Sonos Voice Control https://www.sonos.com/en-us/sonos-voice-control

It is possible using Groups with Alexa and maybe with Google Assistant but I’m a bit rusty with regards to the latest changes to GA .

From a Sonos perspective, He would need any Sonos Soundbar and any other Sonos speaker.  There will be a slight delay playing audio from the TV to other Sonos speakers but if they are in different rooms, this will probably not be noticeable.

Not for TV audio though.  You can create Alexa groups, and probably something similar in GA, to play streaming music to a group of Sonos rooms, but not TV audio.  Sonos Voice can do this though .

I’m thinking the delay is going to be a deal breaker, since the kitchen is adjacent.

As long as Ungroup on Autoplay is turned off it works well.

Thank you, UKMedia and melvimbe for your suggestions.

For this to work, we would like it to be very simple to use for his whole family. The idea was that when making dinner, for example, they could also be in the adjacent kitchen listening to the TV sound playing over the ceiling speakers (while some of the family watches and listens to the TV/Sound bar in the Living Room). It would be important that to have all the sound in sync -- after all, that is one of the features that draws us to Sonos in the first place.

I looked up a bit about Sonos Voice (having never used it myself).  Could I ask (wrt your notes above): 

1. Why would playing TV audio through the Sonos sounder and Sonos amp together yield a delay in one or the other? I thought that the technology was such that they would be in Sync.
2. Why would Ungroup on Autoplay being turned off impact things wrt sound being in sync?
3. With Sonos Voice would one just say to the Sonos Sound bar, for example, “Hey Sonos, group the living room and kitchen” or “Hey Sonos, play everywhere”, to listen to the TV audio on the Sonos sound bar and the Sonos Amp/kitchen ceiling speakers? And when done, just turn off the TV (would this automatically cancel the grouping?) or simply say to the Sound bar, “Hey Sonos, Ungroup”?
4. With the Sonos skill on Alexa, can you do the grouping and ungrouping similarly via Alexa? (That way they could cancel the grouping without leaving the kitchen, just by speaking to their Echo.)

Thanks again for your support on this.

In surround sound, the TV audio is a hardwired ARC or optical connection, and the surround/Sub connection is a low latency direct 5 GHz connection from the soundbar to the surrounds/Sub.  This low latency connection is fast, so it can be synced with the video, but it's not robust enough to go through walls, ceilings or floors.

For grouping, 2.4 GHz is used.  It's not low latency, so it must be buffered more, but it is robust enough to travel to other rooms that are grouped together.

I read the requirement as the user wanted to use voice control to group (turn on) TV audio in both the main room and the kitchen.  You can do that with SVC, “Hey Sonos, group Main Room and Kitchen”, but no such command exists for Alexa.

With Alexa you can setup a group containing both Main Room and Kitchen (call it Happy Hour), and then make command like “Alexa, play def leppard on Happy Hour”.  Alexa does not handle TV audio, only streaming, so it can’t a command for that.  Likewise, there is no command to just group to rooms together without changing what’s playing.  And Alexa does not have that concept.

Another way to look at it is that Amazon built Alexa to control echo devices, and does not contain commands that echos can’t handle.  SVC is built for what Sonos speakers can do.

Thanks.

But do you think there will be a delay in one of the devices (sound from sound bar or sound from amp/speakers) when playing TV audio through the group? Whatever solution we look at would have to be able to be in sync. And, can you enable both SVC and Alexa on a Sonos sound bar, or only one of them? 

You get delays of TV sound through multi-Room Groups.

You do not get delays of TV sound from your 5.1 Room’s speakers.

By definition built in to the software, you will get a delay between the Sonos Home Theater ‘room’ and any grouped rooms. This is a function of the way the Sonos software works, any ‘grouped’ room will be subject to at least 75ms. You can moderate this, by delaying the playback slightly in the initial room, but you’re always going to be affecting the lipsync.

Alexa and Sonos Voice control can co-exist, it’s only Google and their voice assistant that has the rule that no other voice control system can be operative at the same time. 

Thank you all for your support. I will have to keep on looking. Sonos, if you are listening, it would be a good idea and much appreciated by loyal users to have all grouped speakers in sync even if listening to TV audio. (And, as an aside, it will be great when somebody implements an automatic in-sync TV voice-picture system using AI or something.)