Skip to main content
Ontario1
Avid Contributor III
September 28, 2023

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

Looking to help my brother with a Sonos set up. He has a Sony TV in his living room and two ceiling speakers in his adjacent kitchen (wired to basement). He would like to be able to say, for example, to his Alexa device (Echo or Refrigerator) to play the sound from the TV into the Kitchen.  How can this best be done?

I was thinking he may need to get a Sonos Arc for the TV room and a Sonos Amp to power the ceiling speakers. The Arc could always be used for when watching TV and he could optionally enable the Sonos Amp / ceiling speakers in the kitchen when he wants to. 

Is there an easy way for him to be able to enable/disable playing the TV through the kitchen speakers? (It is not really practical to run new / additional cables.) And it would be ideal to be able to say Alexa play the TV through the Kitchen speakers or something like that.

Thanks in advance for your support and ideas.

 

This topic has been closed for further comments. You can use the search bar to find a similar topic, or create a new one by clicking Create Topic at the top of the page.

26 replies

Show previous replies
jgatie
jgatie
September 30, 2023

It’s clearly an issue of Sonos not being motivated enough to rewrite the entire underlying network design of their software. Anything can be done in software!

 

Or to rewrite the laws of physics so radio waves behave the same way through solid walls and floors as they do through air. 

    Ontario1Author
    Avid Contributor III
    September 30, 2023

    From Sonos website blog:

    “Although Sonos is perceived as a maker of audio hardware, at its core lies a million-line codebase, with vast cloud operations, highly-optimised embedded code developed by a team of hundreds of brilliant software engineers, and a track record of innovation spanning 20 years and 500 patented inventions.

    Our team, Sonos Advanced Technology, is focused on future-facing innovation and R&D within Sonos. We are an interdisciplinary group with backgrounds spanning physics, computer science, acoustics, studio production, sonic arts, and machine learning, working together to explore open problems with a 5-year horizon. It's an amusing paradox that, given the team’s background in solving some of the world's hardest problems - from astrophysics to animal auditory processing to AI-driven drug discovery - our unifying goal is to create experiences that are as simple and as effortless to use as possible.”

    They can do this.

    Ken_Griffiths
    Ken_Griffiths
    September 30, 2023

    They can do this.

    Maybe, with a flux capacitor🤔?

    Otherwise Sonos will have to find some way to delay the video display on screen.

      Stanley_4
      Stanley_4
      Grand Maestro
      September 30, 2023

      Dark matter cables routed through a black hole to get the time dilation effects?

        Kvanelshocht
        Lyricist I
        October 21, 2023

        About the latency: if everything which is part of the “grouping “ is hard wired (ethernet), would that be a solution?

         

        in my case: TV connected to Arc. Sonos AMP in the basement with 2 ceiling speakers near TV. Both Arc and Amp will be ethernet wired.

         

        Ken_Griffiths
        Ken_Griffiths
        October 21, 2023

        About the latency: if everything which is part of the “grouping “ is hard wired (ethernet), would that be a solution?

         

        in my case: TV connected to Arc. Sonos AMP in the basement with 2 ceiling speakers near TV. Both Arc and Amp will be ethernet wired.

         

        Are you planning to ‘bond’ (rather than ‘group’) the Amp to the Sonos Arc in order to use the Amps ceiling speakers as rear left/right HT surrounds? - If so, then ‘yes’ cabling them both back to the router/switch is okay if the Arc & Amp perhaps cannot talk to each other over their ‘usual’ 5Ghz ad-hoc wireless connection, perhaps due to the distance/walls between them etc.

        Latency will be down to the wired network in that instance, but in many cases it seems to work fine for a good many users, that’s looking at posts here in the community.

        If you are planning to ‘group’ (rather than ‘bond’) the Amp to the Arc however, then for ‘TV audio’ there is still a ~75ms audio buffer delay to the grouped room. Obviously that delay does not apply to ‘music audio’.

        Hope that assists.

        Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement