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If one were to take 5 (or more) Play:5 speakers and wire the 5 (or 7, 9, 11 etc) channels of a surround preamp to the line-inputs of individual Play:5 speakers, can they all have their own line-input set to autoplay their own zone and create an all Play:5 surround system? More importantly, would all of the Play:5s have an identical audio delay (70ms?) on their line-inputs when being played simultaneously as different zones?
I think yes, but the obvious question: why not just wire passive speakers in that case? With no delays of any kind?
More importantly, would all of the Play:5s have an identical audio delay (70ms?) on their line-inputs when being played simultaneously as different zones?

I wouldn't bank on that at all. Without deliberate sub-millisecond sync between the units you could easily get timing skew.



Also, the SUB could only be bonded with one PLAY:5. For symmetry one might choose the centre channel, but a receiver would be sending mostly voice there, redirecting bass to its LFE (.1) channel. And where is the LFE channel going? Nowhere.



An expensive and contrived way of arriving at a thoroughly unsatisfactory result.
And where is the LFE channel going?

Wired to a sixth play 5?!
Why stop there? Six PLAY:5s and six SUBs, surely. 😉
Well, I just stopped at making sure that every channel output of the receiver has a Sonos speaker wired to it. But as I said, nothing is lost and much gained by just wiring up appropriate passive speakers and a Sub instead.
Indeed. The OP's suggestion makes no sense.