Skip to main content

I recently purchased two Sonos 5 Speakers and a Sonos Sub 3, which I use to listen to classical music from my own library as well as streaming from Primephonic and Idagio.  My living room is 25’ x 15’, with 9.5’-10’ ceiling. It opens on to a large kitchen/dining room on one end and the entrance hall on the other.  I’ve been using this system to create a realistic stereo sound, placing them on either side of the 15’ wall in mono mode. The music sounds quite good (though maybe not as good as I recall my old 1995 Bose wired home theater system to have sounded). It doesn’t quite do for the spoken word though (which isn’t crisp enough), and so not very suitable for streaming the French poetry CDs I’ve uploaded to iTunes.

I now decided to add a TV to my living room, which I’d place over my fireplace that’s on one of the 25’ walls. I was planning to use a Sonos Arc under it for the sound. I’m told that using the Sonos 5 speakers that I have as rear speakers would be overkill so I’ll probably put them in other rooms that are smaller and closed off and use them in stereo mode 

My impression is that the Arc will not sound as good for my music purposes as my current set-up, even with the Sub 3. So I could add rear wall speakers and I thought of the Sonos one SL as I don’t use voice assistants. So my question is will my proposed set up give me as good a classical music listening experience as my current set up? 

Thanks for any advice.

Hi @Esther1984, thank you for reaching out to us, and welcome to the Sonos community. I appreciate you for letting us know your concern.  I’d be happy to help you all here.

The Sonos Arc requires a minimum of 5.5 inches on the front and sides of it, with at least 2 inches between the backside of the Arc and the TV when in a tabletop orientation. If wall-mounting, it is recommended to have a clearance of at least 5.5 inches between the TV and Arc. Adding Sonos One SL as speakers or surround should on the ear level and be at least 2-3 feet away from the nearest wall.

The audio will affect your Arc placement but you can tune your Sonos speakers with Trueplay. Trueplay measures how sound reflects off walls, furnishings, and other surfaces in a room, then fine-tunes your Sonos speaker to make sure it sounds great no matter where you've placed it. You can also adjust the balance and loudness of your speakers in the Sonos app.

We can wait for suggestions and feedback from our Sonos community members, they might provide their opinion about this. You may also contact our Sales specialist for more information. If you need help with any other information, please be sure to let us know.