I don’t know how you had the Connect:Amp set up, but there’s no loss of function.  The Connect:Amp when set up as surrounds is exactly like the Amp, you can’t use it as both surrounds and a separate room to play music. 

@the bouscy,
You perhaps just need to ‘bond’ the Amp to your Playbar for HT audio… see if this support document assists (See the section ‘Use Amp for home theatre’):

https://support.sonos.com/s/article/4717

That is not correct Jgatie. Under S1 running Connect:amp there was an option to use the connect amp as surrounds to the playbar. It would also show up as a standalone music player, switching automatically when the TV was turned on. I used it in this fashion for 8 years before being persuaded to  upgrade.

Under S2 running a new amp, if you allow the playbar to use the amp as surrounds, you lose the ability to use the amp as a standalone music player.

I hope I have explained this adequately.

I did spend 2.5 hours on the phone to an assistant at Sonos this morning and he confirmed that this is the case and apologised. He did say I could achieve the desired result by buying another amp!

I will probably send the new amp back to Sonos and use the old Connect:amp in that room and run 2 systems in the house. Not ideal but it should work.

No, I’m afraid you are incorrect (trust me, I’ve been doing this for more than a decade).  It is not possible to play any surround setup without the source playing on the Playbar/Arc/Beam/etc. at the same time.  You may be thinking of the “Full” setting for music sources, which gives full volume to the surrounds when playing music.  However, that does not decouple the surrounds to make a standalone music player.  

As to the support person’s “apology”, it is my experience that when faced with someone who refuses to believe the truth, they tend to say anything that will get you out of their hair. 

Thanks Ken, but as stated above, to use the amp as surrounds it must be grouped with the playbar which means that when you play music in that room, the primary player is the soundbar, not the amp.

This was not the case with Connect amp using S1.

I must be going mad then! I am sure that under my old setup I could mute the soundbar and have the speakers playing music at volume. Not possible now.

If I can muster the energy I will set up my old system again under S1 to confirm whether or not I am getting too old for this.

Thanks for your input.

@the bouscy,
Whilst I no longer have the devices here to physically test this, just like jgatie mentions, I too have never heard of the case where a ‘bonded’ Connect:Amp in a Sonos Home Theatre setup could be switched and used as a standalone music player - the only way I can see that happening is if the Connect:Amp was ‘grouped’ rather than ‘bonded’ as a ‘surround’ to your Playbar - in which case they would be listed as two separate rooms in the S1 Sonos App.

Either way, the new Sonos Amp performs in the same way as the older Connect:Amp as far as I’ve ever seen and the only difference in a ‘bonded’ (not grouped) HT setup is the Connect Amp needs to be wired in one of two configurations, as clearly detailed in this support document:

https://support.sonos.com/s/article/2237

The new Amp on the other-hand does not need to be cabled and will operate wirelessly.

It really sounds to me like you may have had the two Sonos rooms ‘grouped’ when using the earlier S1 setup. If not, then to be honest I’m baffled here by your comments too. ??

@the bouscy .  Did you have your Connect:Amp wired to your Playbar?  Or did you have both the Playbar and C;A wired to your router?

Did you have your surrounds set to full and +15 for music possibly?

That may give you what you are after 

Hi John,

They were both wired via ethernet cables back to the router.

You’ll perhaps (kindly) have to explain to us here how you did this then, because it’s not something I’ve personally ever seen, where you can have a Sonos ‘bonded’ HT setup and be able to play music just to the Amp speakers only as a separate room from the Playbar, at least not without unbonding the Amp from the Playbar and even if that were the case, you could go onto do the same with the new Sonos Amp.. so I’m still really interested to see how the old Connect:Amp differs from the new Amp.

Ditto what @Ken_Griffiths said.