Skip to main content

I inherited a restaurant with a sonos system in place.  I don’t know what the speaker types are but they are all wired to an amp which is connected to 2 ports, one labeled for half of the restaurant and the other the opposite half. Issue is, they both control random speakers throughout the restaurant, one speaker doesn’t even seem to be connected..  There aren’t many, maybe 20-25 speakers max.  I don’t really need 2 seperate channels.. It’s too small a place to play 2 different sounds at once. 

That’s not all.. What had happened was.. the amp was not the right size for the power and was making some wild noises so a friend offered to swap it out for another that could handle the input. (I don’t know crap about this so bear with me on the terminology. I’m a chef.. I’ll filet you a fish or make you a souffle without batting an eyelash but I am probably going to sound like an idiot going forward). 

The speaker wires are all jammed into the available black and red wire spots in the back.. only one of the sonos ports is now connected and the other just shows up on sonos, but after that was disconnected, 4 of my back speakers stopped putting out sound so I’m assuming they were on the other port? How do I combine them all on one since I don’t have that many so I can avoid having to figure out how to connect both sonos ports to this amp.

I also have the first amp, so if I have to keep them split, can I connect them each to their own amp so thing gets overworked?

MAKE IT MAKE SENSE!

Sounds like your friend needs to connect the speakers to whatever amplifier they set up.

Think of the Sonos Port as being a tape deck. It provides a single line out that supplies your amplifier. How your amplifier is connected to your speakers isn’t something we would have any knowledge about, since they’re downstream from your Sonos. 

I’m not sure that we can “make it make sense”. First, I think your friend needs to accept responsibility for what they’ve done and put it right. Second, you probably need to pay someone to come in and get the installation done properly. Without knowing what make of speakers you have or what the amplifiers are, there’s not much we can do remotely. 
 

Edited to add: Bruce typed quicker than me (again) 😜

I suggest that you hire a pro to straighten this out. Restaurant audio systems are different from home audio. Home audio “experts” are a fish out of water in a restaurant and design inappropriate systems. (That don’t work for long, if ever.) I think that you might have the beginning of a proper restaurant system because you have 20-25 speakers. A home audio amplifier cannot directly deal with this.

Your craft is similar. Tools and techniques used in a home kitchen won’t ’cut it’ (sorry, I couldn’t resist that 😁) in your kitchen.

unfortunately, it’s not in my budget. I guess I can start by asking if the ports can only handle a certain amount of speakers? I’m trying to figure out how these speakers in the back are no longer functioning and the only difference is the port being disconnected.  Can I connect it to the other port with an ethernet cable? I’m pretty sure that’s how it was before, and they were both through the same amp?

 

I’m going to have to go through all of the speakers individually and properly label them.  Right now they say useless stuff like “Left 2, Right 2” but appear to control speakers that do not corrolate that in any way.  I’m great with patterns and figuring things out and would very much like to learn how to do this stuff myself as professionals aren’t professional anymore, it seems. I am waiting on 3 other people for different aspects of my business that are really starting to cause issues and I’m just becoming the jack of all to get things moving.  I’m open to learning anything and everything you are willing to teach and can provide pictures tomorrow if that helps! 

Seems you or someone needs to go through a whole fresh installation, as you say. Disconnect everything, then connect one set of speaker wires at a time. Note which wire relates to which speaker at the other end of the wire. Then decide how you want them set up. You’ll also, I suspect, need to know what speakers you’ve got and what their specs are to know whether they’re 4ohm, 8ohm or what. Then you can start to work out and match speakers, speaker combinations, and amps/ports. 
 

Without professional help available to you I’ll simply wish you “good luck”!

Learn about “70Volt” speakers.. Likely, this is what was used for most of your speakers.

Home amplifiers will not deal with 70Volt speakers.

One thing to keep clear when asking for help is the actual brand and model of the equipment. There isn’t enough here for me to provide much beyond a bit of clarification.

Sonos Ports can’t handle any speakers. If you get the right cable adapter you can get them to power a set of headphones to minimal volume levels. Ports are only intended to get audio into or out of a Sonos system to an external device, be it a turntable (input) or power amplifier (output) for analog only Line-Levels (under 2 Volts) are available.

An almost indispensable (and cheap) tool is a flashlight cell. You may need an assistant for this. At the instant the cell is connected to a speaker, the speaker will “thump”. Using this technique can prove a connection, but will not help to diagnose quality of sound.

It is important that you correctly identify (+) and (-) for each speaker. Each speaker’s (+) terminal should be wired to an amplifier’s (+) terminal. The industry standard is that when the battery’s (+) terminal is connected to the (+) speaker terminal, the woofer (the large cone) will jump out of the speaker frame when it thumps.

We cannot assume that anything about this system was correctly done.

A flashlight cell is good for conventional speakers but if it is a 70 volt system a bit more voltage from the battery might be needed. Maybe a 12 or 18 volt power source?

 

Reply


Terms & ConditionsCookie settings