Prevent beam from creating clone rooms

In general don’t Factory Reset without further consult. The Factory Reset has complicated your issue.

“Room” names must be unique. If you have stereo paired the SL’s, unpair them and give them arbitrary Room names, then add them to BEAM as surrounds. At this point you will have only one “Room” -- the surround system.

This is happening to me, so while it’s helpful to know not to factory reset, we’re often not left with choice. I removed my stereo paired Sonos Play:1s, removed my sub from my Arc 5.1 system, and reset a Sonos Five I bought from someone else. When I go to add it, I can select my Living Room with the Arc in it, to begin the bonding process, but it just creates a Living Room 2. I can go and rename it to Living Room again, but then I have two separate instances of Living Room and can’t begin the stereo pairing process.

Any tips?

What is Living Room (1) consist of, speaker wise. What does Living Room 2 consist of, speaker wise?

I mean in the Sonos software, if you go to System> Settings > System (yea, just noticed how confusing that is...fhe first System is the gear icon, the others are words).

I’m interested in the Room name, and what follows it in parentheses.

In fact, it may help to have a full list of all your “rooms” and what is in them, so that those who respond can be uber clear as to what you should be doing/seeing as you go through this process. 

For the sake of discussion here is my current setup. Actions taken thus far were to factory reset the Sonos Five. I’m attempting to consolidate to the Living Room. 

As you can see, when I attempt to transition rooms, there is no valid option. It also throws out other versions of “room 2” implying to my non backend brain that there is some separation going on here.

Thanks, that does help me, being somewhat mentally challenged today :)

I think what is happening is that you’re attempting to add the Sonos Five (an individual speaker) to a room that requires a bonded pair of speakers in order to act as surround speakers. The current “living room” which is the Arc must have a pair of speakers in order to be surrounds.

A “home theater” room can exist in these configurations: 

1. A sound bar (Arc or Beam)
2. A sound bar with a pair of surround speakers (surrounds must be same type, i.e. two Ones, or two Fives, but not a One and a Five)
3. Either of the above, but with a SUB (or two) attached/bonded.

If you’re trying to just “add” a single Sonos Five, it can’t be in the room labeled Living Room, because that room already has an Arc in it. You could set that individual Sonos Five as a separate Room (name of your choice, Living Room two is just as good as anything else, or you can backspace over the current name and type in your own), and then just “group” the Living Room with the other room that you set up the Sonos Five in. Then for music, they’d all play in sync, but for TV input to the Arc, the Five would be slightly behind (roughly 75ms, generally speaking) the Arc. 

Thanks for your reply. I talked to Sonos Support on the phone to verify some assumptions, I think you’re right. I was thinking you could add only one, as my last setup had instances where one of the play one’s would drop out, leaving only the left or right channel.

They confirmed my suspicion, and I need to have both my fives at the ready in separate rooms before trying to add them as surround speakers. The only problem is my other five is in the mail in transit to me, guess I’ll be patient.

LOL. Yup, completely comprehend your desire :) Patience is one of those virtues I’m rather lacking in, too. Hang tough!