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Contributor I
May 7, 2021 12:50 PM UTC
Answered

One Sonos Amp per channel

has anyone used two sonos amps to power a pair of speakers, one for the left and one for the right to eliminate speaker wires ?

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Corry P
Corry PAnswer
Sonos Staff
May 10, 2021 11:29 AM UTC

 Bruce, I see no issues other than expense, higher footprint for two amps and two power cords, as I have also pointed out in my preceding post. The OP is looking to do exactly this by the way - if you see his first post. He probably hasn't realised the consequences we have pointed out. Or he may have power outlets behind the speakers, so that speaker cords are not a visible issue.

Sonos will be happy to support this because it means more sales:-). And there is nothing that they need to specially do to support what is basically just a grouped set up of two amps.

Over to @Corry P 

I agree - I see no problems with this, if cost and electricity usage aren’t issues.

The Amps would protect themselves from any overload, and I can’t see that happening with only one speaker connected. 

The two grouped Amps would play in sync.

I also agree that there are better options, but we don’t know exactly what @clweed needs from their setup.

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein

19 replies

Airgetlam
May 8, 2021 4:17 PM UTC

Yea, was trying to stay within the ‘Sonos standard’ world. Anything is possible, if you want to jump through hoops, and potentially spend gobs of money. It’s electronics and software, not rocket science. 

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Bruce
May 8, 2021 9:41 PM UTC

But the answer would be no, since you can’t bond two amps together, one for each stereo channel.

You can not set up a single Sonos device to be a mono right or mono left stream.

 

Well, you kind of can, but it wouldn’t be supported.

It’s possible using SoCo-CLI’s stereo pairing function: sonos amp1 pair amp2

amp1 would be the left channel, amp2 the right. Both speaker outputs of amp1 would play the left channel, and of amp2 the right.

https://github.com/avantrec/soco-cli#grouping-and-stereo-pairing

Why do this? One can't just connect both terminals of the amp to one speaker. ..not without hardware modification.

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pwt
Virtuoso
May 9, 2021 8:13 AM UTC

Why do this? One can't just connect both terminals of the amp to one speaker. ..not without hardware modification.

Just answering the OP’s question, really. I agree that it’s somewhat academic.

Th only practical application of this would be with bi-wirable speakers, with Amp-L to one pair of speaker terminals and Amp-R to the other. This is similar to bi-amping, but whether this would actually meaningfully increase the power available at the speaker I do not know.

There’s also a corner case (e.g., with multiple ceiling speakers), where one might want more than one speaker delivering a single stereo channel.

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Corry P
Corry PAnswer
Sonos Staff
May 10, 2021 11:29 AM UTC

 Bruce, I see no issues other than expense, higher footprint for two amps and two power cords, as I have also pointed out in my preceding post. The OP is looking to do exactly this by the way - if you see his first post. He probably hasn't realised the consequences we have pointed out. Or he may have power outlets behind the speakers, so that speaker cords are not a visible issue.

Sonos will be happy to support this because it means more sales:-). And there is nothing that they need to specially do to support what is basically just a grouped set up of two amps.

Over to @Corry P 

I agree - I see no problems with this, if cost and electricity usage aren’t issues.

The Amps would protect themselves from any overload, and I can’t see that happening with only one speaker connected. 

The two grouped Amps would play in sync.

I also agree that there are better options, but we don’t know exactly what @clweed needs from their setup.

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"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
Lyricist III
Jul 10, 2021 2:10 AM UTC

I previously had a bi amped home theatre with bi wiring driving into some relatively inefficient but sweet sounding speakers. I’ve gone back to a simpler set up (preferring simplicity to hi fidelity) with a Sonos amp for the fronts and another for the rears. But I would love to bi amp the system just to give it a little more power and take a load off the amp - more power is normally good!

Would be awesome if Sonos could have one amp as Left, and one as Right, like they do  with the Sonos Play (and then use one half of each amp to drive bass and the other treble). The cutover is all managed by the speakers so no issue there. Alternatively have mirrored amps,  each processing stereo signals which would need the grouping persistent and volume always in sync.  I don’t see any issues with staying in time as Sonos  do that now with the amps for the rear channels today (which I am using). 

I’ve tried using grouping but its way too easy for it to be ungrouped (causing others in the house to get confuzzled?) and volume control is a bit of headache.

Limited use case I know but would sell a few more amps when power is required and where the speakers support bi wiring

 

@Corry P - hopefully an indication of what people could be after.

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Jul 10, 2021 3:18 AM UTC

@Doddsy0 : there was a case for doing this bridged mono mode with connect amp and its modest power delivery. Not so much with sonos amp that has enough power for even the power hungry speakers. Those that want even more power are probably also going to want things like backlit VU meters, which isn't an addressed Sonos market. Which can also be theoretically addressed by a Sonos port wired to such an amp.

The OP wants to do what he does merely to avoid and hide long speaker cables. 

 

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Lyricist III
Jul 10, 2021 6:08 AM UTC

Yeah not so much a bridged mode as offloading bass to a seperate amp. Class D amps do so much better when they aren’t driven too hard - hence why I’d love to see a way of doing this. Would look to be a control change only - link volume levels and keep  the 2 Amps permantly grouped.

It’s not quite like suggesting backlit VU meters (although that would be cool for about 0.5% of users) 

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Contributor I
Sep 20, 2021 10:21 PM UTC

I am thinking about the same: two Amps for two large speakers with four terminals (bi-wiring), with Amp1 Left wired to high frequency terminals of Speaker1 and Amp1 Right wired to low frequency terminals of same speaker.

But would Amp1 then feed Speaker1 2x125 watts? 

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Sep 21, 2021 2:01 AM UTC

I am thinking about the same: two Amps for two large speakers with four terminals (bi-wiring), with Amp1 Left wired to high frequency terminals of Speaker1 and Amp1 Right wired to low frequency terminals of same speaker.

But would Amp1 then feed Speaker1 2x125 watts? 

In the above scheme, Speaker 1 would get both left and right channels fed to it? 

What are you seeking to accomplish? The Sonos Amp has enough power to drive over 90% of the speakers out there in 90% of domestic environments to a point that they will either burn out or damage your ears if played too loud for too long..

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