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Rob_112
Contributor I
June 3, 2019
Question

Sonos Connect amp with external passive subwoofer and satellite speakers

  • June 3, 2019
  • 12 replies
  • 3152 views
I am looking to have speakers out by the pool and I have the Sonos Connect amp, a TIC GS50 passive sub and two Polk SAT30 speakers outside by the pool and looking to connect them to Sonos. But with the sub being a 125W RMS/250 peak with 8 ohm standard and 4 ohm with satellites, and the satellites being 8 ohm compatible 100 watt..... I am seeing that I need to get an external amp to power mainly the sub. Any help on how much of an amp I need ? I have found some external amps that can provide that are fairly inexpensive (under $100) and will automatically turn on and off....but just not sure how much of an amp I need.....?? I am assuming I only need the additional amp for the sub as the satellites would go directly to the Sonos Connect Amp. If the RMS for the sub is 125 W, and the Sonos Connect is 55 per channel, would I then only need 60 watts from the external amp ?

Not sure if it makes a difference for anything but the wires coming from the sun are L +- and R+- (so four wires).



Any help is appreciated !
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    12 replies

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    Kumar
    June 4, 2019
    My preference would be to drive the subwoofer with an external amplifier from the Subwoofer output of the CONNECT:AMP....

    Overall, you'll have better results with a separate subwoofer amplifier.


    I think there is still a problem with the quoted bits.

    The first the reference to wiring the sub out of the Connect Amp to the external amp - this will not be a full bandwidth signal, correct?

    The Sub literature also recommends not to use a subwoofer amp, but a regular amp to drive the passive Sub and to hang the satellites on to the Sub, to be sure that the crossover in the Sub is correctly activated.
    buzz
    buzz
    Grand Maestro
    June 4, 2019
    There is a switch on the subwoofer output jack of CONNECT:AMP. When this connection is used an electronic crossover is activated inside CONNECT:AMP. Bass is routed to the subwoofer output and highs are routed to the CONNECT:AMP's speaker terminals.

    The speaker instructions want to prevent the user from attaching the subwoofer to an amplifier that supplies only the lows, then connecting satellites to the subwoofer. In this case there would be no output from the satellites.

    One could argue that there is a slight overlap between an electronic crossover and the built-in passive speaker crossover, but this is minor with proper choice of the electronic crossover frequency. (set at or below the speaker's passive crossover)

    A big advantage of using a separate subwoofer amplifier is that there is less intermodulation distortion in the amplification. Further, in my opinion, speakers sound better if the drivers are directly coupled to an amplifier -- with no passive crossover between driver and amplifier.
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