Surround sound

I'm not sure what you are trying to accomplish regarding surround. Lets back up and tell us what your trying to do first.

So I have a pioneer receiver. I purchased a sonos connect and two play 1 speakers for surround sound. (I already have the other speakers and sub (not sonos)

The connect allows you to hook up to receiver via 3 options. Optical audio cord (what I tried) coaxial cord or network cord. The surround speakers are not synced.

What do I do?

Your receiver isn’t going to have discrete rear out and Sonos is going to add a delay that would also make it not a good choice for rear surrounds. Sonos is not meant to be used to send wirelessly to speakers for rear surrounds.

And your connect does not have digital input. It has stereo analog input.

You can use a Connect ronsend Sonos music to your pioneer receiver and you can use a Connect to play stereo music from your receiver to Sonos speakers through your house. But for using in a 5.1 system with a legacy receiver it is not meant for.

Wow. Not what I was told when I bought them. Was told all I needed was a connect with my receiver to send sound to the rear surrounds.

The optical cord is a digital out according to receiver and that's how I connected it but I'm assuming that when you say no discrete rear out that's what you mean...so are you saying that without a playbar there is no way to use these wireless speakers for Surround?

The receiver may have optical out but the Sonos is an optical out. The optical port on the Sonos is to send music from the Sonos to a legacy receiver like your pioneer. The optical cord would go from the Sonos optical out to one of your optical inputs on the receiver (like CD input etc). Then you could play Sonos sound via your legacy receiver and speakers.

I believe you have been mislead by an uninformed sales rep. (it wasn't Best Buy again was it).

The analog input of the Sonos can be used to send TV sound to those speakers but it will be left/right front stereo. You would hook the analog input of the Sonos to something like the Tape Out or Monitor out red/white RCA outputs of the receiver. They are not going to be surround sound and they are going to have a 70ms delay vs. the speakers you have currently (created a stadium type sound effect when watching TV).

Sonos does 5.1 using a Playbar/base, a Sonos Sub, and either 2 Play speakers or a Connect:Amp and two speakers. No other way.

The only way for Sonos to create a 5.1 surround system is with a Playbar to handle front/Center/left and then other play speakers to be the rear left/right surrounds. When they are paired with the Playbar they use the low latency 5ghz channel in the speakers to avoid the 70ms delay. But this is only when paired with playbar.

Thanks for your help. Guess I need a playbar. Much appreciated