So, in summary:

 - it is possible to go through the (tedious) manual process of de-bonding surrounds and set them up as a stereo pair;

 - it’s been asked for many times over an extended period of time;

 - the actual manual process takes a while;

 - re-bonding them to revert to a home theatre system is also a tedious process, and this too takes some time;

 - an automated process is desirable to some users.
 

To automate this, it will need every combination of soundbars (and Playbase) and every possible surround speakers to be tested. Then test again with each Sub generation. Then test again for 2-Sub systems, and again for soundbars with and without surrounds but with Subs. 
 

At the end, I would guess that less than 1% of Sonos’ user base will use the feature. 
 

To me, that doesn’t sound like a good use of engineering time. 
 

Or, it encourages Sonos to have a 2-tier app. Sonos Lite for basic functionality, and a second all-singing and dancing version for which they charge an annual fee. 

Danny you are getting way far afoot from my original request. I have no desire to move speakers around to different rooms. I just want the ability to save config for Era100+sub with line-in or  a full surround setup with the Beam.  Speakers would remain in place and previous Trueplay eq and delay settings could remain as they were for each config, just recalled when you reconfigure. 

For this speaker feature, for example, giving people to use the same speakers in multiple configurations, perhaps multiple rooms, can actually encourage them to buy fewer speakers, so they don’t need extra speaker for those other configurations and rooms. 

As a new adopter, fact is I would be less likely to have bought this system at all, and even would have returned it had I known easily upfront about this. I would have in no way just thought, “gee I’ll buy more speakers for this, yeah, two era100’s one behind the next will do it, this way I can fully use something they sell as an accessory, a phonograph, with my system” They would have lost an entire customer with an eco-system buy-in vs somehow seeing it as more lucrative to sell two more speakers to an existing customer. I dont think this is a logical reason to limit software functionality. 

You might be correct that it is a niche request for the over all group of ownership, but that’s what a feature request is. A “fit my niche” ask floated to see if more people have the same desire. Seeing as it’s been requested for years perhaps it’s less the niche than it seems on face value. 

@tnprime . You are of course entitled to request a feature, and I can certainly understand why you would like this feature.

I was the person who introduced the idea of an extra pair of speakers for music, as part of what was intended to be a joke. 

Sonos soundbars are designed to be good for music as well as home theatre.  With surround speakers, you have the option of "dual stereo". With a bit of manipulation  you can get most of the sound out of your Eras. That may not float your boat but it is going to keep some of the niche happy, I would have thought. 

I can see that the line-in would remain an issue for you, but I think we are now in the territory of niche within a niche.

FWIW, I think you could probably send the output of your turntable to your Beam via a switch or two, depending on what outputs the turntable has 

But my key thought is that many people buy a Sonos soundbar precisely because it is better at music than most soundbars, and so kills two birds with one stone. Some of your comments seem to imply you don't think it can even play music. 

“Been requested for years” does not mean “been requested often”.  It crops up once in a while, but by no means is it something which has people burning up the request line.  And you may not be asking for the ability to move speakers to another room or assign a Sub to another room, but there have been some who do.  So your request becomes even more niche if you aren’t covering all functions that fall under the “we want to easily reconfigure surround sound” umbrella. 

I also posit that if you are looking for a wireless multi-room home theater system which allows you to easily reconfigure home theater rooms into other uses, you aren’t going to find one.  There are only a few out there, and they don’t even reach Sonos’ level of flexibility.  

I acknowledged that you don’t have the desire to move speakers around.  My point was that set of people who want this feature want the feature so they can move speakers around.  When those that have been around for awhile say that it’s a feature that’s been requested for years, they are including those that want it for speaker movement purposes.  Your specific request is more of a subset of the larger request, in that many people in the group would still not be satisfied if Sonos met your specific request.

It’s been mentioned before, but the biggest issue, in your specific request is the need to use the line in on one of the sound speakers.   Sending audio to different speakers in different scenarios is not a big challenge as the speakers that make up the room already do this in other scenarios.  However, the soundbar is always the master who processes the audio and sends to other speakers, and how the networking is set up.  Changing that is significant.  I suspect, and there are rumors, that the next soundbar Sonos releases will have it’s own bluetooth and line in capabilities, which would obviously have an impact on the desire to use surround sound speakers for line in input.  

I don’t personally use line in often, but if I do want to play a line source in the home theatre setup, I just connect to a speaker in a different room and group with the home theatre.   And yes, I get that many people don’t have a 2nd Sonos room, or want to spend money to buy another speaker...but that also goes against the idea that having more flexiblity in the configurations will always sell more speakers.

There are surely many customers who look at it the way you do, but there are also many who won’t buy new speakers if they can more easily move speakers around.  Or they will just play stereo music out of the soundbar, which is obviously very common.  My point was that you can’t conclude that adding this feature will definitely result in more speaker sales just because it would have worked for you.

Perhaps worth noting that Sonos speakers used to not include bluetooth connections at all, and the only device with line in were the Fives, Port, and Amp (in their earlier forms).  Only recently has Sonos expanded the feature to other speakers, and maybe all speakers going forward. 

I would not have looked for this functionality in a competing system, I simply would have gone with a Soundbar for the TV and separate hifi speakers for the turntable, either powered wireless, or small traditional amp and speakers.

It was the flexibility of adding combining rooms via wireless that was attractive since I have a long skinny four room NYC apartment and that actually pulled me to over to Sonos and to that end spending a bit more than I originally considered. I like that I can walk to the back room and still hear music later limiting it to just the kitchen or living room as needed and I dont have to run wires which are difficult in old buildings and as a renter.  Also I needed something more reliable than bluetooth for the space and something that saved shelf space over having multiple components was also a huge plus. 

As for other home theater setups that can do this, perhaps there’s not but that’s not was got me to buy in. The reputation of Sonos system being so flexible clearly misled me into thinking I could flex it into what I needed and I didnt dig deep enough into spaces like these forums to find out Sonos has ignored these requests for years. The turntable is a special edition “accessory” to their line-in feature which is a selling point of the Era100/300s. I saw plainly that I needed the Era100 to use a line in, I saw plainly that the same speakers could be used as surrounds, so as a result of already considering buying Sonos for audio around the apartment I further invested and bought a sound bar thinking I could make my apartments audio setup in the living room a part time home theater setup for movie nights. Sonos was quite vague that you are limited in how you implement those speakers and that they are single use if you want to use them for home theater. Therein lies the feature request. 

Re; the sound bar. Not that I dont think it can play music, just that I need the line in which when it’s in use as a home theater the line-in is disabled on the Era100. 

yeah I figured the extra speaker thing was a joke :) 

and I get it, it’s a niche. But I am not asking for a special color, new piece of hardware, correction to a current piece of hardware, it’s a software request. Something that even us niche with-in a niche users can be accommodated by with small outlay of resources. Especially because our niche is included in their sales model of selling accessories for a Line-in feature on speakers also earmarked for home theater use, that places my request in a category of “completing functionality.” Either allow changing of setups as originally suggested for my use case, or allow use of the linei-n audio encorder to the home theater setup.

Or I guess I just find a refurbished or used Port because $450 for a line in to the system is kinda ridiculous. 

anyhow thanks for the replies. 

Traditional AV setups that have a left, centre and right speaker handle playing stereo through just the L+R naturally and then have things like Dolby PL Music to turn stereo into surround. Along with lots of inputs, this is the way most people go. 

However if speaker wires are an issue to the rears then the above is clearly limiting. 

What may have served you better for adding a turntable and having surrounds for movies would have been a Sonos Amp. It can take an HDMI input from a TV, and rather than a sound bar, you attach passive front speakers where cabling is easier. It can also take a sub, and a pair of wireless Sonos rear surrounds. In this scenario I believe you can just turn off the surrounds for stereo use and if you sit on the same sofa as you do to watch TV, the speakers are in the right place. 

The soundbar setups do not have this flexibility… but it shows sometimes Sonos can do it. It is a shame the sound bar setups can’t match that, or have additional inputs too. 

Enabling the Line-In on a surround speaker is not possible due to the special connection between the soundbar and the surrounds.  Sonos has found that the only reliable way to connect surrounds/subs with the low latency needed for lip syncing to the video source is a one-way only, ad-hoc, 5 GHz private connection which precludes any audio (Line-In or Bluetooth) going back out from the surrounds.

Time to start a savings envelope for a used Port and leave the whole rig in home theater mode unless some decade in the future Sonos hears the cry for a switch state grouping feature and does something. 

 Does anyone in this community know of a soundbar surround system that allows the surrounds to be used as stereo speakers?  From my point of view a well setup surround system implies the surrounds are behind you.  Unless you are turning your seating 180 degrees around or employing temporary seating you’re not going to take full advantage of what stereo offers.  So some might argue that maybe the objective is to have stereo background music while doing other functions or maybe music during a party.  If that is the case make the setting for the HT room … Surround Audio - Music Playback Audio set to Full.  Yes, I know soundbars are a SQ compromise, but for most use cases music sounds good enough.

 The other scenario some have described is folks wanting to move the surround speakers to a different location and listen in stereo there.  When it comes to a quick way to execute a change from surround duty to stereo duty this does not sound like that.

 Something that does make sense and would be a win, win for both Sonos & some people would be to allow for a left, center, right & surrounds setup.  I know in my case there would be a purchase of two more Era 300 speakers in the very near future. 

Hi @tnprime 

Welcome to the Sonos Community!

I think this is a very fair point - as a result, I have asked for some changes to be made to the online store product pages detailing that Line In and Bluetooth functionality is disabled when speakers are configured as Home Theatre surrounds. I assume they would be added to the disclaimers at the bottom of the page.

As for the feature request itself, we have taken note and have passed it on, but as mentioned, it has been asked for before without result. To change the way the software currently works with a surround speaker effectively becoming subservient to the Home Theatre primary such that it would be able to provide Line-in/Bluetooth to the system at large would not be an insubstantial engineering load. It may seem easy to the non-initiated, but I assure you it would not be. Having said that, it’s not actually impossible and for all I know, our developers may already have this in the pipeline.

I hope this helps.

It’s actually in the FAQ for the product page already.  There is a similar comment on bluetooth.  I suppose you could argue that ‘set up’ is too vague, and the user won’t know that the full extent of what they would need to do to temporarily activate the line in, but I think most would get the general idea. 

Hey thanks for your response @Corry P  
My real original request in the OP was for a more intuitive and automated way to switch states rather than lengthy button pressing and erasing previously stored settings. This would seem far more doable than creating a way for the Era to ingest line-in for use while in the more complicated and intensive HT mode. Simply allowing for pairings, groupings etc to be saved and recalled even if that means for HT mode it requires 60-120 seconds of waiting for re-bonding and so forth. I personally dont want to use the line-in in HT mode, so to that end I am not bothered that it’s unavailable at that point, only that to regain use of line-in I have to toss out all the time it takes to create everything for HT mode, then back to Stereo Pair + Sub and set that back up again. These settings have to be able to be saved and restored if you wanted in a save state / restore state sort of way. 

@MoPac In my case while the surrounds reside behind the couch the way they are positioned, further back than directly behind the people seated, using them as stereo speakers they work just fine as far as placement and presentation. This is a small apartment living room /multi-use room rather than a large room with them on a sideboard behind the couch or a designated home theater room section.  Hard to describe with out photos I guess. 

The Ports  real value is not in the line, since many other devices have this feature already, but in the line out, as it’s the only device for that.  I would not get a Port if all I need is a line out.

As you know already, the Era 100 is the cheapest device with a line in function.  You could get a 3rd one of these and set it up as it’s own separate Sonos room.  You can group it with your home theatre room or just play the line in audio in the home theatre (your 3rd Era 100 stays silent).  The Move 2 might make sense if you want to move the speaker around the home at time, or use it on trips or something.

If you want to just use bluetooth, then Roam is the cheapest option.

If your TV has rca inputs, as I think many still do, then you could route the audio through your TV and play it that way.  It doesn’t sound like that’s really what you’re looking for.

Hi @melvimbe 

Well spotted, but it still doesn’t mention Bluetooth. In addition, anyone viewing that page must expand a section before they see that info - the disclaimers at the bottom of the page need no such action.

It’s for the web team to ponder at this point. 

 Bluetooth is a different section in the faq.  I didn’t screenshot it because...lazy.

Hi @tnprime 

I understand your initial request, though as it would require on-the-fly reconfiguration of said speakers from moment to moment, I don’t see it being implemented. As mentioned, it has been requested quite a few times - I don’t know the exact reasoning behind the lack of change to date, but I can guess that it has been solidly rejected due to technical considerations. As I said before, however, it could already be in the pipeline - I’m just not privy to all that.

@melvimbe 

That’ll teach me to skim-read!  

I would challenge that on the grounds that presumably all those combinations are still tested today, manually (perhaps) to ensure the basic functionality of adding and removing supported surround speakers still works. Automating it potentially makes the testing more reliable, less person intensive and easier to execute. 

If all you are doing is using the exact same routine that is called either from a button press or different code, you don’t necessarily need to test all additional combinations else re-using code within applications would end up with exponential testing requirements as you add more functions that re-use. 

As re-use is an essential part of software development, and exponential testing requirements are not, I think the nett increase in test requirements here would not be that huge.

However Sonos are not interested, see above. 

I do think Sonos need to think a bit more about the dual needs a lot of people have for a surround system though. Needing different combinations/setups of speakers for movies and music is not uncommon and finding a way to do that with perhaps some more inputs on soundbars would be a very useful thing. 

People buy wireless surround systems for convenience (although needing power isn’t always that convenient) and looks as they prefer no cables (power again!) and then find that these systems are not as convenient or easy to add to functionally as the more traditional AV setup. That’s the bit I don’t think Sonos have cracked with their sound bars yet. They have the bits in various places but haven't brought it together. 

@tnprime: A 2nd generation Connect (post circa March 2015) is probably the cheapest way to acquire a line-in.

While I can understand your not realising that the line-in is non-functional on a speaker used in a HT setup, it is a shame that you are still apparently sure that this could be rectified by a “simple” software development.  I and other contributors to this topic have tried to explain that the very nature of a Sonos speaker, and its relationship to the rest of a Sonos system, are fundamentally different when used as a surround speaker rather than as a primary speaker.

One consequence of this is that a line-in cannot be used to feed music data packets into s Sonos system.  It is not, as @Ian_S seems to believe, the result of sheer stupidity and business incompetence on Sonos’ part, or a sadistic desire to frustrate customers.  What other possibilities are there?

It shouldnt be a “shame” I get it, perhaps it didnt seem clear.  I am going to leave this topic. Thanks for the heads up on the connect Gen2 they go for 100 and under on ebay looks like. 

I see this as partially true. In regards to breaking apart an existing HT setup, the process really woudln’t be that different.  The creation of the secondary room, or recreating the HT setup, would be a bit different.  I would assume that commands to do these changes come from the app making the request currently.  The same goes for treuplay tuning, as the app does the calculation and sends the results to soundbar (or directly to speakers).  In this automated world, the app would be minimally involved as most of the heavy lifting woud be done by the soundbar.  It would store the archived settings and trueplay tuning etc.

If that’s the case, then you would not need to test for all surround speakers and sub, but just each unique soundbar, if all three soundbars even support the hypothetical feature.

Or maybe heavy lifting for this transaction is all on the app.  That may be a better approach tech wise, depending on how it’s currently done, but would have it’s limitations.  For one thing, Sonos generally doesn’t store settings on the app.

I would argue that it is uncommon.  Most people who use a soundbar for TV are content to use the soudbar for music as well.  Most people don’t face forward for TV audio and backwards for music audio. There are those that want separate font speakers for music, but that has nothing to do with this feature request.  I don’t care if the feature happens or not, but I don’t think it’s a feature a lot of people  are looking for.

Personally, I have a home theatre setup where a desk is on the right side of the room.  I would lilke a feature to have the surround speakers play nothing but left channel audio, the soundbar playing the right channel, all tuned to the desk location.  That’s not common though that’s just my niche scenario.  

I’m not aware of a wired setup that allows you to play the rear speakers with the front speakers muted.  Maybe that exists, don’t know.  Sonos focuses on getting the setups that people most commonly will use, and where the speakers will perform optimally, more than whatever combination of speakers that a customer may come up with.  Again, I don’t care if Sonos wants to provide additional setup options.  I just have a hard time believing that there is this large untapped market of people who want use their wireless surrounds as the primary stereo speaker.

Wired setups don’t have to as they almost always have a dedicated L+R at the front in the correct place for listening to stereo. 

I think the underlying issue here is people buy a Sonos surround setup and then realise that their surround speakers are better for music than the soundbar, only it’s less than easy to use them for that. 

Personally I think the better option is to allow the addition of front L+R and additional inputs on the soundbar (line-in, more than one HDMI…), however, it may get even more tricky to keep 6 discrete speakers and lip-sync over ARC in the same planet. 

The Amp gets closest to this, but your chances of speaker matching are slim to non-existent (seeing as you can attach almost any speakers you like) and I doubt that all the supported combinations of Sonos Surrounds and soundbars use matched drivers either. Given the levels of pedentry round here, you’d have thought that would be issue no.1 for a balanced surround system, but apparently not. 

clearly we are getting too far from the original request by introducing tangential examples and use cases.