Hello I’m writing as a long-time Sonos customer who truly appreciates your commitment to smart, high-quality home audio. Your products are intuitive, well-designed, and form the foundation of my entire multi-room system.
However, I’ve run into a serious limitation that I believe deserves your attention — and may be impacting many other loyal customers as well.
Some time ago, I purchased a Sonos Sub (approx. $799) with the intention of enhancing the low-end performance of my analog speaker zones powered by two Sonos Ports. I was surprised and disappointed to learn afterward that the Sub is not compatible with the Port — even though both are network-connected Sonos products.
As a result, my Sub has been sitting unused in my closet ever since. I chose not to return it in hopes that I might eventually upgrade to a Sonos Amp — but truthfully, I already invested heavily in my system and don’t want to replace components that are already doing their job well. The Port is perfect for integrating with high-quality third-party amps and speakers. I simply want to pair the Sonos Sub with it.
The fact that the Port and Sub cannot work together — despite being compatible at the network and hardware level — feels like an unnecessary and frustrating limitation. I’ve seen many other users in the Sonos community voice the same issue. This is clearly something your loyal customers are struggling with.
I respectfully ask that your engineering team explore the possibility of enabling Sonos Sub support on the Port via a firmware or software update. Even offering this as an optional “advanced” or “beta” feature would make a huge difference. This would:
- Allow Sonos Sub owners like me to finally use our investment.
- Improve the flexibility of the Sonos ecosystem for analog and custom home audio setups.
- Potentially boost Sonos Sub sales among Port users who would otherwise pass it by.
I believe strongly that the Sonos team could enable this functionality — and doing so would show that Sonos listens to and values its customer base.
Thank you for your time, and for continuing to build such an exceptional platform. I hope this request is given serious consideration. I, and many others, would be excited to see the Sonos Port and Sub finally work together
Where do you place the cutoff frequency when you don’t know what speakers are connected to whatever the Port is potentially connected to?
The Port is not a power source nor an amplifier
- It is a “gateway” to Sonos speakers when connected to a receiver/amp that have components such as a turntable or CD player connected to it.
- It is a gateway to Sonos speakers when a CD player or Turntable with Preamp is connected directly to it
- The Port can send audio from an amplified source connected to it via RCA input to powered 3rd party speakers via RCA output or Optical out for audio processing
The Sonos Sub
- The Sonos sub is designed to be bonded to a non-portable Sonos speaker that can send low-end frequencies to it via a hidden 5Ghz channel.
- The Sonos Sub is designed to be bonded to a Sonos Amp that has Sonos architectural, or 3rd party speakers wired to it and receives audio via streaming and/or a source such as a turntable.
- The low-end frequencies are routed by the amp to the sub via a hidden 5Ghz channel.
The Port does not process frequencies for separation it sends all frequencies to Sonos or 3rd party powered speakers for processing. This has been the same process dating back to its predecessor the Sonos Connect.
IMHO giving the Port the ability to process information to a Sonos sub or frequencies at all makes it another Amp.
Another issue is pevel matching the Sub output and the R/L channels when they go through another device with a volume control. You'd have to readjust the Sub level every time you adjusted the external volume setting.
Sonos Port is missing the 5Ghz hardware to command a Sub.
There’s no way to know the level of downstream amplification, so there is no way to make the Sub volume balanced with the downstream gear. So being able to use a Sub with a Port is not something we are going to see anytime soon.
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