Move or roam as surround speakers

Hi @Fran1969, welcome to the community.

Move and Roam are not designed to be used as part of a home theater setup. They were designed to move, either indoors or outside the home - and away from where your home theater set-up is. You can of course group them to play in sync with other products in your system, including your home cinema setup, though they wouldn’t be used as dedicated rear speakers. I understand that the size and portability of Roam and Move would be ideal in a surround setup, and I’ll be happy to forward your feedback on to our product team for consideration 

Thanks a lot for your very helpful reply! If possible, I would appreciate if you could forward my suggestion to the product team for consideration

to me, having a couple of Move speakers able to be used as surround speakers, without any wire and 10 hours of autonomy would be something really great!!

thanks again and best regards

This. I have an outdoor theater and I would love the ability to use some Moves as surrounds. Likewise, using some Roams in my non-critical viewing area when I want to enhance my Arc would be awesome. 

Hi, 

I also vote to make the Roam able to be added as Surround speakers.   It’s perfect such that when you want to take them outside you just pick up amd go.   I want to pair with a single Beam setup.

Same here.  I would love to use the Roams for rear speakers with my Playbar and Sub.  There just isn't room for Play 1s or wall mounted speakers in my space.

Same here. I just today purchased two Roam speakers thinking I could use them as surrounds. The idea was to have something easy I could use for 5.1. That turned out not to be the case. I already own a Move. I don’t need two more portable speakers. Don’t get me wrong I love my Sonos system, but this is a bit ridiculous. Sonos’ inability or unwillingness to let its customers use their Move or Roam as surrounds is very frustrating. Please give us an update that allows us to do so. 

Totally agree with this

Definitely a vote from me as well. I had both indoor and outdoor needs for speakers which is why I decided to get the roams. Disappointing that the roams can be used the same as the Ones. Especially since the speakers definitely can play music together, so it’s proven that the speakers can perform dynamic sound

FYI, when Sonos speakers are grouped together, the audio is significantly buffered to make sure it’s able to play in sync.  This done via your WiFi network and/or Sonosnet, 2.4 Ghz.  When speakers are bonded together in a home theatre setup, 2.4 Ghz is not fast enough for the audio to play immediately and match the audio on the TV, so 5.0 Ghz in a closed setup just involving the bonded speakers is used.  There’s a significant difference.  

This

Like this too.

That's a must-have!

This is a huge missing feature.  Seems an obvious benefit to have multi-use speakers that can augment a surround sound set up but still be used to take everywhere.  It would have been a big miss if the Move and Roam were built in a way that made this sort of connection prohibitive...

i think this is a needed must. unless there’s a technical inability to do so, its commercial…

Talking about commercial, I believe they would clearly increase their sales giving the surround features to the Roams. At similar or close  prices, some would prefer the Ones for the power, other the Roams for the battery power/wireless feature.

But sales and margins have sometimes different trends...

Id definitely buy a pair of roams if it had rear speaker capabilities. my room is too small for 2 play ones. I'm considering the Symfonisk shelf speakers, but even those are pretty big in person. The Roams would be perfect, but unfortunately they can be used in that configuration

This is the only thing preventing me from buying another Roam. I have a small living room (like most people living in apartments) and would be difficult to justify having two Sonos One as rear speakers.

Here’s another vote for using Roams as surrounds - the size and portability would be perfect   Having truly completely wireless surrounds would be awesome. Please, please, please do this. 

Another vote for roams as rear speakers in surround.  I’ll buy two as soon as it’s enabled 

Two Sonos Roams would be perfect as rear speakers in my living room since I don't have any outlets or much space behind my sofa.

just ordered roams as backchannels in 5.1 as i assumed they would work. this is disappointing, no electricity outlets available where they need to be, roams would be ideal. if commercial, pls allow roams or make ones with batteries…..

+1 to this topic. It would really be great to have this feature. Being able to have a portable surround speaker system is another level. Hope the developers can consider it! <3

 

Then why allow them to be set as a stereo pair?   I dont see the benefit of stereo if meant to move around. This also assumes you have two roams and I’d 100% trade that functionality for the ability to add them as surrounds on the fly.

I also think this feature would massively increase the popularity and versatility of the Roams - I can’t believe Sonos have not incorporated this software upgrade yet!?

This also has my vote.

Should be able to use Roam (and Move) as part of a surround system.
Software shouldn’t be an issue - just the desire of Sonos to permit it.

Please push for this.

Out of curiosity, would people still want this feature if setup as surround speakers meant that you had to turn off just about every other feature?  For example, if it meant that you could not use bluetooth mode, no auto trueplay, no voice assistant, etc,  and the speaker would not function unless both speakers were currently on and with 5Ghz range of the Arc/Beam/Amp that’s connected to the TV?  In other words, it would act just like any sonos surround speaker, except this runs off batteries rather than directly wired for power.