Adding Sonos 5 in Home Theater

This is a setup I have in my living room. As @Mr. T states, having the pair of Sonos Fives as part of the home theater room is not possible, so I use that pair for music only, and keep the Arc for use when watching TV. 

Same as myself Bruce. The Fives up front for music only are superb.

I was thinking about having 5s for front speakers that are music only too (perhaps later down the track particularly if I decide to get a turntable)
 

So how does it work in practice?  So the arc surround system could be designated as say Living Room while the pair of 5s are in say Living Room 2?  
 

in that case, the 5s would not be about to take advantage of the subwoofer I take it? I guess you could group music in both so called Living Rooms but maybe the sound signature gets distorted?

Gubes - Yes, you’d end up with two rooms.

You could fool with which room the sub is in (TV or music) and decide where you liked it best. I’d guess the TV, you could also buy a second Sub and do both.

If your Fives and seating are arranged for the best stereo imaging then adding in the ARC and surrounds would interfere with that. For a party or when you aren’t in the stereo sweet spot you might like the rooms grouped and the surrounds set to “full” mode.

Hi all,

I own a Sonos one SL and a Sonos Five, actually for music only.

I would like to upgrade my tv audio and I was thinking about Beam or Arc.

Consider that I cannot put speaker in rear position but only in front, I need help!

Solution 1: Arc/Beam + 2x One SL (as surround even if they will be in front)

Solution 2: Arc/Beam + 2x Five (as surround even if they will be in front)

Solution 3: 2x Five connected to tv with 3.5 jack (is it possible to connect first Five with Jack and the second be paired wireless?)

In solution 2 can the Sonos Five changed to stereo playing when I listen to music?

Thanks for your support

Why insist on bonding speaker that are not used for surround (rear) to the proposed soundbar in solutions 1 and 2? This will not sound right, especially when whatching TV? Setting the One SL's or Five's up as a stereo pair in a different Sonos “room” will give you a good stereo effect for music, while the soundbar-room will take care of TV-sound.

If you really want to you could try if grouping both rooms for music is to your liking.

Solution 3 would introduce a 75ms delay on the sound and so severe lipsync problems.

So do you mean to use only soundbar for TV and separately Sonos Five for music purpose?

I know that the surround speaker can be set as “ambient mode” or “full mode”.. thanks again

I have thought about this myself actually, but moreover in the guise of “ I wonder”.

The Sonos 5’s are great, and pretty powerful. I was thinking how a setup would sound if you could (although you can't at the moment) use the 5’s as Front Left + Right, and also Rear Left + Right - leaving the ARC or BEAM as a pure centre speaker. 

I guess this would waste some of the capability which comes with the ARC and Beam, but it would be a great experiment to be able to have that near separate feel using that configuration. 

Anyone else ever thought about that? 

Yes quite often.  I’m ok with the soundbar, sub and one SL rears for tv and movies. But for music I feel it’s sub optimal and it doesn’t need to be. I could get a set of 5s as front 2 speakers but it’s waste that they can’t share the sub I shelled out cash for.

Besides I think with the right software the arc and the 5s as fronts could actually enhance the surround effect as well.

Ok understand. I have space for beam+2 five in front. So in this case beam will work with five’s as surround while connected with TV, but 2xfive will work as stereo if I use with sonos app and music. Am I right?

Anyway I hope using beam +five for TV movies will be good enough.

Thanks

The Sonos system puts your speakers in “rooms”. A room is a speaker or a fixed (surround or stereo) set of speakers. You seem set on putting all the speakers (Beam and Five’s) in the same “room” as if they where a surround set, while the main reason you have the Five’ s is for music. This will give you a very strange sound image: while watching TV sound effects that are meant to come from the rear actually com from the sides and with music (and the system set to “full”) you have double stereo, from the Beam and the Five’s.

I suggest you make two “rooms”: one containing the Five’s for music and one containing only the Beam for TV (you could add two One SL’s for surround rear later).

I guess the other solution would be to use the 5s as surrounds and enjoy the music from them when you set it to full (rather than Ambient) so that they can also leverage off the sub.  Of course the downside is that you lose the line in port if you think about incorporating a turntable and that the stereo sound is coming from behind you rather than in front of you.  I know, 1st world problems.  

In my case the rears would be in a wall sized bookshelf that have power outlets (located just over1 meter or 3 feet from the back of my couch and its an open plan room where the length is around 20 feet (6m) and width is 15ft (4.5m) but extends all the way to the dining room (so total room width would be double that).    So perhaps the extra power of the 5s could suit my living room.  

While this is not 100% ideal for stereo music listening it is much more wife friendly as the rear speakers are neatly enclosed in the bookshelf rather than taking up space on the left and right of the TV/TV console.  

I am probably going over old ground here, but it would seem completely the right route for Sonos to own the HT section and audio if those left and right speakers could be added to a Beam/Ray/ etc ?? I know this was talked about a while back.

Anyone know anymore progress on this research. The audio quality would be awesome. But i dont own a Sub yet so a Beam plus Play1 rears are great, could be amazing with Play 1 or 5 as L/R.

There were always some technical unknowns about how well that would work wirelessly, and how well it would be received to require customers to buy a soundbar and only use the center channel (maybe height channels).  The only information we have is this area is that Sonos is working on Optimo speaker that looks to be a Sonos 5 replacement with atmos.  It’s hard to imagine Sonos would make an atmos speaker that does work for HT.

But related to this, I definitely agree that a pair of 5s (+ sub) beats an Arc + sub + surrounds) for music for stereo music.  However, if a track is recording in atmos, then the atmos version on the Arc is far superior.   You could make an argument that the need for separate fronts becomes less important with atmos audio and modern psychoacoustics.  Then again, I haven’t heard atmos with separate fronts in a home setting.

I think it might be more likely that Sonos will leave the Arc/Beam as they currently stand, but maybe go onto create/release a new type of Home Theatre setup with entirely separate, almost identical, speakers for the three TV front channels and two more for the rear-audio channels.

I think it would be nice to perhaps have the ‘option’ to supply (pass-through) power to the front left/right speakers via the main front center speaker too, or power each speaker separately.

The center speaker would operate in the horizontal orientation, either above, or below, a TV. So that’s three separate front speakers that look something along the lines of the Sonos Arc (but perhaps smaller in size) with both the front/rear - left/right speakers standing vertical (floor-standers) and them having upward firing channels too for Atmos audio and to be able to use them with one (or two) Sonos Subs.

I think the speakers will match aesthetically, but I don’t think they will be identical.    The L/R speakers need to be ‘bigger’ and have the upfiring atmos speakers.  They surely will be able to operate as a separate stereo pair as well. Basically, Fives with atmos. The center speaker needs to fit between TV and console and doesn’t need to be as big.  It also potentially needs to handle the ‘brains’ of the HT setup.   The rear speakers will need to smaller with upfiring speakers, and operate as separate pair.  ones with atmos.

I would be surprised if this happens.  you can just put a power strip behind the TV for all 3 speakers if they are going to be placed that closed together.

I don’t think you’ll be able to use the same speaker in horizontal or vertical orientation in future applications because of the atmos upfiring speaker element.  

I bought two Play:5 Gen 2’s a few years ago to add to my Playbar+Sub+two rear 1’s Living Room setup. I knew at the time that they couldn’t be added as front speakers to Living Room, so added as Living Room 2 for music only.

I’ve never thought the sound was perfect though. I just got an Arc to replace the Playbar in that room. Should I go ahead and move the Play:5’s to the rear for surround sound?

I would just try the Play:5’s and see what you think, you can always put them back, if not. Some folk tend to use Ones/Play:1’s etc; for surround duty, but this may depend on size of room and what type of audio you listen to most often.

I’ve got to say, I have the Arc/sub/2x OneSL and am shocked and how good the sun and rear ones are.   I can’t help but feel that the arc really lacks that mid punch and clarity and is easily the weakest link on the system.   I think that the power and size of 3 sonos fives at the front would quit possibly rival $10,000 systems and only cost about $3500 CAD.  Imagine if you could put the front left and right sideways and use the top speakers for upfiring atmos. I think this would be a shockingly good setup.