Adding Sonos 5 in Home Theater

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.