All in one : Sonos Arc - Amp - B&W speakers - Hdmi Arc - one

  • 2 November 2023
  • 6 replies
  • 101 views
S

Tomorrow my Sonos Amp will reach me so I was wondering what you guys think about the following setup and what I might be able to optimize..

Lg oled TV hdmi Arc ( not e-arc)

Hdmi goes to Arc

Sonos Amp 1.5mm audio cable 2 meters and 5 meters.

2x B&W 704 Nautilus speakers (had to bridge low and high frequencies by wire (black to black, red to red) as the plates are missing) so speakers are expecting regular audio connection.

Fancy Banana plugs with gold in it or something.

Will connect directly to Sonos Amp as front speakers.

On the other side of the room 1x Sonos One and 1x Sonos One SL for surround. 

I need the B&W's for superb classical music (mostly pure piano) and I need all the rest for surround for superb Sonos experience.

What will this setup do in terms of surround?

What do you guys think which setup is best?

Any other tips and tricks?

Very much appreciated!

 

 

 

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6 replies

Jamie A
Userlevel 7
Badge +15

Hi @Soyesnos666, welcome to the Sonos Community!

You mention Arc in your post, though I’m not sure if you mean the Sonos Arc or the HDMI-ARC port. If you do plan on using a Sonos Arc in this setup, you wont be able to use the Amp as front speakers as well, your setup can be either of the following configurations: 

  • Sonos Arc + Sonos Amp (Rear L&R)
  • Sonos Arc + Sonos Ones
  • Sonos Amp (Front L&R) + Sonos Ones

The app wont allow you to configure a Home Theater setup to have multiple front speakers. While you could group the extra speakers, you may experience a delay or dropouts with the speakers grouped with the Home Theater setup.

Personally I would recommend the Sonos Arc as the main connection to the TV, and either the Amp controlling the rear speakers or the Sonos Ones as rear speakers. This was you can have all three front channels with the Arc (The Amp doesn’t have a center channel, so it simulates one), two rear channels, then the other speakers could be places elsewhere in your home for better music coverage.

If you have any questions or I missed anything, let me know, but I hope this information helps!

S

Hi Jamie

Thx for your reply, yes I was talking about the Sonos Arc.

I set it up as a parallel system with the front speakers, it has some benefits as well such as parallel playing (gaming + crisp music) or grouping which is excellent for symphonies with big orchestras when combining everything. The Amp does an excellent job with my b&w speakers for the solo pieces.

It would be really nice if one day Sonos could integrate such front speakers in such a home theater combination but I'm happy nevertheless since my setup supports solo classical, orchestra's and simultaneous playing.

The only issue I still have is that the Sonos app doesn't want to play my 24bit96Khz Flac files which is annoying as I need to play them via Plex for transcoding. Why can't they support these natively? Are the Sonos speakers or the Amp not good enough?

Have a great day

Soyesnos666

 

ratty

The only issue I still have is that the Sonos app doesn't want to play my 24bit96Khz Flac files which is annoying as I need to play them via Plex for transcoding. Why can't they support these natively? Are the Sonos speakers or the Amp not good enough?

Sonos has never supported sampling rates greater than 48kHz.

Leaving aside the old question of whether ‘hi-res’ makes an audible difference, a well-aired argument has been that 24/96 files are 3 times the size of CD Red Book. In a larger system with many players grouped this could well have put a fatal strain on the original SonosNet wireless tech.

I dare say the internals of the players, certainly the latest generation, are more than capable of handling 96kHz and probably 192kHz. Moreover the latest speakers are WiFi-only (or wired) with AX/WiFi-6 cards, so wireless bandwidth is hardly an issue. Whether this will motivate Sonos to respond to market pressures and flip a switch remains to be seen. 

S

Hi Ratty,

Yes the question about the higher sampling rates require a good genes, a trained ear, a trained brain, analogue music, good electronics at the recording as well as at the playing end, if you don't have that you can't hear the difference imo. Of course there is more but this is a baseline of facts in relation to classical music.

It's typically about intonation of the solist. Sonos is excellent for pop rock and electronic music but classical solo music requires other speakers. Hence the reason why I didn't want Sonos fives for that particular use case.

I'm not sure I would hear the difference in this specific setup but live I prefer to hear the subtilities between a short staccato and a slightly longer staccato, or a sharp or blunt staccato, but I cannot test it, I am certain my speakers will be articulated enough to adjust in time, I don't think the Sonos speakers are able to do that honestly (intuition?). But I do like the quality as it is now, still classical music requirements never seem to get much R&D at 'higher end' companies like Sonos or apple. (Maybe it's changing as Apple recently launched a classical part of their music service)

So I hope some product manager or engineer  will read this and will say.. Hey it's not that much work to add that as an optional feature for advanced setups. It makes me inclined to use the Plex amp app instead of the Sonos app.. because even the app is glitching when I try to play such a file. 

So I am wondering what I will do.. will I convert all my files or will I transcode via Plex to AAC.

That's already much less Apple look & feel 😕 

 

 

ratty

Why on earth would you want to transcode FLAC to lossy AAC? That really is potentially throwing away the subtle detail you’re striving for. 

S

Ha no I don't want that! 

I noticed it's the default Plex behaviour for this file. I didn't look into it.... Yet. But respect for your shock 😉

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