Can Amp be used as Home Theater 5.1 brain?

Do you mean a CONNECT:AMP, or the as yet unreleased Sonos Amp?

The answer is a definite no on the former, and a modified no on the latter. The CONNECT:AMP does not have the ability to accept a 5.1 signal and interpret it.

The upcoming Sonos Amp, based on the information posted by Ryan S in the Announcements section of this forum, will only allow you to have a 4.1 system, so you'll be lacking the Center speaker, which they say would be a "phantom" combination from Left and Right speakers.

There's no indication that I can recall that you'll be able to output a 5.1 signal to another device, either.

Hi arianf

I assume you are referring to the soon to be released Sonos Amp. The Sonos Amp will support L/R and Sub (all 3rd party components upfront ) but will bond with Sonos One, Play 1, Play 3, Play 5 as surrounds. That's not the same 5.1 that you currently get with the Playbar that creates a pseudo center channel...but close enough that you may not notice. Yes it is AirPlay2 compatible.

Cheers!

Wait. The PLAYBAR doesn't create a pseudo anything, to my knowledge. It is supposed to have a Right, Center and Left all built in to the same enclosure (as does the Beam and PLAYBASE).

Do you mean a CONNECT:AMP, or the as yet unreleased Sonos Amp?


I'm referring to the Sonos Amp, as I mention... I'm curious about using the HDMI Arc port, which only the Sonos Amp has, if I'm not mistaken.

Wait. The PLAYBAR doesn't create a pseudo anything, to my knowledge. It is supposed to have a Right, Center and Left all built in to the same enclosure (as does the Beam and PLAYBASE.

I'm a bit old school in that respect. As much as I enjoy my Sonos (and I really love them, if that's possible) before that I always had dedicated separates up front. That said I have a pair of Gen 2_Play 5's (w/sub) in the same room as my Sonos HT that are dedicated to music. When I employed my separates I could select stereo mode for music and the center channel was not used. To my ear the Playbar/Playbase/Beam do not reproduce the stereo separation for music that I like. But as I said..I'm old school 🆒

Cheers!

arianf, I think my original answer, along with AjTrek1's response should cover that for you :)

AjTrek1, just because they're in the single enclosure doesn't change the fact that there's a set of speakers dedicated to each channel. You just can't change their separation 🙂

Hi arianf

I assume you are referring to the soon to be released Sonos Amp. The Sonos Amp will support L/R and Sub (all 3rd party components upfront ) but will bond with Sonos One, Play 1, Play 3, Play 5 as surrounds. That's not the same 5.1 that you currently get with the Playbar that creates a pseudo center channel...but close enough that you may not notice. Yes it is AirPlay2 compatible.

Cheers!

Hmmm, what's the difference between surround vs what the Playbar creates?

Wait. The PLAYBAR doesn't create a pseudo anything, to my knowledge. It is supposed to have a Right, Center and Left all built in to the same enclosure (as does the Beam and PLAYBASE.

If this is true, and there is no difference... then the Sonos Amp, effectively is able to give your home theater system AirPlay 2 functionality. Which is currently not possible! Because even if you add a Sonos One, to your system 5.1, you'd need to change the configuration of the system to play as a group of speakers (since the Sonos One needs to be the brains). Then when you watch TV, you'd need to regroup the system as 5.1 from playbar, which disables AirPlay 2. Lots of back and forth configuration to have 5.1 and AirPlay 2. I'm hoping the Sonos Amp will be able to solve this

EDIT: Just realized, you didn't mention that the Sonos Amp can bond with the PlayBar... so I guess if it's unable to bond with the PlayBar then it won't have the center channel. So the Sonos Amp is unable to do what I want, shoot.

OK arianf

Not to add confusion let me clarify...

I'm quite a bit older than most. When I first started listening to music there were no remote controls you had to get up, walk across the room and change the input. As a matter of fact cassettes tapes weren't invented (if you know what they are). As for CD's...they were a bunch of Sci-Fi. In fact Microsoft wasn't even in existence..and let's not talk about Apple :?

So for the sake of continuity..my old school thinking aside..the Playbar, Playbase and Beam in today's world offer as much separation L/C/R as can be expected from any soundbar. Sonos IMO does it better than most.

However, as Airgetlam said using the Sonos Amp in the manner he and I have suggested will give you 4.1 and not 5.1. But as I said with a set of good 3rd party front speakers and matching sub attached to the Sonos Amp then bonded to Sonos One's Play 1's. Play 3's or Play 5's as surrounds you'd be hard pressed to find better. Of course you get Airplay2 to boot!

Cheers!

AjTrek1 and I may be of the same age 🙂

Great discussion, everyone.

I understand the problem you're trying to solve here, arianf, to be that you want to get AirPlay 2 and HDMI-ARC support with your Playbar 5.1. The short answer is that the new Amp will not solve what you're looking for it to do.

In order to get the AirPlay 2 and HDMI-ARC input from the Amp, it'll need to be your main home theater device in the setup. Starting with a single Amp, you'll have left and right channels that are outputting audio, and it could be to one or two pairs of speakers (unamplified). You can add to that single Amp a pair of Sonos players that are capable of being home theater surrounds, which includes the Play:1, Play:3, Play:5 gen2, Sonos One, Connect:Amp, and additionally one of the new Sonos Amps when it's released.

And on top of that, you can add a third party subwoofer on the Amp's output or the Sonos Sub.

The only way that you can bond a Sonos Amp into a room with a Playbar, Playbase, or Beam is as a satellite speaker (which means AirPlay 2 compatibility would still be determined by the home theater main speaker). There isn't an option to add any Sonos device with a Sonos Amp as a center channel.

For your existing setup, you could use an Amp instead of your Playbar, which could give you the HDMI-ARC and the AirPlay 2 compatibility. Though there would only be 4.1 total unique channels (assuming you've added in the surrounds and Sub) there is a simulated center channel which may work out for you, depending on what you're watching, there may not even be center audio in the stream.

You could also group that 4.1 setup with another Sonos device, like your Playbar. However, if you're grouping them together, you'll get your 5.1 audio out of the Amp and it's bonded players, but the audio stream that's sent to the Playbar will be treated as if it were in a different room and could be out of sync and will also be not counted on when the audio image is being constructed.