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I currently have a 4.1 setup with Sonos Amp. The two front speakers are passive wired speakers connected to the amp.

I want to add a soundbar as the center speaker.

Will I be able to disable the left and right sound in Beam or Arc? I want those to be coming from the bigger passive speakers.

No, not currently. It’s been a request since the original PLAYBAR was released in 2013, so I wouldn’t expect to see it happen anytime soon. 


@New Daddy,

I’m not sure what you mean by having a 4.1 setup with a Sonos Amp, it has 2 channels left/right only aswell as the .1 .LFE channel. I assume you have two speakers on each channel, which are for the front L/R TV channels and a phantom front center channel using its HDMI-ARC input connection (with or without the Sonos optical adapter).

If you were to add the Beam to the setup, via an optical splitter for example, it would just play the same three front channels with no way to switch off any of those channels (and quite possibly not always in perfect sync?)

From your initial post, I get the fact that there is ‘possibly’ no rear TV channel audio in your present setup, so my thoughts would be to perhaps purchase another Amp and bond that to the first Amp and shift two of your passive speakers over to use as rear channel TV audio instead for true surround sound audio and of course to use for full music playback too (which you have currently). That would be a better addition to your setup, me thinks🤔?


@New Daddy,

I’m not sure what you mean by having a 4.1 setup with a Sonos Amp, it has 2 channels left/right only aswell as the .1 .LFE channel. I assume you have two speakers on each channel, which are for the front L/R TV channels and a phantom front center channel using its HDMI-ARC input connection (with or without the Sonos optical adapter).

My 4.1 consists of the Amp, two passive wired speakers in the front, a Sub and two Symfonisk surround speakers in the back connected wirelessly.

Two amps may work, but I was hoping maybe I could use a Sonos soundbar purely as a center speaker. 

It looks like it can’t be done according to Bruce.


Soundbars cannot be used as center speakers. With Sonos there’s also no processing in the Amp to ad a soundbar to the Sonos “room” the Amp is in.


My 4.1 consists of the Amp, two passive wired speakers in the front, a Sub and two Symfonisk surround speakers in the back connected wirelessly.

Two amps may work, but I was hoping maybe I could use a Sonos soundbar purely as a center speaker. 

It looks like it can’t be done according to Bruce

Sorry it wasn’t clear if you had rear surrounds in your setup - I see now that you do - there’s nothing more you can add to that and as mentioned, none of the Sonos soundbars, Amp or speakers can be used just as a center channel. It is though something that users have requested in the past and Sonos Staff have noted that request, albeit a while back now.