Is this possible?

  • 1 December 2020
  • 10 replies
  • 180 views
K

Hello community. 

I'm excited to join the Sonos community having recently purchased the Arc, Gen 3 sub, and a more recently 2 x Play 1 SL. 

I have set everything up and it is playing excellent. My setup is the usual home theatre setup with the 1 SLs’acting as rear surround speakers. 

But what I wanted to also do, but can't seem to find a way to do it, and after searching the forum/google still no clear answer. 

Currently, all products are allocated to one room and they appear as arc+sub+rs+rl

What I want do is in addition to using the SLs as surround, I also want to be able to use them, and them only as stereo speakers where they are placed. ie If I want to play music only through them and not the arc or sub, then to be able to do that. I have tried to create separate room, adding/removing different products etc, but to no avail. If I chose another room, and then chose "remove sub", it removes it completely from my system, and it doesn't even appear in the original room where everything was setup in home theatre style. 

Is what I am trying to achieve possible? Hope I haven't sounded to confusing.

Any and all help is very much appreciated.

Regards,

K.

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10 replies

N
Userlevel 7
Badge +18

No, not possible but often requested. You can set the surrounds to Full and to +15 for music playing to give a heavy bias for music to play through them rather than the Arc

K

Hi there.

Many thanks for the reply. 

I did come across this solution as you have suggested, change the settings for the surrounds from “ambient” to “full” and then increase the volume. Just seems a very long winded way of doing something with only half the result, as I do not want the arc to active in this situation. 

I am surprised Sonos hasn't found a way to implement this. From what I have read on the forums, they seem quite receptive to requests and usually find a way to get time into future updates. 

Oh well, back to the drawing board it seems. 

K.

N
Userlevel 7
Badge +18

It’s not really all that long-winded: you only have to do it once. There are separate settings for TV Level and for Music Level.

K

Sorry mate, it didn't come across as I wanted to say. What I was meaning to say is that even after doing the above, I can't achieve the outcome I am after, so seems a long winded way of doing something without achieving the result. I know, its only about a 4 click process, but even a 1 click process seems long if doesn't give you the desired outcome!!! lol

Thanks for your reply anyway buddy. 

Regards,

K.

K

Ok, now that I have established the above is not possible, onto the next issue. 

I have an open plan living, and bought the play1s to use as surround rear speakers, but with the aim of plugging them in when needed, and then switching them off an unplugging them when not needed. When not in use they would be stored in on one of the cupboards, as to leave them plugged in is an eye-sore. 

Now, when I plugged them back in last night, the app could not find them, and I had to go through the setup procedure all over again. Is it possible for me to do what I want? or do I have to leave them plugged in and on all the time? If this is the case then it is massive pain to have to go through the setup process each time!!!

Thank you to all in advance for your input. 

Regards,

K.

N
Userlevel 7
Badge +18

They should be found automatically, but may take a few minutes from powering them up to finding the wifi network and being fully ready. 

Asgorath
Userlevel 4
Badge +6

As said, unfortunately you cannot. I myself also really wish this was an option (in my case mainly to use the Sub with my Amp that is connected to high-end hifi speakers in the same room). The only option right now is to combine the speakers into a group. You can save grouped products, but your Arc and other products will then also be used. So not fully what you are asking, but it’s something.

I did notice I myself don’t mind that the Arc is also being used when I use my Amp to play music and group it with the Arc+Sub+One+Sone setup of my home-theater. What I often to is put the volume on my Amp slightly higher. This means the other speakers and sub are kind of more ‘supportive’.

In the clean ‘setup’ of these two grouped I had a slight delay between the two when playing music through the TV (for example a streaming concert). Barely noticeable with music but very noticeable with spoken voices. This was easily fixed using the delay settings with the products. Matching both to fit perfectly.

Paul A
Userlevel 6
Badge +17

Hi @Kermut.

Welcome to the Sonos community and thanks for reaching out to us. We appreciate all feedback and recommendation as it will help us on how to improve our products and features more in the future.

As @nik9669a mentioned above, this has been requested numerously with our engineering team and I will make sure to share this topic as well with our engineering team as another addition to this feature request.  Just to set your expectation since our engineering team does not respond to any feature requests. We can subscribe to this thread and our announcement thread for any feature release and up-to-date announcements. 

Please let us know if you still have further questions or concerns. Here in the community, everyone is welcome to share and help out.

Thanks,

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K

Hi Paul.

Thank you for replying to my post. 

While my first issue isn't a deal breker, and I am sure over time the engineering team will come up with a solution to this as I can see it as a massive selling point for potential purchasers, and a headache relief for existing customers. It is the second issue that is irking me at the moment. I have had to “remove” the surrounds twice now, and re-add them as the app could not find them/they did not connect to the network etc. Not sure what the issue is, but I've switched them off about 5 times, and when switched on, twice they were not found within the app, ie they did not re-connect to the ‘system’. Not sure what to do at this stage. 

Regards,

K.

N
Userlevel 7
Badge +18

@Kermut it may be worth sending a diagnostic next time it happens. I suspect wifi interference.

 

Try the following: power off all your Sonos devices. Reboot your router and wait until it has fully restarted with the wifi up and running. Then power up the Arc. When it has fully restarted, power up your other speakers one at a time. This will set fresh IP addresses for the speakers and eliminate any potential duplicate addresses. If that works (it may only be temporary! if so do it again and...) consider reserving ip addresses. You might also want to run in SonosNet mode, on a different channel to your wifi.

 

I say this because, from experience, I found that my problems went away after moving to a SonosNet environment with reserved IP addresses for my devices, as was recommended to me on these forums.

 

 

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