Question

Multipule TV's on a amp setup

  • 1 October 2020
  • 4 replies
  • 604 views

All of this is the new so the latest model/version. I have 6 amps and 1 port. I want to plug 2 TV's into 2 of the amps via the optical to hdmi connection. I can only seem to get one of TV'S to work on the amps and just looking at the Sonos app I don't see how I would even pick which TV I wanted to use. Is this possible and if not are there any workarounds? The goal is to be able to play the audio of those 2 TV's across the different  amps. Thanks


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4 replies

Userlevel 7

Hi @Cartracing21 

The Sonos Amps are only designed to accept one TV per Amp much in the same manner as an Arc, Beam, Playbar or Playbase speakers (the latter two are discontinued). Any work around that might work would not be supported by Sonos.

Hi @Cartracing21 

The Sonos Amps are only designed to accept one TV per Amp much in the same manner as an Arc, Beam, Playbar or Playbase speakers (the latter two are discontinued). Any work around that might work would not be supported by Sonos.

Yes I want to hook 2 TV's up. I have 6 amps so 1 tv each into 2 of the amps. Now let's say I want to play TV #1 on amps 1-3 and TV #2 on amps 4-6. Does my whole amp setup of 6 amps only support 1 TV? See the picture below of the app. I don't even see how if I had 2 TV's I could select which one I want to go to which amps/zones.

 

You’re looking at one of the Amp’s ‘room’. It is showing that you have an input hooked up to the TV input. You would need to look at the second Amp’s ‘room’ to see the input for that Amp’s TV.

Your problem, potentially, is when you group other ‘rooms’ with either of these two ‘rooms’, you’re going to get a 75ms delay between the TV input ‘room’ and all grouped ‘rooms’, due to Sonos buffering so it can play simultaneously across the grouped rooms. 

I’ve never seen a setup that feeds a single TV output to two Amps, both as ‘front’ speakers. Not sure how that would work, perhaps a splitter for either the HDMI ARC or optical signal? I’d be worried about signal attenuation in a splitter, if it wasn’t powered, and providing a full strength signal to both outputs. 

This is definitely not what Sonos, as a home theater system, was designed for. I suspect there are other things I’m not thinking of at this moment. 

I’m not sure we are clear on exactly what you’re setup is.  It sounds like you have a setup similar to this:

 

Amp 1 -> TV 1

Amp 2 → TV2

Amp 3

Amp 4

Amp 5

Amp 6

Port 1

 

If you want TV 1 audio to come through on Amp 1 and Amp 3 for example, then you can select Amp 1, select TV input, then group Amp 1 and Amp 3 together. You can group with the other Amps and Ports as well, including Amp 2 (it would play audio from TV1 in that case).  As Bruce noted, there will be a delay in the grouped speakers, but that may not be an issue depending on where the speakers are playing, and you can adjust this a bit if matching audio to video is not that important for your scenario.

I’m not 100% sure on this, but I don’t think you can set it so Amp 1 is NOT playing TV1 (playing nothing or playing music), but some other Amp 3 (or other Amp) is playing TV1.  It’s not a scenario I’ve ever really tested before, since I don’t have any use for that feature.  However, you certainly could have Amp 1 and Amp 3 grouped together, with Amp 1’s volume set to zero.