Hi. I was thinking about adding a couple of rear speakers to my Beam Soundbar, would a couple of Roam speakers do the job wirelessly. The fact they are battery powered , would make them ideal for temporary placement in my TV room, when watching content that warrants good surround sound, while the rest of the time, they could live in my kitchen and conservatory.?
Best answer by John B
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Hi
No, Roam is designed to be used on the go and is unable to be used with the Sub or in Home Theater configurations.
I appreciate they are designed to be a portable speaker, but kind of, that's my point. Make them portable to take into my TV room when needed. Is it something that can be addressed as a firmware update?
I appreciate they are designed to be a portable speaker, but kind of, that's my point. Make them portable to take into my TV room when needed. Is it something that can be addressed as a firmware update?
It could be, probably, but Sonos believes in ‘horses for courses’. HT setups are meant to be permanent setups and the Roam (and Move for that matter) is the antithesis of that. It is extremely unlikely to happen.
I second the desire to be able to temporarily add a pair of Roams to the Beam in my bedroom. I don’t have any Subs so I don’t care about the extra thumping bass. But being able to add the Roams as rear channels would be nice. It is not like it would be all that difficult to add them/remove them from the configuration when I want to use them elsewhere.
+1 on adding the ability for the Roam to remain portable while having a theater option. It only makes sense to have it as an option than not not have it at all.
+1 on adding the ability for the Roam to remain portable while having a theater option. It only makes sense to have it as an option than not not have it at all.
FYI, it’s not a matter of customer desire so much as how it would technically work. Sonos rear surround speakers communicate with the main device (Arc, Beam, amp) via proprietary 5 ghz network, not through your home router. It does this for better performance, knowing that the rear speaker will stay stationary, in the same room, always powered. These speakers are always bonded to the main device as well. The Roam, like the Move, is designed to connect to your home router, not to main device for home theatre. It is not always stationary, in the same room, or powered, as are Sonos rear speakers. Could they make it work in a reliable way that they could support with reasonable development and testing costs? No one outside of Sonos knows for sure, but it’s not hard to see that the situation isn’t as easy and straight forward as it may look at first glance.
+1 on adding the ability for the Roam to remain portable while having a theater option. It only makes sense to have it as an option than not not have it at all.
FYI, it’s not a matter of customer desire so much as how it would technically work. Sonos rear surround speakers communicate with the main device (Arc, Beam, amp) via proprietary 5 ghz network, not through your home router. It does this for better performance, knowing that the rear speaker will stay stationary, in the same room, always powered. These speakers are always bonded to the main device as well. The Roam, like the Move, is designed to connect to your home router, not to main device for home theatre. It is not always stationary, in the same room, or powered, as are Sonos rear speakers. Could they make it work in a reliable way that they could support with reasonable development and testing costs? No one outside of Sonos knows for sure, but it’s not hard to see that the situation isn’t as easy and straight forward as it may look at first glance.
There may be technical reasons that it can’t be done. And if Sonos says it is technically prohibitive I can accept that.
But Sonos may not have considered this use case as having a large enough following to warrant the effort. I think there will be a lot of +1s for this scenario, where the Roams would be fixed most of the time and used portably only on the odd occasional.
+1 on adding the ability for the Roam to remain portable while having a theater option. It only makes sense to have it as an option than not not have it at all.
FYI, it’s not a matter of customer desire so much as how it would technically work. Sonos rear surround speakers communicate with the main device (Arc, Beam, amp) via proprietary 5 ghz network, not through your home router. It does this for better performance, knowing that the rear speaker will stay stationary, in the same room, always powered. These speakers are always bonded to the main device as well. The Roam, like the Move, is designed to connect to your home router, not to main device for home theatre. It is not always stationary, in the same room, or powered, as are Sonos rear speakers. Could they make it work in a reliable way that they could support with reasonable development and testing costs? No one outside of Sonos knows for sure, but it’s not hard to see that the situation isn’t as easy and straight forward as it may look at first glance.
There may be technical reasons that it can’t be done. And if Sonos says it is technically prohibitive I can accept that.
Sonos have hinted at this a few times with the Move. I would find a link/quote, but not going to put fort the effort for that. Agreed though that is not 100% guaranteed that it is completely impossible.
But Sonos may not have considered this use case as having a large enough following to warrant the effort. I think there will be a lot of +1s for this scenario, where the Roams would be fixed most of the time and used portably only on the odd occasional.
The same question came up many times with Move, and it’s really hard to believe Sonos didn’t consider or thought that such a feature wouldn’t increase sales. Regardless, I wasn’t trying to say that people shouldn’t stop asking. My statement was about the general assumption that whatever features can imagine can be done has to something that Sonos can easily do...which quite often not the case.
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