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Question

Number of Amps Required

  • August 6, 2024
  • 1 reply
  • 64 views
C

I’m currently going through the electrical phase of a new construction home, and it is an open floor concept with fairly high ceilings. I am wanting to do two in-wall speakers in the front one on each side of the TV, and two in-ceiling speakers in the back where the kitchen/island will be. The kitchen/island will be facing the living room area. Ideally I want to have all four speakers connected to the TV, but occasionally have just the two in-ceiling speakers play music when family/friends are over and surrounding the kitchen. 

Then I would also like to add a pair of outdoor speakers that I don’t necessarily mind if they are connected to the four indoor speakers. (I’m assuming this is best to have it’s own amp?)

 

Edit:

Should I separate the living room and kitchen/island speakers into two amps or keep them together into one amp? 

 

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1 reply

Jamie A
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  • Jamie A
  • Sonos Staff
  • August 21, 2024

Hi @Cmora01a, welcome to the Sonos Community!

You have a few options for what you could do, ranging from one Amp to three Amps, so I’ll list them out and give enough info for you to decide on what sounds good to you:

 

One Amp:

Going for One Amp, you can connect six Sonance Architectural speakers to it. This means you can have two speakers by the TV, two speakers in your kitchen, then two speakers outdoor. While this will be the cheapest option, I don’t recommend it personally. If you wired in this way then you wont be able play speakers separately, so whatever is playing on the speakers by the TV will also play on the kitchen and outdoor speakers, basically acting as a single room.

 

Two Amps:

If you go for two Amps, then you could either have the TV and kitchen speakers on one Amp and the outdoor on a separate Amp, or have the TV speakers on one Amp with the kitchen and outdoor on the other. The drawbacks being the reverse of each other, where with the first option you wont have surround sound, just stereo, but can control the outdoor speakers separately. The second option instead letting you have surround sound but causing the outdoor speakers to play with the kitchen speakers.

 

Three Amps:

Three Amps would allow the speakers by the TV to work as the front left, middle and right channels, the kitchen speakers to bond with and act as the rear left and right surround channels, and the outdoor speakers to have their own separate Amp. This way you’re able to have a 5.0 surround sound setup with the TV and have the outdoor speakers only playing when you need them (and not have them playing at night when you just want to watch TV). However, this does mean that the TV speakers will also play when you want to play music to the kitchen speakers.

 

My personal recommendation would be to have the outdoor speakers on their own Amp, so either using two or three Amps, but the information above should be enough to help decide on a general setup. I have seen other users mention using a speaker switch box to stop speakers playing when they’re not in use or if you don’t want them to play, but this isn’t officially supported by Sonos so we aren’t able to give recommendations or troubleshoot these devices. 

If you have any more questions, please let me know, and I hope this information helps!

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