Sonos Amp + 4 ceiling speakers - possible to use as surround speakers and independently from HT?

  • 19 November 2020
  • 6 replies
  • 1590 views
S

Hi. I’m fairly new to Sonos, so hoping to get some advice.

Currently, I have one Sonos AMP driving four architectural ceiling speakers in an open plan living/dining room (2 speakers in the living area, 2 in the dining area)

In the living area, I plan to install a Sonos ARC and SUB.

I’d like to use the 2 ceiling speakers in the living area as rear surrounds when watching TV. But I also want all 4 ceiling speakers to play music independently from the HT system.

What’s the best way of achieving this?

Thanks

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6 replies

Paul A
Userlevel 6
Badge +17

Hi @stehick.

Welcome to the Sonos community and thanks for reaching out to us. I understand that you wanted to listen to music separately on your Sonos Amp with your Sonos home theater speaker. Let me give some assistance on this.

Currently, once a Sonos Amp is added to a home theater speaker as surrounds, whatever the main Sonos home theater speaker is playing, the Sonos Amp would be part of the audio system. However, in your situation where you wanted to play music on the Sonos Amp while it is added as surrounds and at the same time watch TV, the only way for it to work is to have a separate surround audio for your Sonos home theater speaker like for example a Sonos One Sl, The set up where you can listen to music and at the same time watch TV is by going to the TV menu settings and then changing audio out from external speaker or audio system to TV speakers as this is a TV setting option and not within Sonos since if you listen to music while watching TV and the TV menu is not changed, there might be no audio coming out of the TV speakers since it is still set to external audio. What I can do is send this to our engineering team to take a look into regarding the surround sound of Sonos home theater speaker, if there is a way in the Sonos App to add a switch to remove and re-add any Sonos Speakers set up as surrounds to a Sonos home theater speaker so the audio of the TV would not be interrupted. I would suggest subscribing to this thread and to our announcement topic for any feature releases, feature updates, and bug fixes.

If you still have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to reach out or create a topic. We are always here to help.

Thanks,

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S

Hi Paul

Thanks for your reply. I’m not sure I’ve explained my situation very well.

There are two things I’m concerned about:

  1. When using the Sonos AMP as surround speakers for my home theatre system, I only want the 2 ceiling speakers in the living area to be used as surround speakers. I don’t want the 2 speakers in the dining area to be included. Currently, I have all 4 speakers powered by a single Sonos AMP (great for listening to music; but not what I want when using them as surrounds for watching TV). I imagine I need either (a) to buy a second Sonos AMP so that the living and dining areas are powered by separate Sonos AMPs or (b) to buy a speaker switch that would allow me to select living area only (when watching TV) and both areas when listening to music.
  2. If I bond the Sonos AMP to the Sonos ARC, so that the AMP is seen as surround speakers when I’m watching TV, what happens when I’m not watching TV and just want to listen to music. When listening to music, I don’t want the ARC to play. For music, I only want the AMP to power the 4 ceiling speakers (in stereo). However, from what I’ve read elsewhere, I’m worried that once the AMP gets bonded to ARC as surround speakers, I would have to un-bond it each time I want to play music. That sounds like it could be a nuisance.

Appreciate your help.

Thanks

Paul A
Userlevel 6
Badge +17

Hi @stehick.

Thanks for making things clear and for your immediate response.

You’re spot on with 

 (a) to buy a second Sonos AMP so that the living and dining areas are powered by separate Sonos AMPs. You would need a second Sonos Amp to power up the speakers separately.

 

However, 

 

(b) to buy a speaker switch that would allow me to select living area only (when watching TV) and both areas when listening to music. Would not apply to you since you do not want the Sonos Arc to be playing music as well when you wanted to listen to music.

 

In this scenario,

If I bond the Sonos AMP to the Sonos ARC, so that the AMP is seen as surround speakers when I’m watching TV, what happens when I’m not watching TV and just want to listen to music. When listening to music, I don’t want the ARC to play. For music, I only want the AMP to power the 4 ceiling speakers (in stereo). However, from what I’ve read elsewhere, I’m worried that once the AMP gets bonded to ARC as surround speakers, I would have to un-bond it each time I want to play music. That sounds like it could be a nuisance.  Yes, this is actually correct. We currently do not have any feature on the Sonos App that would make you play music only on the Sonos surround speakers without the main speaker playing music as well. This is what i was referring to as a feature request that I will be sending to our engineering team. However, until such frature request has been released, the only way we can achieve this is removing the Amp as surrounds when you wanted to lsiten to music and then adding them back as surrounds when you wanted to watch a full surround sound audio from your TV.

I hope this helps.

If you still have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to reach out or create a topic. We are always here to help.

Thanks,

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D

I’m facing exactly the same issue… is there a plan to enable the surround speakers to be accessible as independent devices on demand? In my case I have some high end ceiling speakers powered by the sonos amp mainly for music but also want to add to the sound bar to make use of them in a 5.1 setup - its very cumbersome to have to remove the speakers and re-adding them takes a couple of mins… 

 

Thanks

O

I’m facing exactly the same issue… is there a plan to enable the surround speakers to be accessible as independent devices on demand? In my case I have some high end ceiling speakers powered by the sonos amp mainly for music but also want to add to the sound bar to make use of them in a 5.1 setup - its very cumbersome to have to remove the speakers and re-adding them takes a couple of mins… 

 

Thanks

Same here. I want to use the single speaker close to my Kitchen for playing music while my TV is off (open kitchen living room design). If I could still simply target individual speakers with Spotify if it is not already in use by the tv the setup would be magnificent. It should not require dark magic to add this feature and it would remove the one negative experience I have had with Sonos. 

106rallye
Userlevel 7
Badge +17

Since surrounds are commanded by the soundbar and the Sonos system revolves around “rooms” not speakers in a surround set up, I do think some black magic will be needed to get you to send a signal to only one speaker in a surround set up………

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