With a Sonos sound bar and Sub, you can only add up to two surround speakers in a home theater setup for a 5.1 system. So you can use the two rear speakers but not the two speakers above the TV.

FYI, a Sonos sound bar already includes the left front and right front channels.

Thanks.

Didn’t I read somewhere that we can plug speakers as long as the impedance does not exceed 8 omh ?

You can connect up to four 8 Ohm speakers to a single Amp (up to six if using Sonos Architectural by Sonance speakers), but for a home theater setup with a Sonos sound bar, you can only add two surround speakers using the Amp, not four. And you especially cannot add two front channel speakers with a Sonos sound bar.

If you didn’t have a Sonos sound bar, you could have a 4.1 home theater setup using one Amp to power the two front speakers and one Amp to power the two rear speakers.

Thanks again.

So, I suppose that the soundbar will sound much better that having a second set of speakers beside the tv set ?

The sound bar will sound better because it is usually placed closer to ear level and the sound bar’s drivers are actually facing the listener as opposed to two in-ceiling speakers that are much higher than ear level facing downward above the TV. The sound bar also has a dedicated center channel speaker for dialog. The 4.1 setup will only have a front left and front right channel and a “phantom” center channel.

Technically, you can connect 4 speakers to the amp, when the amp is used for surrounds….however, you still are only getting the two rear surround channels out of the amp.  So if you wanted to connect 2 speakers in the back, 2 in the front, using the single amp for surround, you’re just messing up the surround audio.   You could all 4 speakers in the rear, but the speakers would need to be close together to keep the correct sound effect, and there really isn’t any point in doing that.

Thanks again for that precious help.

So, I would be using my 2 back ceiling speakers and the sound bar in the front.  Can I add a Sub to that ?

Yes, use the Amp/two rear ceiling speakers as surrounds with the sound bar and add the Sub to the sound bar to complete the 5.1 home theater setup.

With Sonos2, is any version of the Sub the same ?

What is your recommendation for the sound bar ?

Sonos has three generations of the Sub, and they all basically function and look the same. The latest Sub (Gen 3) is only compatible with the S2 app but has updated internals and gives you the option to add a second Sub to give you a 5.2 setup.

I need a little more information for a sound bar recommendation. How large is your room? What model TV do you have? What do you primarily watch? Do you use any external media devices?

The room has 20’x24’ with cathedral ceilings and is mainly used for looking to tv and movies.  The Sonos Amp would serve that purpose and also to play music through the Sonos app.

We have a Panasonic 50” tv (TC-P50VT25).  We want to replace it with a bigger and newer one, probably the LG oled 77”.  

As for external devices, we only have the Sonos Amp and a DVD player.  

Because of the large size of your room and the fact you are getting a new and larger TV, I would recommend the Sonos Arc sound bar. The Sonos Beam is too small for that room and larger TV size.

When you purchase a new TV, be sure it is equipped with an HDMI eARC port so you can take full advantage of the Arc’s audio capabilities.

If you want the best audio and video experience from your Sonos setup, get the Arc, a new 4K TV with eARC, and a 4K UHD player so you can experience lossless Dolby TrueHD/Dolby Atmos and multichannel PCM audio. Although the height effects from Dolby Atmos will be limited with your cathedral ceilings.

Thanks again.  It will help me go further with our project.