Using a port hooked into my av receiver, can I group with a beam in another room to get the audio from beam over my av receiver speakers?

@dzanders24 ,

Yes, but there are some details to wrestle with.

Any SONOS source (Line-In, TV, music service, local music library) can play in any combination of  SONOS Rooms. 

The “details” are some latencies (delays). SONOS “Rooms” can be “Grouped” to play the same source. Analog sources are delayed 75ms. This delay gives the players some time to work through network difficulties without impacting the time alignment between players. 75ms would impact TV lip sync too much. Therefore TV audio played through a soundbar is only delayed 30ms. Since the soundbar uses a direct 5GHz wireless connection to the surround speakers and subwoofer that are in the same room as the TV, there is less chance of network connection mayhem and the 30ms works fine.

This is where you could encounter “echo” (delay) issues. If your TV or DirecTV boxes are directly connected to a traditional TV and a SONOS soundbar, there will be a 30ms latency for the TV audio. Using a “box” that I will not describe here, you can also connect the TV to a traditional audio system. or a home theater receiver, but you’ll be stuck with the 30ms latency for the SONOS soundbar. It’s hard to predict exactly how this will work out with a home theater receiver. If the home theater receiver introduces a delay that is (accidently) exactly 30ms, its output will be time aligned with the SONOS soundbar. In any case SONOS Rooms Grouped with the SONOS soundbar will use the 75ms latency. This means that the Grouped rooms will be skewed in time about 35ms relative to the soundbar when the soundbar is playing TV audio, but the remote Grouped Rooms will be time aligned.

This seems awful, but if it is not possible simultaneously hear multiple Rooms, no one will notice the different latencies. SONOS provides a lip sync adjustment that you could use to add some latency to the soundbar and reduce the skew between the soundbar and the Group. Obviously this will have an impact on the TV’s lip sync. 

I know that your head is probably spinning at this point. I’m sorry about that and the “spin” is about to get worse.

PORT’s analog input latency is 75ms. I don’t know if the DirectTV boxes will maintain their sync if you happen to get them time aligned. I know that some cable boxes will drift out of alignment rather quickly and there can be sound and picture offsets of several seconds after a while.

Here is a scheme that will minimize the “echo” at a system level.

Connect one of the DirectTV boxes to a PORT and connect PORT’s Line-Out to your receiver’s auxiliary input. You may need to disable some sound processing in the receiver in order to reduce its latency. Now you can Group all of your SONOS Rooms and have time aligned DirectTV audio in all locations. At your second TV use Grouped audio rather than audio directly from the TV. At that second TV there might be a slight lip sync issue, but I don’t expect that this will be a major issue during the game. It might be an issue if you attempt to use this scheme for movies.

Now you can walk your space during the game and have synchronized audio.

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Perhaps it’s just an urban legend, but delays could be money making opportunities. Reportedly a bookie introduced a significant audio delay. This allowed the bookie to bet against patrons in his parlor because he knew the results of the play ahead of the patrons.