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Dear Sonos Support,

I am experiencing the following problem with a Play:1: when used alone, or in pair with another Play:1, it works flawlessly. However, when added as a rear speaker to the 5.1 home theater, there is no audible sound coming from it. I replaced it with another Play:1, and the issue persists on the new one as well. The other Play:1 (on the right side of the home theater) works correctly.

It does not matter if the sound comes from the home theater: the problem persists when streaming music as well. The only way to have sound back from it is to unpair it from the home theater.

Weirdly enough, when I add the Play:1 to the home theater, I hear the chime sound from both the rear speakers. But as soon as I start listening to music or to the TV, the sound is gone. If I start Trueplay setup, the system says that one speaker cannot be heard.

I tried with both wired and wireless connection. I restarted the router and reset the speakers. Same result.

My diagnostic confirmation number is 738879246.

Thank you,

Davide

Hi @davehen, welcome to the community.

 

I’ve taken a look at your diagnostic and I can spot a couple of issues that you will need to address.

 

  1. It’s not recommended having the only wired Sonos player be a surround speaker. Your system is already set up to use your WiFi network so you can go ahead and remove that Ethernet cable from your left surround.
  2. The content you had playing through the home theater at the time of submission was in stereo PCM, which means little, if any, audio will be sent to the rear surrounds. Check that the content you’re watching to test this is in Dolby 5.1 to get the best results.

 

Let me know how you get on.

Hello James,

Following your recommendation, I unwired the left speaker and wired the Playbar, and the problem is gone. Thank you very much for your hint!

Speaking of wired devices: do you think they add any more stability to the installation? Or should I just unplug it?

Thank you again.

Glad to hear it’s all up and working again!

 

As for whether to wire players or not, that entirely depends on the strength of your WiFi signal in the areas that the players are located. If you have a generally strong WiFi signal in each location then there’s generally no need to wire a player. Test it out on your own setup for a few days and see if you experience any issues with dropouts or players disappearing, and if you do, consider wiring one of the speakers that is not performing rear surround duties. :slight_smile:

So, if I understood correctly, Sonos signal relies on WiFi pure and simple.

Then, I misunderstood the nature of SonosNet, which I though it was a mesh network created parallely to WiFi and that - once created by wiring 1 device - could benefit any other wireless speaker.

Do you confirm that my understanding was wrong?

Thank you again!

No, your understanding is correct. There are two different ways you can have a Sonos system configured for your network. Check out this article that hopefully clarifies things further: Choose between a wireless and wired Sonos setup :slight_smile:

Enlightening indeed.

Many thanks.

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