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Issues with Sonos Beam, Sub, Amp (surrounds) with Amp in basement utility room

  • 25 September 2023
  • 4 replies
  • 95 views
T

We just built our dream house and I pre-wired two in wall speakers in our great room with an amp in the basement utility room.  I successfully set up the Beam and Sub combo in our great room and they work fine over wifi, but when I tried adding the amp as a rear surround the app kept failing with the error message “Surrounds couldn't be added. Choose an unused Sonos Amp in Settings > System to finish setup.”

After multiple attempts i found several discussions saying the amp had to be physically near by the beam for surround (news to me) so i brought it up into the great room to test and sure enough it came right up and the app paired it as a rear surround.  I took it back downstairs and sure enough it fell back off with ?+? for the rear surrounds.  

I found some more discussions that said to wire the beam and amp to ethernet if i needed to have greater distance.  I did have an ethernet available by the beam so plugged it in to test and plugged in the amp and sure enough they popped right up and worked.  Thought I was good to go, but now the wireless sub isn’t working.  It appears that everything has to be wired or everything has to be wireless and in range of each other, but I’m not 100% sure. 

I do not have a wired ethernet port available for the sub to use, so I’m at a bit of a crossroads.

Can Sonos Beam run with a mixture of wired and wireless devices?

 

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Best answer by Airgetlam 25 September 2023, 03:08

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4 replies

Airgetlam

Both the Sub and the surrounds want to ‘bond’ with the soundbar on a ‘hidden’ 5 GHz network, but wil fall back to wired LAN if necessary.
 

Is your Beam running, with its radio/wifi up and functional? How far is the Sub from the Beam? Amy chance of any wifi interference?

Bruce
T

Both the Sub and the surrounds want to ‘bond’ with the soundbar on a ‘hidden’ 5 GHz network, but wil fall back to wired LAN if necessary.
 

Is your Beam running, with its radio/wifi up and functional? How far is the Sub from the Beam? Amy chance of any wifi interference?

i tried with wifi on and it didn’t work with the amp in the utility room so i switched both beam and amp to wired ethernet and they started working right away and that’s when the sub fell off.  I enabled wireless on the beam and the sub showed as online, but wasn’t playing any sound.  Wonder if i needed to just let it sit longer.   Sub is maybe 10’ from the beam in the same room so range shouldn’t be an issue between it and the beam. 

For additional context the amp in the utility room is in the basement far away and there’s a tile floor between floors so it has zero chance of talking directly to the beam 

Airgetlam

The Sub is also looking for that ‘hidden’ network radio signal, turn that back on. 

Bruce
T

Thanks for the quick reply.  I must not have left it running with wifi enabled long enough for the sub to sort itself out.  Beam is hard wired and wifi enabled, amp is hard wired (wifi disabled) and sub is wifi only and all is working now. 

Thanks

 

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