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play 5 surround not working

  • 24 November 2022
  • 8 replies
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Hello, I am having trouble with my play 5 speaker when I add it as a surround speaker with my playbar and sub. The play 5 works fine when unpaired and also works when it is added as a stereo pair. But when I add it as a surround speaker the speaker doesn’t output any sound. If I hit the physical volume buttons when paired in surround the volume of the other speakers change but not the speaker in question. The same thing occurs whether I’m using the TV or just the speakers themselves. I have tried factory resetting everything in the 5.1 system and re-adding them and also altering the Surround Audio settings within the Sonos app. Are there any other troubleshooting methods out there that I should try? I’ve been wracking my brain trying to figure this out for the past few days and can’t figure it out. 

One thing to note is that the speaker is a gen 2 play 5 that has a faulty wifi card but it is connected to the system via ethernet. Could this detail just inherently negate the surround sound feature by chance?

I have submitted a diagnostics report as well: 1727428884.

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Best answer by Corry P 24 November 2022, 13:24

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Hi @makeshiftwin 

Welcome to the Sonos Community!

There’s no chance about it - that is exactly why you are not getting any sound from that device.

The good news is that if you get in touch with our technical support team and supply that diagnostic number, we’ll happily replace your faulty Play:5 Gen 2 with a Five - there are no remaining Play:5s in stock. As your remaining Play:5 will not operate in tandem with a Five, we’ll replace that one too. This will not cost you a penny - not even the shipping.

In the meantime, connecting the Playbar to ethernet as well will provide a path for the faulty Play:5 to play surround audio.

I hope this helps.

Thanks for the quick reply Corry. That really is fantastic news. Due to the layout of my home it’d be extremely difficult to run an ethernet cord to my playbar so I’ll definitely follow-up with tech support. Thanks again, happy holidays!

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I have an Ark, two Era100s and mini sub. I just purchased a Play five and it will only play music but when I turn the TV on for sound I get all my speakers to work except the PLAY5. Strange this happened and was wondering what I could do to connect this problem. Do I have to get another five for it to be paired or just alone as it plays music perfectly. Anyone that has an idea to correct this will be great.

 

Thank Don 

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I have an Ark, two Era100s and mini sub. I just purchased a Play five and it will only play music but when I turn the TV on for sound I get all my speakers to work except the PLAY5. Strange this happened and was wondering what I could do to connect this problem. Do I have to get another five for it to be paired or just alone as it plays music perfectly. Anyone that has an idea to correct this will be great.

 

Thank Don 

How is the Play:5 connected to the tv?

If the Arc/Eras/Sub are connected as a 5.1 system you should be able to Group the Play:5 room to this room. 

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I have it set up on wifi no cables going through my Ark. I don't have 5,1 just stereo and when playing a movie it's Dolby digital but not 5.1 I have no idea if my TV is capable of 5.1 Dolby digital it is. Have all others hooked up for surround in the app. When I look at my system it says the five is connected and living room, but the others are listed in another living room. Seems as though when I set it up it went on its own to the living room if that makes sense. I just checked and playing music, the five is working with all the others except my 100s are not in sync a bit of a delay. Confused here to be honest.

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The Sonos system is made up out of “rooms”, that can be a speaker or a fixed set of speakers. Since your surround set up already has al speakers that can be part of a set you cannot ad another speaker to that room, so Sonos puts it in another room.

You can group room as mentioned above: https://support.sonos.com/en-us/article/group-and-ungroup-rooms This will result in the grouped speaker lagging behind 75ms on TV sound in relation to the surround set.

When your Era 100’s are indeed part of the Arc “room” is seems strange they would be the ones that lag behind. Without knowing type and maker of your TV there nothing I can say about the possibilities for 5.1, though if the TV has an ARC or eARC connection 5.1 should be possible. Can you show the sound settings on your TV?

No cables to the Arc, by the way? Not even HDMI? That would be a problem.

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I did find the 5.1 and I have the Ark connected to the HDMI ark on the TV which is a Sony . Just checked the sound on the TV and now connected to 5.1. So I am still working on that five to join the other speakers. Maybe I won't be able to and just listen to it just for music so probably take it back. 

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I have it set up on wifi no cables going through my Ark. I don't have 5,1 just stereo and when playing a movie it's Dolby digital but not 5.1 I have no idea if my TV is capable of 5.1 Dolby digital it is. Have all others hooked up for surround in the app. When I look at my system it says the five is connected and living room, but the others are listed in another living room. Seems as though when I set it up it went on its own to the living room if that makes sense. I just checked and playing music, the five is working with all the others except my 100s are not in sync a bit of a delay. Confused here to be honest.

You do indeed sound confused. 
In a Dolby Digital/5.1/Home theatre setup (all names refer to a similar concept) there are 6 speakers: Front Left, Centre, Front Right, Left Surround, Right Surround and Sub. The Arc (note the spelling) is a single physical enclosure which houses the 3 front speakers - FL, C and FR. Additional to this you have the rear effects speakers LS & RS. Those speakers are the 5 in “5.1”. A Sub completes the setup.
Whilst there are systems enabling additional physical speakers, this is the limit in a Sonos system (although you can potentially add a second Sub). 

Sonos needs a label to identify the speakers in a system. They selected room names as the way to organise speakers - not an unreasonable system. So, if you have an Arc in your Living Room it’s logical (but not essential) that the Arc is physically in your living room. You can add surrounds to the Arc, as detailed above. In Sonos terminology the surrounds and sub are “bonded” to the Arc, and are collectively seen in the app as a room called (in this explanation) Living Room. You can’t add more speakers to Living Room, so a Play:5 might be in a room called Living Room2. Rooms could equally be called Tony, Chris and Alison… or Red, Green, Blue since they’re just a label, but you might then have problems remembering what speakers are in those locations!

Sonos also lets you play the same source - turntable, streamed music etc - to multiple rooms in a system. This is done with the grouping feature. It can be done too where the shared source is the tv connected to an Arc. But it’s important to note the way Sonos achieves synchronised play to multiple devices is by introducing a very slight delay when the sound play starts. Normally this isn’t an issue - did the music start 70msec later than it should have done? But with video there is lip sync to consider, so there’s less delay playing tv sound to the Arc/surrounds to minimise any issues. If you group another room to the tv source, that 70msec delay becomes potentially more noticeable in the other rooms. If you’re in a place where you can hear both rooms’ speakers, it’s like an echo. If you’re physically in a different room and only hear the speakers in that room and can’t see the tv, it makes no difference. 


Does that help you understand what’s happening in your system?

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