Removing from and adding new products to a system

Room names are just labels, simply edit them to what you wish.  

I am puzzled by your description of the setup, @MG1214. The surrounds, if set up as surrounds, must be bonded to a home theatre device. Yet you describe them as being in a room without an Arc or Beam. Are they in fact a stereo pair? Or, what are they bonded to, to make them surrounds? 

Great question, thanks for asking. So truthfully I am a little confused myself. I do know that they are surrounds, and I remember when adding them in the application asked me if they were a stereo pair, and also about making them surrounds.

So based on your question, and the other poster above you, it really doesn’t matter, the Arc will act as the central reference point, so I could just remove the two Move’s add in the new Fives and then add a new room label if I wanted to have them on an independent volume slider. As it stands now I have two “rooms” so I could just add another room for the new Fives.

Thanks for asking the question, and thanks to jgatie as well. Cheers.

The Moves can’t be used as surround speakers. If you have the current Fives set as surrounds, they are already bonded to your Arc. 
 

In the Sonos app, can you stream music just to room 2? Or, which speakers do play when you stream just to room 2? 

In the app, go to Settings/System/About my System and scroll down. In the description, I think there will be something like 

Play:5 Room One (RS) 

in the system description. This says that a Play:5 is assigned as Right Surround to the room called Room One. There’ll be a similar entry for LS (Left Surround) too. 

Thanks for the additional response,

I did know about the Moves not being able to act as surrounds, and yes the current pair of Fives are RS and LS. When I play music I make sure both rooms are playing. The speakers are all in one physical location. I like having individual volume sliders to control the mix of the speakers even more. It is a really great feature. 

I will look into bring the two Moves back into the system again down the road, I’ll just have to buy some stands for them. Maybe I’ll bite the bullet and order the stands from Sonos at the same time as I order the Fives. 

Thanks again for your input. Cheers.

No worries. Just be sure the surrounds are located correctly for rear sound effects to be in the correct spatial position! It might sound very confusing otherwise in a 5.1 movie. 
Any rooms grouped with a tv input playing to the group will have a slight delay, which you might hear as a kind of echo. If it isn’t worrying you, all is good: it’s your system. But the way Sonos works, it buffers a bit of audio when the system starts. It’s minimised to the room with the Arc to minimise lip sync issues, but is an inescapable element when grouping with additional rooms. 

Thanks. I use the system 99.9% for music, but I am starting to want to use it with movies and television. I thought I read that there is a way to override the buffering through the app? It would be nice if that was possible. 

Sorry: no, not possible. As I already said, the buffer is inherent within the system, in order to ensure seamless audio streaming. But, as I already said, for music it all plays in sync, and that’s by far your major use case. 

So a follow-up question. If I was willing to forego surround sound, if all I needed for the few times I use speakers for television/movies, if I understand you correctly, if I have a room that contains say the Arc and a pair of Fives, as long as I play to only that room there would be no to little latency, so no echo effect?

The only to get rid of the delay for TV sources is to configure the Fives as surround.  Grouping will always cause a delay.  Either via an echo due to the surrounds delayed in respect to the Arc, or you can adjust the delay to sync the audio, but then there is a delay from the video, causing lip sync problems. 

The only way of having a single room containing an Arc and a pair of Fives will be to have the Fives bonded to the Arc as surrounds. Alternatively the Arc could be one room and the Fives a stereo pair in another room, or two single speakers in two individual rooms. Whatever setup, a video source and grouped rooms will always have a lag in those grouped rooms. 

When playing from TV or streamed music, surround speakers will play in sync with the Arc. 
 

When playing a video source, when you group with another room there will be a delay in the signal that is sent to the other room. But, when you play an audio signal all speakers in all rooms will be perfectly sync’d. 

Update. The second set of Fives landed and are now in the system just fine as a stereo pair. The other Fives are happy as LS and RS with the Arc and the two Sub 3 are getting along with everyone! I am toying with the idea of keeping the two Moves and using them as middle of the sound field speakers. Might be fun, although reasonably I should sell them. Still, wouldn’t that make for a nice room filling system if I did keep the Moves?

Thanks again for everyone who chimed in. I really appreciated your feedback and guidance.

For stereo it would fill the room but likely disrupt the stereo image.

I’d put a Move in the bath or kitchen. I love my old Gen 1 Beam bathroom speaker.

Fair enough, but it might be a pleasant disruption sometimes? I have spent many years of my life with just 2 channel audio, then 2.2 with the addition of really nice subs. My former system was a pair of lovely Monitor Audio PL200s with two SVS SB2000 Pro subs. With that, while I had really precise stereo imaging, my brain thirsted for a sense of sound more around me as opposed to coming at me.

I know with a good room and proper DSP like using REW and correcting for room modes, even 2.2 audio can be more immersive, but it is ultimately still limited in that respect. So while adding different sound nodes certainly brings with it the smearing of imaging and phase potentially, it also has it’s rewards, such as a more immersive sound field.

I guess over time, should I attempt to use the Moves I’ll know if it is a problem. I think ideally I would have yet a third set of Fives, but that would be pushing things maybe. Who knows, I do see myself going that route frankly, but maybe in a year. Money doesn’t grow on trees, at least not for me. Cheers.

If you want immersive sound but don’t want the blurred imaging you get from multiple stereo speakers Atmos is where you should be looking. For Sonos that would be an Arc, 1 or 2 Subs and Era 300s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolby_Atmos#cite_note-21

Dolby Atmos can support home theater systems with up to 34 speakers in a 24.1.10 configuration.

Thanks, and good point. I do have an Arc, and two Sub 3s in addition to the 4 Fives. For me, with listening to music, which is my primary use, to the best of my understanding, there is very little music that actually has Atmos information, and again, if I’m not mistaken, Sonos can only decode Atmos and surround sound information from eARC and not with music files. 

But yes, for certain if I do truly want that degree of accurate not blurred immersion, a proper surround sound system would be required. Sonos has just allowed me to enjoy music differently, and probably will result in me one day, when all the technology is there, have a truly wireless, full surround sound system.