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Sonos Five good - adding to my system advice pls

  • May 10, 2025
  • 5 replies
  • 99 views
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thinking of adding Sonos Fives to my current system (Beam, Sub, Era 100s) - same room  

 

Reasonably happy with the HiFi music reproduction but the focus is obviously to the rear of the seated  positions and naturally the front is a narrow focus from the Beam.

 

Questions - 

Are you Five owners impressed with the music reproduction - worth the investment?

 

Will TV (when turned on/video played) automatically play through the beam and Eras if music was previously played through Fives (and possibly the eras and sub). Sometimes play music through Apple Music on Apple TV, though generally through iPhone Apple Music app or Sonos app.

 

I’m aware that speaker grouping is possible just wondering if the HDMI ARC connection would disable the Fives when activated. As i write this it occurs to me that music through the Apple TV will be still ‘TV’ audio so would have to be played through an app to use the Fives.

 

Trying to keep things as simple as possible for the Mrs when I’m away and consider the implications before i purchase.

 

 

 

 

Best answer by 106rallye

The Sonos “room” concept differs from, for example, the Google Home concept of a “room”. A room in Sonos is a device or a defined set of devices. With a surround set up you can bond a soundbar or Amp with two surrounds (that can also be one Amp) and a maximum of two Subs.

This means your Fives wil for one room (when set up as a stereo pair) or two rooms (set up as two speakers), that can be grouped with the Beam room.

Nothing changes in your Beam room, so it will function as before. You could set it to leave a group when TV sound is being played.

Remember there’s a 75ms delay on the grouped speakers when you group speakers with TV sound, soothe Fives and the Beaam wil be out of sync when playing TV sound.

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5 replies

106rallye
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  • 106rallye
  • 6600 replies
  • Answer
  • May 10, 2025

The Sonos “room” concept differs from, for example, the Google Home concept of a “room”. A room in Sonos is a device or a defined set of devices. With a surround set up you can bond a soundbar or Amp with two surrounds (that can also be one Amp) and a maximum of two Subs.

This means your Fives wil for one room (when set up as a stereo pair) or two rooms (set up as two speakers), that can be grouped with the Beam room.

Nothing changes in your Beam room, so it will function as before. You could set it to leave a group when TV sound is being played.

Remember there’s a 75ms delay on the grouped speakers when you group speakers with TV sound, soothe Fives and the Beaam wil be out of sync when playing TV sound.

Airgetlam
  • Airgetlam
  • 44832 replies
  • May 10, 2025

Just for reference: I have a pair of PLAY:5 gen 2s (older generation than the current Fives) that I use for music only. I find them to be a better reproduction for music than the Arc (slightly larger than your Beam)  that they flank, but it really is a matter of what sounds good to your ears. I like the better stereo separation, and my mind tells me that the larger speaker size helps just a bit with the sound reproduction. What I don’t do is move my Sub between the two, I leave it connected to the Arc for movie use. While it might ‘help’ with a bit of music, most of what I tend to listen to sounds great as it is from my PLAY:5s. But, that might be different for different types of music, there is no ‘right’ setup, only what sounds good to the user. It is rare, but not never, that I group the two Sonos ‘rooms’ together for music use. I never do so when playing the TV input, due to that delay that ​@106rallye speaks of. 

To clean up some of the previous post: This means your Fives wil for one room should probably be ‘This means your Fives will be in one room’. And soothe should be ‘so the’. And of course Beaam should be ‘’Beam’ .

Now, having ‘corrected someone else’s post (sorry, ​@106rallye !) I need to double check my own, as it is too easy to mistype. 

 

Bruce
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  • willyroyale
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  • 16 replies
  • May 11, 2025

OK. Thanks for the advice. 

 

I can probably answer this myself but interested in experiences.

Can speakers be included in 2 different ‘rooms’. Eg my Era 100s in Living Room (surround home cinema function with Beam and Sub) and also in same physical room but in a Sonos room ‘Hifi living room’ so offer quadrophonic Hifi and possibly adding the Sub?

Airgetlam
  • Airgetlam
  • 44832 replies
  • May 11, 2025

No. A Sonos device can only be part of one Sonos ‘room’ at a time. You’d need to switch ‘rooms’ for the device via the setup function if you wanted to move it to another Sonos ‘room’. Not impossible, just an amount of effort, and you’d lose any TruePlay settings in the process. I find it much easier just to group them.

Bruce
Airgetlam
  • Airgetlam
  • 44832 replies
  • May 11, 2025

Oh, and for music playback, when I include my home theater surrounds, I have changed the setting from ‘ambient’ to ‘full’ in the Sonos controller’s settings for that ‘room’, so I get a normal stereo playback from the surrounds, rather than just support for my soundbar. 

Bruce
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