Only the Playbar is muted because it’s the only speaker connected to the TV.

But if you add the pair of Play:5s as surrounds to the Playbar in the Sonos app, the mute button will mute both the Playbar and Play:5s.

Be sure to separate the Play:5s as a stereo pair before adding them as surrounds.

Read more here:

https://support.sonos.com/s/article/2927?language=en_US

Yeah, we already have a second set of Play:5s as rear surrounds. We wanted an extra set as fronts.

Only the Playbar is muted because it’s the only speaker connected to the TV.

OK, weird, I figured if they were playing the same source they should mute when that source is muted. But I guess because of the way the optical output works, the mute button is remotely controlling the Playbar and not muting the source itself.  Since posting this I noticed that I can turn the volume control on the TV remote all the way down to mute both. Which is inconvenient since we have multiple people using the system and not everyone gets it, but it is what it is.

I wonder if I get a toslink splitter, would that work?

Hi @Unifylink 

As you mentioned, using the remote to mute will mute the Playbar, not the TV. As the pair of Play:5s are a different room, they are not affected.

You can adjust both room volumes together with the volume slider control in the Sonos app. There’s no way to link them to always be the same volume.

A TOSLink splitter producing an electrical signal for Play:5 line-in would likely induce a significant audio delay on that room only, making the whole setup unusable (the splitter spends time converting to analogue, only for the Play:5 to then spend time converting back to digital and then also buffers the input prior to playing).

I hope this helps, or at least explains.