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We recently made a Play:3 our first Sonos purchase, and I like it. A lot. The fact that my wife can use the app without me having to help is a massive plus as well!



But, the room we put it in is a large one, and my original plan was to pair a couple of 3's eventually. But after listening to a Play:5 I've ordered one to test that out - I think two in that room would be overkill, but I'll be really interested to see how it plays out vs a Play:3 pair in stereo.
The Play 3 may well be discontinued, it isn't in the Sonos store any more so if you are planning a pair you'd best grab another one fast.



I thought a pair of Play 1s would be a pain on my end table so I got a single Play 3 thinking I'd like it better. The sound was better but I found the mono operation very boring to listen to so I swapped it for a Play 5, way overkill to be sitting three feet from my ears but the sound is more lifelike and it is less aggravation (although big) than having two Play 1s on the table.



I haven't given the pair of Play 3s a decent test in a big room, set up to fill the room but in my 10x10' office they seem to me to be better than a pair of Play 1s and I get better stereo imaging than a single Play 5.



For the big room and music a pair of Play 5s or a pair of Play 1s / Sonos Ones and a Sub are a very nice combo. The Sub sounds good with the Play 5s too but it isn't essential.
I like my Play:3 pair more than my single Play:5. I haven’t tried to do an A-B comparison yet, and they’re in very different spaces, which affects the sound. But every time I use my Play:5 I’m disappointed. (I’m very much in the minority on that opinion.)
I've got a Play 5 in one room and two Play 1's in another. I prefer the Play 1's. To be honest, as impressed as I was when I first got the 5, I hardly listen to it now. It's relegated as background music/radio thing where it's ability to produce a relatively rich but ultimately flat mono sound doesn't matter.



Turns out stereo was an important invention :D



The sound from two speakers as a stereo pair is much more than twice as good as just one of them, if you know what I mean. It's not just the stereo image but the whole sound seems deeper, clearer and just about every other positive sound adjective. With my Play 1's I'm still at the stage where I can't quite understand how such little devices can produce such a big sound.



So if it was my money, I'd get the second Play 3
Thanks guys, I guess with things like this there is always a little buyers remorse and what if.



The room definitely isn't big enough for two play 5s so I shall look at another play:3. A bit worrying if they are being discontinued however.
A bit worrying if they are being discontinued however.



I must say it wouldn't worry me at all. Companies discontinue things all the time as they work out where they think the market is heading. You can still buy them tons of shops, still the guarantee, still get the support and so on.
Back stock varies in how long it is available, keeping an eye on the number of New Play 3 listings on ebay or the like can give you an idea of how rare they are becoming. Of course the last few new ones are likely going to rise in price as they move from the "get them sold" to the "valuable back stock" category and then back to junk.



Used ones are likely to be around a lot longer and at better prices.


But, the room we put it in is a large one,

The bigger problem in a large room, that no stereo speakers can address, is sound levels having to be too high near the speakers for music to be well heard on the other side of the room. The only solution is to have speakers at the other end of the room and in your case you might be well served with a play 1 pair in stereo addressing the main listening area and the 3 on the other side of the room to be played grouped with the 1 pair when all room coverage is desired.



At some time in the future, if music listening is a priority, consider adding a Sub to the 1 pair.



If Alexa/voice control is important, a One pair instead of the 1 pair.
I sometimes do something like that with a Play 3 stereo pair and a single Play 1 in the back. Sounds pretty good.
I think thats the best solution and the one I'm going to go for Kumar - a play:1 pair and sub with the 3 at the other end.



Now I just need to get around the library limitations of 65,000 songs..
Saw a post here on that today , they had songs saved by album so the limit was 65K albums rather than songs. I didn't keep a link to it so you'll have to search a bit to find it.
Thanks - I found a post describing setting everything to an m3u playlist to try and work around it.



I just find it somewhat staggering that such a limit exists.Oh well.
Sonos has a legacy problem, when they first came out hardware was very expensive and they had to pick fairly low end bits to keep the total price down to a level that would sell. Now they have increased the hardware bits capabilities a great deal but are faced with the lingering older gear's limitations.



They are doing a lot to work around this with tweaks like handing off music library indexing to the most capable unit but some limits can't be worked around without dropping support for the older hardware. See the CR-100 topics for how ugly that turns.
Given that Sonos believes that less than 10% of present user base listening - a number that is also declining - is to NAS as opposed to internet radio/services, and given the Sonos credo of backward compatibility to the extent practical, I doubt there will be anything coming from Sonos to fix this issue. Even when much of the use was NAS based, the 65000 track limit affected only a small minority.
Aside from a few albums not available elsewhere I'm finding myself listening to Napster over my home music library too so seeing others following the same path isn't surprising.



If there is no work-around then it is a tough call for Sonos they have to count the number of angry ZP users that would be bitten by having their units bricked versus the number of folks showing signs of having issues with the 65K limit and deciding who is out of luck. I'd bet the 65K folks are going to, no having to issue expensive rebates for defunct ZPs is probably the deciding factor.
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