The Sonos Five is a powered speaker that doesn’t require an Amp. You just need to plug it in to power and connect it to WiFi.

Thanks for the fast reply,

Do you have to use other parts of the Sonos Ecosystem or can you just run via Spotify from your Mac?

Dr356

Proud owner of Martin Custom shop 000-18 12 fret :-)

No, the Sonos Five can be used as a standalone product, connected to your WiFi/LAN. You would control it from a mobile device (at least for setup), and once setup, you could use a Mac controller to run the device. But the controller is merely telling the computer on the Five what to do, it really isn’t playing music on your Mac and sending it over. 

Thanks for this, its very helpful.

I wish I could get the amp to work.  It was very expensive.  When I have it upstairs near the router, it can work, but in the first floor, in a large open room with fairly good line of sight to the router, it just won’t run.  So, now I have a $200 amp that I wire the speakers to, and just let the Sonos amp sit, gathering dust.

Did you talk to Sonos support about your Amp issues?

If it is working close but not at a distance it is likely a signal issue, the FAQ has some excellent troubleshooting tips if you search on wifi.

Tell us more about your setup and if there are any issues other than the Amp.

Upstairs I have router, a Sonos Play 1(wonderful speaker), A sonos bridge, and a Lo Link hub.  A pair of JBL’s which are passive and not wired to anything.

Downstairs I have the WM amp wired to 2 Harbeths.

Not really any other issues, my dream would be to have the Play 1 and the Harbeths play in synch as it would fill the large first floor space.  Right now, the Sonos ap does not see the Harbeths, and WMI does not see the Play 1.  Using Spotify, I can play either the Harbeths or the Play 1, but not both at the same time, in synch with the same tune.

BRIDGE is now obsolete and often defective (due to age). I recommend that you power down BRIDGE. If the SONOS system is aware of your WiFi credentials, the SONOS system will switch to WIFI.

Tomorrow morning, I’ll hook it up to the speakers downstairs.  Another problem is while it works on my iphone, it does not work on the brand new Mac Mini because of a firewall.  So, this would stop it from being functional on the speakers as well.

Thanks for all of your help and I will keep you posted on my progress on this.  

I managed to get as far as having the sonos amp play through my Harbeths and the Play 1 simultaneously.  I took the mini to the Mac dealer who showed me that the firewall is turned off.  I still cannot get the sonos system on the mini to see any of the devices.  Done all the turn things on and off press buttons at the same time.  Nothing fixes it.  So I am stuck with playing everything through the iphone.

Are you sure the Mac is connected directly to the same network the Sonos and phone are?

Excellent suggestion.  I’ll check……

5 mins later

Well, duh!

I’ll see if this makes a difference.

It doesn’t make a difference.  

Guess I’ll just run it from my Iphone.  

If I had to do all this over again, expensive amp, expensive speaker, impossible to run easily.  I’d never buy it.

Being told there is a 60 minute wait for customer service/tech support, having no letters or voicemails responded to, why bother?

I don’t deal with Apple stuff so I can’t help with that but every computer, tablet and phone I’ve hooked to the right network has connected to my Sonos without problem. I beat my head over one instance of plugging into the wrong Ethernet port, but when moved it worked.

Random thoughts: Is there a VPN on it? Ad blocker? Filtered DNS?

Thank you for your help, I’ll try to work on this a bit more.

Everyone was a great help.  In the end, a guy from the excellent computer place that sold me my I mac mini got on the phone, took over my Mini, and even though he had never heard of Sonos, had everything synched and running perfectly in 5 minutes flat!  

The only thing now in order  to have Nirvana  is to find a cd player that I could hook up wirelessly to the Sonos system…..Are there such things?

I haven't seen one, probably a Bluetooth one would work. I'd go wired for less hassle and better sound. Any (nonSub/surround) Sonos with a line in connection would work. A newer S2  Connect is also an option.

I went the other way, ripped all my CDs to lossless FLAC and use the Music Library to play them. After months sitting unused I disconnected the CD player and never missed it.

i should probably do the same.  I have oh, maybe 500-600 cds that have been sitting in a few boxes for several years because hooking up my cd player to the Sonos amp is hard to do because of space limitations.  There is so much music on the web now that CD’s are redundant.  

Some CDs are available for streaming but I have a number that were privately released that I'd really miss.

Switched ISPs now so less of an issue, but having music when the net or your music service is down is nice too.

I use a Raspberry Pi as my library storage so the cost to setup and keep running is minimal.