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Question

Sonos Beam (Gen 2) + Roam + Play 1

  • 14 July 2024
  • 4 replies
  • 31 views

I want to move some of my existing, older Sonos products from my primary home to my vacation home. In my vacation home I just bought a new Sonos Beam Gen 2. Can I group this with an older Sonos Play:1 and Sonos Roam (gen 1). Can I group all of these in one group and play synchronized music?

 

Also, I’m pretty confused on the various apps. Ideally there would just be the Sonos App that works with all products. However reading through this forum and doing some online searches it appears there are the following:

  • Sonos App
  • Sonos S1 App
  • Sonos S2 App

Is that correct? And which app do I need to use to create a group of Sonos Beam (Gen 2) + Roam + Play 1?

 

4 replies

N
Userlevel 7
Badge +19

First some definitions. In Sonos-speak, you create a “room” which is just a label to identify a speaker or set of speakers. That might be a Beam. You can also create a stereo pair by “pairing” them. Or you can “bond” speakers to a home theatre speaker such as your Beam to make a 5.x system. Finally, you can “group” rooms to play the same music. 
 

 

N
Userlevel 7
Badge +19

If you only have the single Play:1 it can’t be bonded as surrounds because that requires two of the same speaker type. But once you have the Play:1 and the Roam set up on your network you can group any two of the three rooms, or all three. 

 

You’ll need the S2 app:

https://support.sonos.com/en-us/article/sonos-app-version-compatibility?language=en_US

S

@nik9669a thanks for the response. I don’t want to create a surround set up. I’m happy enough with just the Beam for my TV sound. But I do want the same synchronized music playing in different rooms by grouping 3 “rooms” together 

  • Living Room with the Beam
  • Master Bedroom with the Play 1
  • Any other room with the Roam

To be clear, is the S2 app basically the main (new) Sonos App https://apps.apple.com/us/app/sonos/id1488977981 ?

Honestly I don’t know why they created a new app, the old one worked perfectly fine. I hope its not the case, but I think it was likely done in order to force folks to upgrade to new products so Sonos can generate more revenue.

N
Userlevel 7
Badge +19

Then: yes, you can group the three rooms. 
 

But

the way Sonos achieves synchronised multiroom support is to inject a slight delay when playing audio. This normally doesn’t matter, as you have nothing to reference it to. With tv it’s different: the Beam will have a very small delay but the other rooms will have a 70msec delay. Some say it’s not enough to notice but others say it creates an echo effect. 
I often group my lounge and kitchen so I can continue to listen to tv programs whilst cooking. I can’t see the picture so the delay doesn’t matter. With extra speakers in the same room, it may be too distracting. 
If you already own the speakers, set them up and try it. Decide for yourself. 
It is the new/S2 app you’ll need. It is showing some teething problems at the moment. 

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