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Surround sound and stereo pair

  • 23 January 2023
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Can i ask is it possible to have sonos set up for tv surround sound and also stereo pair for playing music?

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Best answer by nik9669a 23 January 2023, 20:15

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The Ray is the front 3 channels of a home theatre system. But the “room name” is just a label, so the Ray “room” could be called “TV”. You could also have a stereo pair of speakers called “Music” in the same physical room in your home. 
Is that what you mean by your question?

Im not quite sure i follow. How would i set up the tv and then how would i set up to play music?

The HT device can be set to autoplay the connected TV audio - there are a variety of ways to switchover TV audio to Music audio, examples are…

  • Play music to the HT room via the Sonos App
  • Use a voice assistant to switch/play a music source
  • Airplay to the speaker 
  • Group the HT device with a speaker that’s playing music audio
  • Use Sonos API to ‘cast’ music to the speaker
  • Use touch controls on the HT device or surround speakers

…. the above is not an exhaustive list.

There are ways to manually switch back to TV audio too. They include…

  • Use the Sonos App to switch to TV audio
  • Volume up using the TV remote 
  • Use voice control to switch to TV audio
  • Use touch controls on the HT device or surround speakers

 

Userlevel 7

No, this isn’t possible. You have to pick one or the other. Although when set up as surrounds, the pair of speakers acting as surrounds will still play as a stereo pair along with the bonded Sonos sound bar when streaming music. Just be sure to set the Music Playback setting under the Surround Audio settings to FULL.

@Mr Squirrel,

In some respects the answer is ‘Yes’.

As an example, two Sonos Ones (+ Sub, if required) can be added to a Sonos HT product, such as a Beam, or Arc, for Dolby Digital 5.0/1 A/V surround sound (with or without Atmos audio).

If the surrounds are set to ‘Full’ playback for music audio in the Sonos App, then the two speakers will play full stereo audio for music, rather than Ambient audio. The Full setting is of course ignored when playing Dolby Atmos music audio, which is becoming popular with some streaming music services.

The only issue is the Soundbar cannot be muted during music playback, although personally speaking I would not mute the front channel audio anyway, as I prefer the soundstage in front of any listening position, rather than being set just behind the listener. 

Also note that the HT setup can also be ‘grouped’ with other wired, or wireless, (fixed or portable) Sonos speakers for music playback in perfect sync too, either in the same room, or in other rooms around the Home …or outside nearby (anywhere a reasonable local WiFi/SonosNet signal can reach).

Hope that helps to answers your question.  

Im not quite sure i follow. How would i set up the tv and then how would i set up to play music?

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