I have several Sonos speakers in the house, plus an integrated amp (NAD355 80w amp) that I used to use with an old Gen 1 Connect. I no longer use that Connect since it became glitchy. Otherwise, the amp currently only gets audio from a TV and connects to two tower speakers (Paradigm monitor). The NAD amp just died, and would be costly to repair.
I think the best replacement is probably a Sonos Amp. I’ll be able to connect those speakers to the rest of the system again (plus use the TV).
My questions are around the workflow of the Amp with the TV as well as audio streaming. My TV doesn’t have HDMI audio out. It has a small headphone jack or optical out, which I’d connect to the line in on the amp.
I think there’s some auto-play from line-in functionality, but I haven’t used it:
- Does it work well? How seamless would it be to turn on the TV and have audio come out of my tower speakers via the Amp? I don’t want to have to get out my phone to tell the amp to play audio from the TV.
- Can volume only be controlled via the Sonos app or onboard touch controls? I assume for digital (HDMI ARC), yes. For the headphone jack audio out from the TV, maybe the TV volume would have some effect?
- If I had HDMI audio out, would the workflow be improved?
Alternatively, I could buy a non-Sonos amp, plus the Port. That would be quite a bit more expensive, and I’d need to push physical buttons on the amp to stream music to that room, but to watch TV I sort of know what that workflow will be like.
I like the idea of getting a “standard” (non-Sonos) amp for longevity and lack of future obsolescence, but that didn’t really pan out with the old one dying anyway :\
