Sonos AMP and Beam set up (is this possible?)

There is a lot to unpack here. Starting with the basic structure of Sonos works, for your home you’ll have a Sonos system.  That system will be made up of Sonos rooms, or zones.  A room can be made up of one or more speakers that are semi-permanently bonded together to play the same audio at the same volume.  There are limits to what speakers and devices can be bonded as a room. Rooms can be temporarily bonded together to play the same audio in sync, however, TV audio will play immediately to sync with the TV video, whole group rooms will be slightly behind for buffering reasons.

Either the soundbar or Amp will be connected to the TV via ARC, not both. If the Beam is connected, it will play the front audio channels, and the amp can be bonded with it to play rear surround audio.  That’s probably not what you’re looking for.  The other option is to have the Beam and Amp be two separate rooms that you group together.  However, for TV audio, the amp audio will be slightly behind, creating an echo effect that is not ideal.

You could use an optical connection instead of Arc.  Use a splitter to split the optical audio to the Beam and Amp to play the same audio at the same time, 2 ungrouped rooms.  This gets more complicated though.

No.  Your amp can only be one room.  It has stereo (2) speaker connections only,  You could use it as you intend with 2 speakers connected to each port (4 in total) but you have 2 lefts and 2 rights, or 4 mono channels that will always play the same audio at the same volume.  You could get a separate speaker switch, but that would not be controllable via the Sonos app.  To do that, you need a separate Amp or speaker for each room.

You didn’t say what your goals are for this setup, but the setup you have is essentially just getting TV audio through out the space, and not exactly sounding that great.  Ceiling speakers are great for spaces with no specific listen spot, no stage where the music should be coming from, but not the best for audio in general.  The kitchen and dining room make sense for this, but maybe not for the living room.  

That depends on how you set it up from your first question.  But your PS5 will be connected to the TV, and the connection to Sonos will be via the TV.

bropx024 wrote:

Like I said, this is very new to me and the house is very much a building site still, so I have no way of testing it (which is how I tend to learn anything new - trial and error) so your advice is greatly appreciated.,

 

NB - I should add that I would like to add a turntable to the line in on the AMP at a later date, but that isn’t in the diagram (if you can call it that) below

 

If it were me, and the budget allows, I would only put ceiling speakers in the kitchen.  I would use cheaper speakers that Sonance to save on budget.  I would get an Arc for the TV to start  with.  I would maybe use a pair of Sonos Ones in the dining room.   If you think you may still want ceiling speakers in the dining and living room, you can have the wires put in place before the walls go up so you can add them later if you decide to.

You shouldn’t/can’t connect both the Amp and Beam to the same TV - it’s usually one, or the other… I doubt both will play in sync and it will likely cause an echo if you did find some way to achieve this.

The Beam plays the front three HT channels (front L/C/R). The Amp does the same, but it has a phantom center channel. I don’t personally see your ceiling speakers being any use at all for surround sound TV audio (either front or rear channels) - they appear to be positioned incorrectly for Home Theatre surround sound output. It would be rather odd too, watching a news reader for example, on screen, with the audio coming from any/all those ceiling speakers, I think🤔?

Personally speaking I would opt to use the Beam for TV audio and use the 4 ceiling speakers for music audio only. 

Assuming you want HT surround sound, I would opt to add two Sonos/Symfonisk speakers, set at head height when seated, to bond to the Beam. I think a Sonos Sub positioned between the Dining Room & Living Room would be worth considering too…

One Amp can drive all 4 ceiling speakers (you could add a switch if you wanted to operate the same audio output to one or two different zones etc.) and the Amp can also be used to add your turntable to the setup aswell.

Those are my thoughts, at least, but see what others may suggest here too.

Is your goal to create surround sound for TV watching? If so, where is the seating area?

Hi guys, sorry, I should have stated that I will only be using the ceiling speakers for music from spotify

I recommend providing the capability to individually adjust the Volume of each pair. This could be done with separate AMP’s or one AMP with in-wall Volume controls for each pair.