Was told I needed to buy a Sonos amp for each zone - just to play same music stream (typically Apple Music or Spotify) and be able to turn it on and off - is this right?





One amp will control one zone. That means the same stream at the same volume level. You can group multiple zones together to play the same stream at different volumes, or you can un-group them and play different streams at different volumes.



That said, you can have more than one pair of speakers powered by a single amp. You can do that my attaching more than one wire at the speaker ports (see https://support.sonos.com/s/article/265?language=en_US for more details), or you can use an external speaker switch, with or without volume controls. The latter can allow you to manually turn off speakers and have separate volume controls in your different pairs of speakers. That will save you money to go that route, but it's not ideal.





Seems strange if there isn’t something with multiple outputs I can control simply from an app? Remember my dad had a basic amp in 1980 that managed ?





Sonos doesn't sell a single unit that can handle multiple zones on it's own. They are designed to have multiple units to work together in a multiple room system that fits your specific needs. They don't sell an all in one receiver/amp like traditional companies would sell.



As far as TV audio, you can connect a TV to each Sonos Amp and it will play in that zone with audio and video in sync. If you group the TV zone with another zone, then it will be slightly delayed (needed for multiroom buffering). Bonding speakers in the same zone to create a 5.1 surround system is dfferent and doesn't sound like what you're looking for.

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Thanks very much Danny. All makes sense. Interesting point re buffering delay & TV. Most kind. Cheers.

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