Amp and Sonos Ones Variations?

HI, I am the original poster for this thread and thank you everyone for your answers.  I am new to AV; Still learning- ha

Let me elaborate a little more.

So early last year (pre COVID) I bought In-ceiling dual core speakers for almost every room in the house liking the clean look of what in wall and in ceiling delivers.  That meant lots of AMPS, and lots of costs.  

So, this year I decided to finish out rooms that were missed and tweak my original work.  I got the ARC’s and subwoofer for bedroom and living room with 85” TV’s in both.  Amazing.

**So here is the thing:  (now realizing the Sonos Ones mounted look acceptable) I decided:

My office, dining room and entrance foyer are all connected in an open layout.  I originally put 2 dual core in ceiling speakers (1 in office, 1 in dining room).  I added 2 sonos ones to just the office and 1 to foyer.

In bathroom, I had 1 dual core in ceiling speaker (powered by an AMP); and it sounded good but just did not have enough volume for when in the shower.  So I added 2 Sonos One Mounted in corners of the bathroom.

The only difference between these setups is the size of the rooms by comparison and # of speakers, but the AMP to dual core ceiling speaker and 2 Sonos Ones is the same.

When using the app, it asks which room.  So I said the appropriate room, and then it asked if these are surround sound or not.  I said yes to both.  The office sounds great.  I get the in ceiling directly above my desk chair, with the 2 Sono’s Ones behind me in the Sonos App Surround mode.

For the bathroom, the shower is in the corner and the in ceiling is in center of room.  The 2 Sonos Ones are mounted further away in each bathroom corner.  It appears the Sonos Ones are putting out more sound volume then the dual core speaker; and since I chose surround sound on the Sonos App (In app under system it appears Bathroom AMD (+LS, +RS) they are not pushing as much vocals and more base and background and it sounds awful.

So one setup sounds great, and the other sounds horrible.  There is no difference in the speakers or app setup.  The office is quiet and the ceiling speaker is above my head.  The bathroom is not quiet and the ceiling speaker is not above my head but center of the room (and surrounds further past), but all I hear is drowned out vocals and base.

The suggestion I use the AMP in another room, although good, well I have 7 AMPs already.  I don’t need another (maybe FB marketplace does).  So what I probably should have done was put in a second in ceiling and placed them appropriately, but I am past that now.  So I was thinking how do I break up the App created surround sound and just make them a stereo pair and also work with the dual core in ceiling speaker.  I could make Bath 1 and Bath 2 and just choose 2 rooms and volume each time, but I was hoping there was either a solution to put in one room, or tweak it the way I have it.  Its strange the office is great, and the bathroom so terrible; but that’s what it is.

@Tom in Dallas Thanks for clarifying your setup. I think your best option is to disconnect your Ones as surrounds from the Amp, set the Ones up as a stereo pair, and then group the Amp and pair of Ones together when playing music in the bathroom. This setup should make your Ones sound MUCH better with your ceiling speaker.

Be sure to perform Trueplay after you pair the Ones as a stereo pair.

Thanks GuitarSuperstar.  I changed them to a stereo pair and they do sound better.  When you say group the amp and pair of ones together to play; you mean have one ROOM-Stereo pair and one ROOM-AMP and have 2 volume controls on my app, and adjust together as needed.  I turn both on and set volumes for ONES and AMP separately.  I assume you mean that when you say group.  I could not find a way to make all 3 work on one room with one volume bar.

@Tom in Dallas Read this article to learn how to group rooms: https://support.sonos.com/s/article/3391?language=en_US

When two or more rooms are grouped, sliding the volume slider in the app will adjust the volume of all rooms in that group. If you tap on the volume slider, it will give you the option to adjust each room individually.