Beam + 2 x Sonos Ones for TV surround, but what about music?

  • 5 December 2018
  • 3 replies
  • 2485 views

Hi all,
I currently own the Beam, which has proved to be a great purchase so far! Very happy!

I want to add two Sonos Ones into the living room and link them up as L+R surround speakers for watching TV with the Beam. Does anyone know how this configuration performs when listening to music (Spotify in my case), not the TV. Will the Sonos Ones work as a stereo pair or will the Beam still act as the main speaker? I know I'll be able to reconfigure the setup via the app to make the Sonos Ones act as a stereo pair (essentially forgetting they're part of the surround setup), but I don't want to be resetting on the app every time I go from watching TV to listening to music.
Apologies if this is an obvious question, I'm new to Sonos and want to ensure it'll do what I need before convincing the other half that this is something we really need to do! 🙂
Thanks all!

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3 replies

You essentially have two configuration options with this setup. The default setting is that the 2 surround speakers will just play ambient when playing music. The other option is to turn on full, which will have the 2 surround speakers play full stereo. I prefer full stereo myself, but others feel that it messes with the sound stage.

Also worth noting, when using Sonos Ones with the Beam, the Alexa microphones are automatically disabled in the Sonos Ones. This is done primiarly because the voice commands controlling the TV will not work if the Sonos Ones hear you before the Beam does. So, there really isn't an advantage to using Sonos Ones over Play:1s in this setup, other than aesthetic look of the speakers and their ability to be used in other rooms later.
Thanks Danny that's super helpful. I feel that setting the Sonos Ones to full stereo mode is how I would prefer the system to work for music, but I'll experiment with the options. Is it an easy transition to set the Ones to full mode from surround?
On occasion I may decide to move speakers to other rooms so I'm keen to stick with the Ones as my surround speakers.
setting the ones to full stereo and half volume seems to be just right for my setup for listening to music. There are separate settings for TV and music. For TV I leave surround setting at normal volume or turn it up slightly