Contributor I

Beam and Play 5 (Gen 1) together

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I have a beam already connected to TV which works great but I would like to add a Play 5 (gen 1) in the same room as I can then plug in audio devices to Line in socket. What would be the best way to set this up. I would like the music from the line in to play through the beam as well as the Play 5 . Not too bothered if the TV does not come through Play 5 but a bonus if it does. Would the position of the two units be better facing each other across the room ?
I have not bought the Play 5 yet and looking at Gen 1 because of cost.
Any help here would be appreciated. Thanks

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Airgetlam

You can add any Sonos speaker as a second "room" in the Sonos software, and then just "group" the two rooms, and they'd play whatever you have on the line-in (assuming you have a Sonos speaker with a line it....you've correctly identified the PLAY:5 series as the most likely candidate).

In fact, in the Sonos software, when you do have a line in available, you can pre-define what rooms it would play in, so that when you went to play the line-in, it could automatically include both "rooms". Or just one, it doesn't actually have to play on that PLAY:5 if you didn't want to.

But here's where there's potential complications, which you'll likely need to evaluate on your own. When you're grouping the Beam and the PLAY:5, and playing the TV input from the Beam, you might get a slight delay between the two speakers. But that would only be on the TV input, if you were playing music (not from the TV) on the Beam, it would be in perfect sync. It's a relatively small caveat, especially as you indicated it might be a bonus, but I wanted to be fully clear.

The placement of the speakers would be entirely up to you. I'd certainly recommend that the Beam be under/on top of the TV set, but you could place the PLAY:5 wherever you thought it sounded best. If you have an iOS device with a controller on it, I'd recommend that you do the "TruePlay" option on the individual rooms (you can't TruePlay 2 rooms grouped, only one room at a time). But if you don't have access, it's not life threatening, either. Kind of a bonus.

The PLAY:5 gen 1 has been out of production for several years. It might be challenging to find one, but the PLAY:5 Gen 2 serves for this purpose just as well, the difference between the two being mostly cost, loss of a headphone jack, and capacitive rather than mechanical buttons.

Hope this helps!

Bruce

martinmcnearyAuthor

Contributor I

Bruce
Thank you for your detailed comments above. It clears it up a good bit. I will go and hunt down a nice Play5 now.
Rgds
Martin

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