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Era 300 as Projector Speaker

  • 17 February 2024
  • 3 replies
  • 101 views
C

I’d like to get a speaker that I can use to play music and that also connects to our projector for movie night. It’s worth noting that the projector is the primary TV in the home. It’d be tricky to put a soundbar in the front of the room, as it wouldn’t be anywhere near the projector. However, we could trivially use a line-in to connect the projector to an Era 300 (or other speaker) on a nearby table. My thought is that the speaker will lend itself well enough for both TV/movies and music - we’d simply connect the line to watch a movie.

Is this notion ill-conceived? I would also consider a Play5, though I suspect that the 300 is better suited for this dual purpose. I’m also unsure about how well this would work if we expanded down the line - for example if we paired two Era 300s and/or maybe a sub later, all using the line-in from one 300 as input. Seems like something that might introduce lag? At a minimum it’s not eArc, and I imagine that will introduce some loss.

Worth noting that we currently Bluetooth from the projector to a Beats Pill that’s no less than ten years old. I appreciate any input!

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Best answer by Airgetlam 18 February 2024, 00:53

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Airgetlam

The analog line in on the Era 300 will, by definition, introduce a 75ms minimum ‘lag’. This can not be gotten around, Sonos introduces this on all analog line ins, so that the signal is buffered so that it can be played in sync on any other grouped rooms. Music in sync is Sonos’ main selling point, there isn’t much that can be done about this. Some people (like me) are sensitive to lipsync issues, and would find that 75ms unsatisfactory when watching anything generated by the projector. 

Sonos doesn’t really make a great solution for projectors, but I would suggest a Sonos speaker designed for video connections, such as the Sonos Ray (an optical connection), the Sonos Beam, or the Sonos Arc (both either optical or ARC/eARC connections). All of these digital connections have super low latency connections that allow good lipsync with a video source. Of course, the projector wants to be behind you, and the speaker wants to be in the plane of the screen, which can be problematic with cabling between the projector and speaker. You may want to consider extracting the audio before it reaches the projector, in which case I’d recommend an HDMI switch, with either an optical output (inexpensive) or an ARC/eARC extractor (much more expensive).

There are dozens of threads in this forum from people who have tried many approaches, I’d encourage you to do some reading and research, there are lots of recommendations from other community members that you may gain some useful information from. 

Bruce
C

Thank you! I’ll look into other solutions. Seems like using the line in is not a good idea.

Stanley_4
Userlevel 7
Badge +22

Consider using a Sonos Amp and Sonos/Sonance passive speakers You’ll get no delay with the Amp hooked to your projector’s HDMI ARC output or with a converter the optical port.

Other brand speakers would work but you’d give up the option to use Trueplay.

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