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Hi, I have a fairly large living room combined with dining room and kitchen, altogether about 50 square meters (530 square feet). Currently I have a Beam connected to TV. I was planning on adding surrounds and a sub, and I also wish to add a turntable at some point.

First of all, is the Sub worth it in this setup? I am watching quite a lot of movies and tv shows and not listening to loud music as I have a small child.

Second, as far as I understand, you cannot add the turntable to the Fives, if they are already used as surrounds, or has this changed? So I thought about two OneSLs and a Sub. And later turntable with a Five or maybe a Raspberry hack, or some other solution? In the situation of adding Five with turntable, is it possible to listen to music with one Five and a combo of Beam/SUB/OneSLs in the same room? 

Third, would it be a problem, if the surrounds are about 3 meters (10 feet) behind the couch, because the couch is not near wall and I don’t want to have stand with a speaker in the middle of room?

Thank you for answers and tips :)

1. Adding a Sub is definitely worth it. Every good home theater system needs a good subwoofer. The extra bass will give you more of a movie theater-quality audio experience.

2. When a Sonos device is being used as surrounds, this disables the line-in connection, so a turntable cannot be connected. Using a pair of Fives as surrounds would be overkill anyways, especially with the Beam. Go with the One SLs instead. Then add a Five or pair of Fives or a Port later to connect a turntable.

Yes, you can listen to the turntable audio on a Five and your Beam/Sub/One SL setup in the same room. You will just group them all together in the Sonos app.

3. The surround speakers being 10 feet behind the couch is actually better than the speakers being too close to the couch. Oftentimes when the surround speakers are right behind your listening position, they can overpower the audio coming from the front channels playing from the soundbar.

After you set up your Sub and One SLs as surrounds, be sure to perform Trueplay tuning to optimize the sound in the room.

I’d say One SLs as surrounds too.

That big a room the Beam is going to struggle, an Arc might be your biggest improvement followed by the Sub.

You can adjust the surround volume lever, or better use TruePlay (with a supported Apple device) to compensate for speaker position.

You might consider using your Play 5s as your primary music speakers, put them in the best possible positions for this and save the TV sound setup for TV or background music. While the Beam and Arc make acceptable music speakers the stereo positioning isn’t great and the image suffers.

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