Moving. Take older equipment or not

Only with a Sonos wireless system. Not any other speaker's wireless (like BOSE, for example). They'll hang off of wifi (both Sonos speakers and Connect:Amps) and talk to each other, but they won't play nice with other company's speakers.

Thx. That'll save a few bucks. Appreciate answer

There are still a lot of very good passive speakers for sale and a lot of folks have some really fine older passive speakers that would be expensive to replace so the Connect Amp has a place in the lineup.
Of course; that is one reason why obsolete stuff is used in every sphere today. But buying new passive speakers to make use of existing Connect Amps could very likely be bettered economically via play units.

Of course; that is one reason why obsolete stuff is used in every sphere today. But buying new passive speakers to make use of existing Connect Amps could very likely be bettered economically via play units.

Bettered economically I'd agree, the Play 3s and v1 5s that I have sound pretty good for the price, they are also a winner in the space used and lack of complexity arenas too.

But for sound quality a Connect Amp or Connect and external amp powering dumb speakers is hard to beat. My ZP-80 (previous version of the Connect hardware) in our living room, driving a Denon receiver and a 5.1 Infinity TSS 4000 speaker set seems to have a lot better sound to me. Still we tend to use the Play 5 on a plant shelf for general listening or a Play 3 on an end table for low level listening a lot more often than we do the big system. A smaller system in my computer room with another ZP-80, Yamaha receiver and a 5.1 Infinity TSS 800 5.1 set usually sits idle while I listen to a Play 3 too.

All the legacy stuff will go when we downsize again, it will be missed but our Sonos Play units are good enough at this point. I still miss my Klipsch La Scalas that the wife refused to let me bring to this place but things change.

But for sound quality a Connect Amp or Connect and external amp powering dumb speakers is hard to beat.
To my ears, a 1 pair + Sub bested at least three well known makes of passive speakers. I took the same care with placement with these as I would with a passive pair. And then ran Trueplay on the Sonos set up.
I think you will find others that will say the same about the gen 2 5 pair, even without the support of a Sub. With a Sub, that will go head to head with many more passive makes.

There are also good engineering reasons for this state of affairs. Passive speaker tech is almost entirely a few decades old, and the usable amp tech that can be used to drive this is even older - perhaps 50 years old.

Active speakers such as the play units can dedicated amplifiers to each driver - the 5 units have 5 amps inside - and utilise crossovers that work in the digital domain that allows use of DSP for optimising driver performance, better use of small volume speaker boxes, and room response tuning algorithms of the kind used in Trueplay. All of this provides many more degrees of freedom than what the boxed in designer of passive kit has. A very useful benefit of this tech is how it allows costs and price points to be driven downwards. There is a reason why professional studios almost entirely use active speakers now - for both quality and cost reasons.

Sound quality and preferences are subjective I agree, but there is some very tasty proof of the active speaker/digital tech pudding in the eating of it. There is lot that can be done in the realm of small size satellites + Sub set ups than what is possible with passive speakers where most of the choices are often about what veneer to use/buy.

I agree that there are excellent examples of passive speakers of varying ages, and the Connect/Connect Amp addresses how to still use these, but I would not buy or recommend buying a new pair today.

Besides outdoors, Sonos also doesn't have any in-wall/in-ceiling speakers. For good reason of course, since it's difficult to get power to those locations. In a previous home, I went almost entirely with in-ceiling and loved it, particularly in a room with vaulted ceiling. I might have gone the same route in my current home, except that the Sonos home theatre was thrown in with the deal, and the floorplan doesn't lend itself as well to such a setup.

Yea, I'd be a fan if they were to produce an in-wall speaker. Although it might be challenging in a retrofit, getting power to them, I can see a lot of benefits in new construction. And certainly so in a vaulted ceiling.

Oh, it might be potentially challenging to get a wifi signal into a "box" in the wall. I wonder if you could make the speaker grill an antenna? I guess it depends on what the box and grill are made of. Metal would be problematic, but plastics might pass the signal better. Huh. Maybe I should do some research about signal penetration through drywall and other materials.

If you can run speaker wire running power or Ethernet would not be much more of a challenge. There may be code how you can run the power though, but it should work. My home was new construction, and although I wanted to wire it myself after the fact, I had to get the electrician to do part of it since there was no attic space where the rear speakers were at. Wiring after the fact was not possible.

I don't know why wifi would be a problem in particular. The signal is already going through walls in the house, so it should be able to hit what's in the wall. But, as I mentioned earlier, if I'm going to wire power, I'm wiring cat5 or 6 as well.

It would be smart to wire speaker wire to the locations as well. If you sell your home, everything attached must stay. I would not want to lose sonos speakers in a home sale, so I would replace with cheaper speakers during the sale.

And while I'm dreaming, where you wire the power to? would the power line come out of the wall near an outlet or perhaps tie the whole system to the breaker box?