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I need some assistance in figuring out which products I need, in order to do what I want to do.

 

Layout: I have 2 rooms on opposite sides of the house, that both have TVs separated by a dining room in between.  I would like to be able to to play the same music in all 3 rooms(2 dens, 1 dining room) if necessary, however also be able to have the option to have just the dining and 1 den continue to play music while another room is playing sound from the TV.

 

I assume I need 2 “Beams” and then a few play 1s but it is unclear to me.  Any guidance would be much appreciated!

You need a BEAM for each TV that you want to provide audio support, and one or two ONE’s for the Dining Room. Two ONE’s can be “Bonded” as a stereo pair. You can add additional SONOS speakers as rear channels for BEAM. Each BEAM (with any associated surrounds) and the ONE’s will be a “Room” in your system. You can play different content in each Room, or “Group” any combination of Rooms to play the same content. However, Grouping Rooms that are playing TV audio will present challenges that have no easy solution. Group is intended to play the same music in multiple Rooms.

Can I connect two ONE’s to a TV without a BEAM or is the BEAM the only way to connect Sonos speakers to a TV?

The Beam and the new Arc are the main products focused on TV connections and require either an HDMI ARC/eARC connection or an optical S/PDIF from the TV (both Beam and Arc come with an optical to HDMI adapter).

The Five has a 3.5mm input jack that takes the output from TVs that have that type of output.

The Ones don’t have any form of input jack; they work by taking streams over the network connections.

I don’t recommend connecting a FIVE to a TV audio output because there will be lip sync issues that annoy most viewers. The sound bars are designed to minimize lip sync issues.

I currently use a Play:5 (gen 1) connected in just this manner and have no issues. There is an initial delay while the Sonos Autoplay option detects there is audio input signal but no lip sync issues. If there are lip sync issues  you can also adjust the Audio Delay.

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