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Hi all,

 

While these are probably basic questions, I’m new to most of the technologies I’m asking about so It’s a bit overwhelming to search for info when you’re not familiar with the terminology and products 🙁.

 

My current setup consists of older LCD connected to Apple TV and a Denon receiver which is connected to a set of regular speakers. I want to migrate to Smart TV, ditch the Apple TV, and replace the Receiver and speakers with two Sonos Five in the living room with the option of later adding subwoofer, and several One’s spread around the rooms in the house. All speakers (or at least the ones in the living room) will be connected via ethernet.

 

My use cases:

  • Connect my Roon (which is running on a NAS) to Sonos. I’ve already checked that this is possible (with few limitations).
  • Have the option to connect the Smart TV to the speakers in the living room but have it trivial to switch between sound from the TV and speakers. Note, I’m not interested in Home Theatre Surround setup. Regarding which TV - I have to decide between one of the latest models of Sony, Samsung, LG or TCL (because it has android models). This is the subject I’m mostly confused about. Every article I find assumes that you’re looking for Home Theatre setup with sound bar but I’m not 😀 - I just want to have the option to occasionally play the movies via good speakers.
  • The last use case is occasionally connect a laptop or mobile to speakers (mostly in the rooms) which I’m assuming is trivial and I didn’t even look into it.
  • I want to avoid Bluetooth as much as I can. I don’t have good experience with it in terms of reliability.

I would appreciate any advice or link to article directly related to any of the subject above.

 

Thanks in advance

 

Haim  

I want to migrate to Smart TV, ditch the Apple TV, and replace the Receiver and speakers with two Sonos Five in the living room with the option of later adding subwoofer, and several One’s spread around the rooms in the house.

I get that you’re not really interested in surround, but unlike the Sonos home theatre offerings the Fives are not designed to connect to a TV. They only have an analog stereo input, and will introduce a minimum delay of 75ms to the sound. So even if you could find a quality analog output from the TV, perhaps via optical and a small DAC, the loss of lip-sync could be obvious.

You might be better off reconsidering whether to trash your existing speakers, and instead look into hooking a pair to a Sonos Amp. This does support direct TV connection (and surrounds/Sub later if you wish to expand).

 

  • The last use case is occasionally connect a laptop or mobile to speakers (mostly in the rooms) which I’m assuming is trivial and I didn’t even look into it.
  • I want to avoid Bluetooth as much as I can. I don’t have good experience with it in terms of reliability.

An Apple laptop/mobile could send any Airplay audio to Sonos speakers.

With Android it would depend on the individual apps and whether they support ‘Connect’ functionality, i.e. casting off a stream to the Sonos units. Sonos doesn’t support Chromecast.

A Windows laptop couldn’t send audio to Sonos over the network in any elegant way.

I wouldn’t write off Bluetooth: a Sonos Roam can act as a Bluetooth ‘gateway’ into the Sonos system.

 

Thanks @ratty, 

 

mmmmm, this is surprising. I was under the impression that it is trivial to connect home devices to Sonos…

 

  • Android is easy, all my apps support connecting to Sonos
  • Roon is also easy.
  • Windows is disappointing. The reason I don’t want Bluetooth is that I had too many  Youtube sync issues when using Bluetooth headphones on windows. It’s not deal breaker but I’ll look into it.
  • TV is a problem. I prefer to replace my Pulse Audio speakers and buying and Amp on top is pretty pricy. Maybe I’ll find a place where I can listen to Sonos Ray. 

 

In any case, thank you very much for the answer, it really did clear things for me.

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