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New Room Setup

  • 15 June 2019
  • 2 replies
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I have three play1 speakers throughout the house and hard wired speakers in the ceiling of the living room that I’d like to use for sonos and tv. Will an Amp work for that? Also, besides the two ceiling speakers the only other sound for tv comes out of the tv speaker itself. I would like to add a playbar or playbase and possibly a sub but would like some insight as to which hardware to purchase. Any help you can provide is much appreciated!
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Best answer by Airgetlam 15 June 2019, 22:59

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OK, let's break this down.

A Sonos Amp can drive up to 3 pairs of speakers (they need to be Sonance speakers apparently to hit the three pairs) but they still would only be one "room/zone". And if the Sonos Amp is being used as a surround speaker amplifier, it should only be connected to a single pair of speakers.

There's basically 2 ways to use Sonos for a surround situation: You must have one of their soundbars (PLAYBAR, PLAYBASE, or Beam) or a Sonos Amp. Note that the soundbars have all three front speakers in the single enclosure, right, center, and left. You can't add additional right and left speakers to that. And the Sonos Amp, while it does allow you to drive separate left and right speakers of your own, it doesn't allow a center channel, instead creating a 'phantom' center channel by combining the sound from the right and left speakers.

The Sonos Amp, driving separate speakers, can be "bonded" to the soundbar as surrounds.

You haven't given us any indication of where the ceiling speakers are, so I'm going to assume their in a position to be used as rear surround speakers, i.e. behind where you would normally sit.

So, if this is the case, I'd got with a PLAYBAR for the front (widest dispersion of audio), and a Sonos Amp powering the ceiling speakers as surrounds. If you have additional ceiling speakers that you want to use as music speakers, I'd power them with a separate Sonos Amp. You could then group the "rooms" together when playing music to get all speakers in sync. Note, however, when grouping while using the TV input, there will be a delay between the "rooms"
Thank you, that is very helpful!

you are correct, the ceiling speakers are in the rear of the room