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I’m mostly new to Sonos (I have the Move) and I’m looking to replace my existing living room setup with something that’s compatible for a multiroom setup in the future. Right now I have my xbox, chromecast, etc hooked up to my receiver and the TV’s ARC HDMI going into the receiver as well so I can play the smart apps through it. From the digging I’ve done I see I need either a Five, Play:5, Amp, or Port for the turntable. I’ve ruled out the Five/Play:5 for a variety of reasons and I think the right move for my room is Amp/Port, Arc/Beam, and either two Symfonisk bookshelf speakers or One SLs.

 

Can someone help me understand how the Port would work in conjunction with the Arc/Beam here? I’d connect the Port output to the turntable and then the input to the receiver via RCA again. I see the setup instructions for the soundbars are to plug it into the TV’s ARC HDMI port and this is where I get kinda lost. Would that still be necessary with the Sonos Port? If so then I assume that means I need to connect all my other devices through the HDMI ports on the TV as well and then since those are non-ARC ports would that still send the audio for those devices through to the speakers?

Hi Rishi,

If you moved to an Arc/Beam and Symfonisk/One SL for the surround speakers, would you stop using any hard wired speakers connected to your receiver? If so, then I am thinking you would not need the receiver in your new system. You could connect the XBox and Chromecast devices directly to the TVs HDMI connections (Assuming there are enough connections) and then connect the Arc/Beam to the TV HDMI ARC connection.

You would also need a Port to link your turntable with the Sonos system. The turntable connects to the Port’s RCA Line In sockets. The Port then connects wirelessly to the rest of the Sonos system. Your turntable needs to have a built in or external pre-amp, as the Port needs a Line In level signal, not Phono. To save cost, you could look for a used Connect to use instead of the Port, but it needs to have a date code of 1502 or newer to support the latest Sonos S2 App. Better to get a 16xx or earlier version to be on the safe side.

You also need to figure out what your TV does with the audio signals that are passed through it to the HDMI ARC socket from the devices connected to the normal HDMI ports. Take a look on the Home Theater pages for the ongoing discussion about getting 5:1 and Atmos sound through the HDMI ARC connection. A lot depends on the age and make of the TV as far as I can gather.

Depending on the size of your TV, I would go for the Arc rather than the Beam as it is a newer product and does support Dolby Atmos, which the Beam can’t do. Even without an eARC HDMI connection on the TV it should be possible to get compressed 7:1 surround to the Sonos Arc, so long as you have an ARC connection. Hopefully compatibility issues will be eased once Sonos updates the Arc firmware to handle LPCM encoded audio. 

To improve the home theater experience (and in my opinion when listening to music through a Sonos home theater set up) you will probably want to add the Sonos Sub at some point.

Hope this helps and doesn’t cause more confusion.


Hey, thanks for the response. That definitely helped. I do plan on removing my old speakers. Good to know I won’t need the receiver cluttering up the space. I’ve got my eye on the sub too, but probably won’t do anything until I move from my current place.

 

After a little more digging I think I can get my TV (55” TCL 4 series) to support Dolby Atmos. It says the audio pass through supports Dolby Digital Plus, but the Home Theater posts I found didn’t really help my understanding too much. But as a super basic test, I did just connect my xbox to my TV and the audio was playing through my receiver so it seems like it would work with Sonos. If not, whatever. I can troubleshoot and go from there. I got this TV on a small budget when I moved and needed all new stuff, so I knew I would want/need to replace it soon enough anyways. I mainly wanted to confirm Sonos could fulfill my needs and the Port was the right hardware for the job. Thanks again!