Replacing old Bridge and Connect…so confused over what to get!


Please bear with me, as I’m not an audiophile! We have a first generation Bridge and Connect, which we had connected to a stereo receiver to play on wired speakers in our house as well as outside.

Our stereo receiver died, and hubby wants to replace it, but I’m wondering if we’re better off just changing up our whole system (and taking advantage of the upgrade program). I realize it’s 2022 and wires are no longer needed, lol!

Without wanting to pay a fortune, I’m wondering what our best options are. Just get a Roam or Move for when we’re outside and a One for inside, and get rid of all the wired speakers in our house? Or what about the Amp — is that something that can just be hooked up to the existing wired speakers? (Though yes, I realize it’s on back order…). I’m assuming that an actual receiver is no longer needed, as everything we’d be listening to is streamable…

Thanks for any help you can provide to an old dinosaur!


10 replies

I like wires! If you have decent WiFi coverage, you don’t need BRIDGE. Yes, AMP can be used to power your existing speakers.

 How many speakers was your receiver driving?

Describe your current speakers. How do they sound?

Correct, you don’t need the receiver, unless you need regular AM/FM reception. Most stations also have an Internet feed that SONOS can play. Do you need to play something else, such as a turntable? ROAM and MOVE cannot connect directly to a turntable, but AMP can connect to a turntable a long as there is a “preamp” built-in to the turntable or provided externally. Once a turntable is connected to a SONOS system, the turntable can play in any combination of Rooms. (SONOS speakers are each identified as a ‘Room’)

It would help to know how you listen to music, and where. By how I mean what is the source of the music. A music service like Spotify or Apple Music?

Where refers to locations in the house. Also, do you need to listen to same music in more than one room at the same time in a way that it feels seamless, being in perfect sync.

Thank you, Buzz. We have connected wall speakers both in our downstairs sunroom and upstairs bedrooms, a set of shelf speakers in our family room, and two outdoor speakers. With our current setup, assuming the receiver was working, we could play music on only one set, two sets, or all. Like I said, I’m not an audiophile, so the music sounds fine to me, but that’s not saying much :)

No need for a turntable at this point (though I guess it would be nice to dig out all my old vinyl). So if we got the Amp, we could just get that huge receiver and outdated Sonos equipment out of our cabinet, and just use the Amp? That may be the way to go…

How are you selecting which speakers(s) to play? Are these stereo pairs of speakers?

Don’t apologize for not being an audiophile. After spending tens of thousands of dollars, an audiophile is never satisfied. You are satisfied.

Yes, speakers are stereo pairs. We have a wall dial that allows us to choose which speakers to send to.

We predominately use just the outside speakers. On occasion (if we’re having a big party) we’ll use both the outside and one pair of downstairs speakers. In that case, no need for it to be absolutely seamless.

We typically will listen to only music services such as Spotify and Pandora. Really, the only time we would want AM/FM would be to listen to MLB games while outside, but we could probably figure out a way to stream those as well.

That additional information should help buzz tweak his advice to suit you better; I won’t jump in with more and confuse things!

AMP can work fine for you.

Don’t count on being able to get your favorite MLB game from a streaming service. You’ll need to research this for your team(s). In general professional teams do not want their games streamed.

Is this “wall dial” a group of three Volume controls or just a simple selector switch? I recommend using Impedance matching Volume controls, however, if you use only two pairs this is not required. The advantage of using Volume controls is that you can adjust the level independently in each room.

Just as a random note, I stream the SF Giants (KNBR) from iHeart radio, with no upcharge/subscription. I used to have to pay TuneIn a premium subscription for access. But as buzz says, each team can have different settings. 

Thank you, Buzz! I’ll have to re-look at the knob, but I’m pretty sure we can adjust volume with it as well. Now I guess I’ll just have to wait for the AMP to come back in stock!

And thanks for the tip, Airgetiam. I’ll give iHeart a try. 

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Jus an addition. Remember you can’t use the Bridge on a system using the new software (S2, the brown app). If you can’t connect the Amp by cable to your router and wifi would not work well, a Sonos Boost can be used. The Boost is the replacement for the Bridge.

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