Wondering the best config for a riding arena. I have 4 play 3’s (from 5-6 years ago), 2 fives (late 2023) and am happy to buy another pair if needed. The arena has good coverage (several nodes) from a decco/tp-link wifi 6e tri-band mesh network. I’m wondering a couple specific things. Should I be pairing the speakers or leaving them as individual? Also, will I have a problem trying to connect so many over such a large distance as a “zone?“ Also, will it be better to have them across the arena from each other down the long sides or better to have 1 on each short side as well? Any other thoughts or advice would be welcome as well. Thanks in advance for any feedback.
I’d set them as individual since trying to get multiple speakers to properly provide both left and right channels at the correct volume in stereo mode can be iffy in a large space.
You should have no problems as that really isn’t that many speakers. You will have each speaker in a Sonos Room (used to be called a Zone) and then all Sonos Rooms grouped together. Give each Sonos Room a good name like North-East, North-West, East, things that make it easy to tell which one you are seeing in the Controller.
Position them where they sound best to you, which isn’t really much help. I’d try the Fives centered on the short wall and the Play 3s on either side of the long wall, spaced equally away from the center to start.
That is a pretty big space for not many Sonos so adding a couple more Fives centered on the long walls and moving the Play 3s to fill in the gaps between Fives might be good.
You might consider a Sonos Amp and some of their outdoor speakers too, you could connect six to a single Amp which might be more sound for less money.
With that large an area the one thing that might surprise you is having the Group Coordinator (or the Sonos that picks up the audio and shares it back out) be one of the more distant from your WiFi devices can cause glitches using a closer one avoids. The group Coordinator is the Sonos you start putting the Group together from. You should try to have that be the Sonos with the best WiFi connection.
That is really helpful. Thank you so much for taking the time to give your advice. I really appreciate it.
There are a few others that like to comment on this type of question so make sure to give them a chance to respond before you go shopping.
Enter your E-mail address. We'll send you an e-mail with instructions to reset your password.