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Trying to Understand Home Theater set up with Sonance in Ceiling + Amp Set up

  • 18 October 2021
  • 2 replies
  • 1412 views
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I am doing a renovation with walls and ceilings open and think I want to go down route of Sonance in ceiling speakers throughout the home and the one area I am confused about is my living room / home theater set up.

 

Previously I had floor standing speakers, center speaker over fire place and two rears behind  / the the side of my couch which is pushed against a wall all connected to a Denon Receiver.  My preference is to eliminate the floorstanding, center + rears and go with in ceiling speakers connected to Sonos Amps since it is really the main living area that happens to have large couch + TV vs dedicated home theater set up.  

 

If I go with the Sonos Amp to power in ceiling speakers throughout my home, can the in ceiling speakers pull double duty to connect to my receiver when I want to watch movies.  Am I just supposed to scrap my Receiver and use the Amps instead  

 

If so how do i set it up?  I see the user guide for amps suggests 3 speakers near front of TV (L C R) and then two rears.  Is it possible to set up a single speakers as the center channel? This seems like it would be overkill for listening to music where it probably only needs two or four max but I realize there are some puts and takes trying to kill two birds with one stone

Also any other considerations to think about?  Should I just leave the receiver set up for the living room to connect to in ceiling speakers and use the Sonos Amp + in ceilings for rest of the rooms that are primarly used for listening ot music?

 

Thanks

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Best answer by GuitarSuperstar 18 October 2021, 10:13

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G
Userlevel 7

A home theater setup with Sonos Amp requires two Amps and only allows for two front channel speakers (left front and right front) with a phantom center channel and two rear surround speakers. With a Sub or third-party subwoofer, this will create a 4.1 setup. And you will be limited to standard Dolby Digital audio.

So if you want a dedicated center channel speaker in your home theater, and you want to play higher resolution audio formats like Dolby Digital Plus (from streaming) and Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD Master Audio (from Blu-ray discs), you should use your current Denon receiver instead. Then connect a Sonos Port to the receiver to include your home theater speakers in your Sonos ecosystem.

Or you could get a Sonos sound bar like an Arc or Beam (Gen 2) to use for the front channels and a Sonos Amp to power two in-ceiling speakers as surrounds. These two sound bars are compatible with Dolby TrueHD, Dolby Atmos, and multichannel PCM. Just be sure your TV has HDMI eARC if you want to play these higher resolution audio formats. The Denon receiver would not be used in this setup.

"Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you." - Rashi
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Thank you very helpful

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