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What to buy for Cellar Lounge Room

  • 22 April 2018
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S
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Hi,
I have a pair of Play 1's and an Echo Dot hooked up to a Connect in the kitchen. It was a rather expensive solution but ticked the boxes i) Children being able to ask Alexa for music ii) YouTube is a consistently good source for a type of music I like so I can bluetooth from any tablet or mobile device to the Dot
I'm loving my kitchen setup and now I have the budget to look at my Cellar Lounger Room. The room is fairly small - 4.5m long by 3.5m wide
I suspect I can tick all the boxes if I spend enough money and I see a couple of options
Number #1 priority is good quality music system
Number #2 priory is good quality sound from TV
I looks clear that I get the PlayBar for my wall mounted TV which has optical audio out
The decision I think is around the speakers I choose for listening to music / tv surround sound. I have an Echo Dot in the lounge that I want to retain (the children love it) and I also want to hook in from a mixer unit (I DJ a bit). So I was thinking a pair of Play 1's with a Connect (I would add a switch to support my 2x input requirements) or a pair of Play 5's (I'm considering the Play 5's not Play 3's as a step up form the Play 1's as they have audio in). If I went for the Play 5's could I use one Play 5 input for the Echo Dot and one Play 5 input for the mixer? (is so then not needing a connect would seriously subsidise this option)
If I did go for the Play 5's then would a sub add additional value? Is there a downside to cramming in too much high end spec to a small room or should I be able to adjust settings to get a great sound
And lastly regardless of what speakers I choose can I set it all up so when the input is from the TV to the PlayBar I'm all good to go for TV sound with the Play 1's or 5's in surround mode and when the input is music (Dot/Mixer via Connect or Play 5 inputs / Sonos app) then the Play 1's or 5's are not in surround mode
Greatly appreciate all advice, many thanks
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Best answer by Airgetlam 23 April 2018, 23:19

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7 replies

S
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I had not taken into consideration the size of the Play 5's which I would wall mount and looking at the room size they would be extremely dominant so the decision is Play 1's with a Sub and Connect. One of my question is still relevant: Can I set it all up so when the input is from the TV to the PlayBar the Play 1's automatically go into surround mode and when the input is music (either the Dot/Mixer via Connect or using the Sonos app) then the Play 1's automatically move out of surround mode?
Airgetlam
Yes, there's a setting in the controller app. I'm not at home to actually see the exact path, but it's in room settings>Room with Playbar>Advanced Settings>Surround Settings or something along those lines. In that section, you can set the surrounds from "Ambient" to "Full" for Music playback, which sets them up as full stereo speakers. alongside the PLAYBAR (i.e. it does not turn off the PLAYBAR).

You're going to have difficulty with the DJ aspect. There's a 70ms delay on the analog in on the CONNECT, as the analog data gets transferred to digital, and then buffered to be transmitted to all Sonos devices.

There's not a ton of settings in the controller app that you can adjust for sound. Don't expect an equalizer. They'll sound good out of the box, and depending on your setup, maybe better if you have access to an iOS device so that you can run TruePlay on them. But that's a variable. It really depends on your setup as to whether TruePlay makes a significant difference or not. In most cases in my home, it didn't. In a couple of cases, it did. If you don't have one, or can't borrow one for 10 to 15 minutes, don't feel like you're missing out all that much.
Bruce
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Thanks for the reply Airgetlam. The 70ms delay is new to me, thanks very much for pointing it out. Have researched deeper and possibly I can use an analogue to digital converter and connect the mixer in via the Playbar? I see there are optical switches available so that would avoid pulling out cables. If this is a goer then maybe I could input the Echo Dot via the PlayBar too to save buying the Connect (using an RCA switch)?
Airgetlam
Bleh. You're getting into territory I'm less conversant in. Yes, the optical input is significantly lower in delay, since the signal is already digital, but if you're sending that signal outside of the 5.1 set up speakers, there's still a cost.

Bear with me, I'm going in deep :)

The 5.1 system that the PLAYBAR/PLAYBASE is part of, with the optical connection, communicates to the surrounds and SUB using a 5Ghz low latency/low distance signal. All of the other Sonos speakers use a 2.4Ghz signal, which has significantly greater distance, but isn't quite as low latency. Now, in order to synchronize all of the communication across the 2.4Ghz wifi signal, Sonos does a certain amount of buffering of the signal, in order to make sure that all speakers can play at the same time (in synch). There isn't a way to adjust this, it's just in the code, and not exposed via a tool of any type for adjustment.

I've seem posts both ways... people who say they can't hear the delay, and those who say it's the most horrible thing since....pick your horrible event. So I can't really tell you that it will be bad. I think for DJing it will be. For normal music, I don't think it will be. DJing in my experience requires some immediate/no delay reaction time in order to get everything to work properly.

Conceptually, your thoughts make sense, i.e. it should all work. I'm just unsure about the delay being an issue for your DJ applications. But the PLAYBAR/PLAYBASE don't know/care what the source of the data is, as long as it is either stereo or dolby digital.

And I concur with your instincts not to be pulling switching out optical cables. I've never been a fan of the plastic connections used, which with enough messing with, can get "loose".

And you're most welcome. Hopefully some of this is helpful. Sonos is a great system, but it's not an "end all for every purpose" set of speakers. For instance, it's terrible for being a computer speaker (games/Video) due to that delay. If you want to do music, it's one of the best.

Good luck 🙂
Bruce
S
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Airgetlam - thank you so very much for the advice. I will try it out and make a call whether to keep or return if the delay using the PLAYBAR is problematic. I suspect the mixer will only be used around 5% of the total time as an input so possibly I live with it as I stand to gain so much in other ways with the overall setup. A possible alternative option is to add a lip sync corrector (around £60/$60) on the headphones but I feel this is unlikely to be satisfactory even if I could match up the speaker / headphone delay as the mixer would then become unresponsive by that same delay. Would hardwiring the PLAYBAR / SUB or Play 1's help in anyway? (I suspect not)
S
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An update on the delay which may be useful for anyone else looking to add a mixer to Sonos
Using an Analogue to Digital converter (£11 - www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0796R1VWP) and inputting to the Playbar (a Toslink switch can of course be added cheaply) massively reduces the latency but the headphones are slightly ahead of the speakers. I think it is just too much to live with but should be fairly easy to add a delay (maybe using RF (not bluetooth) headphones might bring it back in sync)
Just as I was going to look into that option I found an old Maya 44 USB card and sat that between my mixer and the headphones, it added way too much delay so I tried inputting via a Connect (uncompressed mode) and I am completely in sync! I had thought it would make the mixer too unresponsive to be usable but that is not the case (bear in mind I am a bedroom not a professional DJ)
S
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An update that may be of interest. I bought a second hand lip sync corrector on eBay for £30. Adding this to the headphones and setting the delay as 100ms brings it (as far as I can tell) perfectly in time with speaker output. It is a slicker solution than using the Maya 44 USB card mentioned above. Of course it makes the mixer 100ms less responsive but not an issue for me (the same caveat as before - I am a bedroom DJ not a professional)
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