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Amp and Sonos speakers

  • 30 March 2021
  • 5 replies
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Hi everyone.

I have recently started to replace my old Denon amp and floor standing speakers with Sonos. Bought 2 Sonos Fives and configured them as stereo pair and it has been working well, better than the floor standing speakers. My intention is to retire these speakers and only use Fives. Next I wanted to connect my Sony tv to Sonos and also use existing non Sonos sub (Ken Kreisel) so I bought Sonos Amp to connect the sub and TV through HDMI. However I realised during the set up that I can’t add Sonos speakers as front stereo. I understand Amp is supposed to help with the traditional speaker set up but it wasn’t obvious anywhere I won’t be able to add the Fives as a front pair or even to the same room. The latter could have solved some part of the issue I am facing.  
As a workaround I have done the following:

 

  • TV is connected to Amp through HDMI. Amp is configured to connect to floor standing speakers but I have left them disconnected.
  • TV headphone out is connected to line in of the Fives.

This works but not ideal because I have to select two rooms (Sonos group is not recognised as speakers in Apple Music and other apps, only Sonos app) and HDMI signal auto turn on works for the sub but not the Fives. 
 

Is there any other alternative option?

Thanks

Vik

 

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Best answer by GuitarSuperstar 30 March 2021, 07:29

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5 replies

Userlevel 7

The Sonos Fives weren’t designed to be used as front channel home theater speakers. And, unfortunately, you have chosen the wrong combination of Sonos devices and speakers to create a home theater setup that you will be happy with.

With your existing equipment, your best option is to continue to use your old floor standing speakers as the two front channel speakers along with your old sub both connected to the Sonos Amp. Then move your two Fives to the rear of the room and connect them to the Amp as surround speakers.

Thanks for the reply. 
As such I am not trying to use this as home theatre set up. I did not like the lows from Sonos sub so wanted to keep the better non Sonos sub. Fives work as stereo pair anyway and it won’t make sense to buy a different set up for tv alone in the same living room. 
 

is there another Sonos product that will work with Sonos fronts and non Sonos sub. Would that be Arc?
 

in my current set up, when I play two rooms - fives as stereo and Sub through Amp, it works but can’t get the right balance. 

No, just the Amp.

Well Amp doesn’t allow you to add Fives as stereo pair in the same system. If the only way is to maintain two systems then I could have mainatained Denon as a second system instead of Amp and could still play music or tv to two separate systems.

Also there is delay which I can’t fine tune. Why doesn’t Sonos allow custom delay on line in?

Userlevel 7

@edelabcd You probably need to give up using the Fives with your TV unless you are going to use them as rear surround speakers. And since you don’t like the Sonos Sub, your Sonos options are limited. Maybe you should consider returning the Fives and Amp and go with a non-Sonos home theater setup, or go with my recommendation above but maybe consider getting a new set of left front and right front non-Sonos speakers to connect to the Amp.