Audio over Sonos wireless vs. wired LAN

  • 1 December 2021
  • 8 replies
  • 2383 views
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Planning an Arc and a Sub for a living room. It’s new construction, so I have the option to run Cat 6 lines for each of them, going through my home LAN’s switch. Alternatively, I could have just the Arc wired, and leave the Sub to communicate over a dedicated Sonos wireless network.

This document doesn’t even mention the wired LAN option, so hard to find good information about it:

https://support.sonos.com/s/article/3235?language=en_US

(What it calls “wired” is actually having a single Sonos device act as a wireless router.)

My questions:

  • Which approach would you prefer, if both are possible?
  • With the Arc sitting on a stone mantel and the Sub under some cabinet shelves ~10 feet away, is there any risk that Sonos’s wireless will perform worse than wired ethernet?
  • Or is there any risk that other LAN traffic will interfere with audio?

All things being equal, I suppose not having a cable from the Sub plugged in to the wall is slightly easier, but it’s not hard to do if it will help...

8 replies

el rubio

hi @dansmith21 my recommendation is to foresee wiring at any potential speaker point - a wired Sonos device with wifi enabled interconnects through its Sonosnet - in my humble opinion you will not regret it - I did the same during a refurbishing project with a central switch

 
mix.bioss.net
K

hi @dansmith21 my recommendation is to foresee wiring at any potential speaker point

 

I agree; my experience suggests that wired is always better especially for challenging use cases like grouped play. My Sub is not wired though, but since it wirelessly connects directly to the speaker it is bonded to, that is why I reckon that it hasn’t needed wiring. 

And in general, new construction is a good time to run LAN wires throughout the house, with wireless use then restricted to only within each room from the Lan output jack in the room to the many devices that are WiFi/internet enabled, that will proliferate in future.

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wireless use then restricted to only within each room from the Lan output jack in the room

I think you’re misunderstanding my question. The Arc and Sub are in the same room.

There are three configurations:

  1. No ethernet cables. Speakers both receive internet audio and talk to each other over my home WiFi. Sonos calls this a “wireless setup”.
  2. One ethernet cable to the Arc. Arc receives internet audio over ethernet, and talks to Sub over a Sonos wireless network, independent of my home WiFi. Sonos calls this a “wired setup”.
  3. Two ethernet cables, one to each speaker. Speakers receive internet audio and talk to each other over ethernet via my home LAN. No wireless radio signals are used at all. The article I pointed to doesn’t talk about this, but I’ve seen it described in forum posts. Call it an “all-wired setup”.

My question is whether I should plan for (B) or (C). I can imagine reasons either might be better, but I’m not sure how it will work out in practice.

K

 

My question is whether I should plan for (B) or (C). I can imagine reasons either might be better, but I’m not sure how it will work out in practice.

My quoted comment was with respect to leveraging the all house LAN wiring if it is installed, by devices other than Sonos, so that they get stable WiFi even in distant rooms. Even if Sonos is able to dispense with it by running with just one Sonos unit wired to the LAN.

To your quoted, I would go with B because the way Sub communicates back to the main unit is a special case as opposed to how independent Sonos speakers do so with each other - where all of them wired to one core network would always be more stable than wireless - be it totally so or with just one Sonos unit wired to the network.

In your case, I would have a LAN jack terminated close to the Sub simply because it can be done without too much resources, and see how things go with C. If there is any trouble, reverting to B would just mean removing the cable from Sub to the LAN jack. The LAN jack itself will then remain idle until it finds use in the future to provide a wired access point to the net for any other device that needs WiFi.

ratty
  1. No ethernet cables. Speakers both receive internet audio and talk to each other over my home WiFi. Sonos calls this a “wireless setup”.

Not quite. In a home theatre setup the master player connects to the router; the Sub/surrounds talk to the master unit using its private 5GHz signal. They don’t intercommunicate over the home WiFi. 

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  1. No ethernet cables. Speakers both receive internet audio and talk to each other over my home WiFi. Sonos calls this a “wireless setup”.

Not quite. In a home theatre setup the master player connects to the router; the Sub/surrounds talk to the master unit using its private 5GHz signal. They don’t intercommunicate over the home WiFi. 

Not what the support document I linked to says. Note that the red lines only exist in the “wired setup” (what I’m calling (B)).

My guess is the Arc only has one WiFi antenna, so can only connect to one network at a time. It can’t both get audio input from my home WiFi and send audio output via Sonos private WiFi.

But doesn’t matter to me—the Arc will be connected with ethernet either way.

jgatie

Not what the support document I linked to says. Note that the red lines only exist in the “wired setup” (what I’m calling (B)).

My guess is the Arc only has one WiFi antenna, so can only connect to one network at a time. It can’t both get audio input from my home WiFi and send audio output via Sonos private WiFi.

But doesn’t matter to me—the Arc will be connected with ethernet either way.

 

Trust @ratty over any support document; he's been known to correct them on many an occasion.  In this case, he's 100% correct, the Arc connects to the surrounds and Sub over a private 5Ghz signal.  Further, the Arc is quite capable of connecting to both your Wi-Fi and the private 5 Ghz signal.

ratty
  1. No ethernet cables. Speakers both receive internet audio and talk to each other over my home WiFi. Sonos calls this a “wireless setup”.

Not quite. In a home theatre setup the master player connects to the router; the Sub/surrounds talk to the master unit using its private 5GHz signal. They don’t intercommunicate over the home WiFi. 

Not what the support document I linked to says. Note that the red lines only exist in the “wired setup” (what I’m calling (B)).

The little dotted lines in those simplistic pictures don’t even address the case of a home theatre setup.

 

My guess is the Arc only has one WiFi antenna, so can only connect to one network at a time. It can’t both get audio input from my home WiFi and send audio output via Sonos private WiFi.

Your guess is incorrect. All the home theatre master players contain two radios: 2.4GHz and 5GHz. The 5GHz radio is only used to connect its satellites (which is also why the HT master can’t connect to a 5GHz WiFi).

The private 5GHz connects the satellites in both modes -- Ethernet/’wired’/SonosNet or WiFi/’wireless’ -- unless both the master and the satellites are wired.

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