Question

how many play1's can I connect to my playbar...?


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Hey, 

So i'm getting a playbar soon and i want to connect my existing and new Play1's to the playbar. From reading online it would appear i can connect two providing i use a bridge however im keen to know if I can connect more than the two and if so is it the same process?

Also, can i connect Play 3 or 5's to my playbar. thinking of buying some with the playbar and unsure if i should stay with P1's

Thanks 

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30 replies

Userlevel 6
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You can only have two Play 1's or two Play 3's as surround sound with a playbar. You can add more but they wouldn't be bonded and you would have to group them.
The software right now will only allow you to connect 2 Play 1s or 2 Play 3s for surround sound mode.
If you are just grouping for Stereo then you can do as many as you like, including play 5s... but that's a bit pointless if you ask me.

If you are investing in a playbar + play 1s/3s for Surround sound then please do your homework first and make sure your TV is capable of Dolby 5.1 Audio pass through or that you have Bluray player that will do DTS to DD5.1 conversion - otherwise you may not be happy with the end result and it is quite a lot of money to invest.
personally I would be buying a sub to go with your playbar / play 1's. As far as I inow you can only connect 2x play's ( 1/3/5's ) to the playbar, however, if you seriously wanted more speakers in the same room you could just create a different zone and group them. However I believe this may have some delay involved due to the latency of certain play modules, but I'm sure someone more tech savvy can answer that question.
Userlevel 6
Badge +16
personally I would be buying a sub to go with your playbar / play 1's. As far as I inow you can only connect 2x play's ( 1/3/5's ) to the playbar, however, if you seriously wanted more speakers in the same room you could just create a different zone and group them. However I believe this may have some delay involved due to the latency of certain play modules, but I'm sure someone more tech savvy can answer that question.
You can only have Play 1's or Play 3's bonded to the Playbar for surround sound. Yes you can stereo pair any of the Play 1,3,5 and then group them to the Playbar but there might be a delay with voice when watching TV.
Userlevel 6
Badge +16
personally I would be buying a sub to go with your playbar / play 1's. As far as I inow you can only connect 2x play's ( 1/3/5's ) to the playbar, however, if you seriously wanted more speakers in the same room you could just create a different zone and group them. However I believe this may have some delay involved due to the latency of certain play modules, but I'm sure someone more tech savvy can answer that question.
You can also use the connect:amp with ceiling speakers to achieve the surround sound, a lot more expensive but can be done that way to.
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Thanks for the comments/advice TV is compatible so no worries there.

End goal is 5.1 was just wondering how many you could add to the playbar however i do only intend to have 2 P1's and eventually the sub, that said given the output of the play1 im not actually sure i would want the Sub but i'll no doubt get it to complete the setup. 

Do I need to get a bridge to connect a Playbar with extra speakers or can i do it over my own wifi network. I have a time machine which is dual band and have my sonos on a separate band to my everyday devices. 
Userlevel 7
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When connecting Play:1s or Sub you need to be in SonosNet mode.  Which means you need 1 Sonos device (any device - can be bridge) hooked to your router.
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When connecting Play:1s or Sub you need to be in SonosNet mode. 
My router isn't in the same room as my TV where my playbar and P1's will be, any solutions? 
Userlevel 7
Badge +18
When connecting Play:1s or Sub you need to be in SonosNet mode. 
Just get yourself a Bridge and hook that to your router. SonosNet will build itself from there.
Go find somewhere you can properly listen. You will not believe the difference the sub makes 😉
Userlevel 7
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The Sub does add a lot
Userlevel 6
Badge +16
The Sub does add a lot
It sure does, heard it in store and its DEEP even with store background noise. Her indoors stopping me spending £599 on one at the moment.
Userlevel 7
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The Sub does add a lot
and it wasn't orange
Userlevel 2
You can add a bunch of more play components to your physical room. You will simply have to create additional sonos rooms and group them to your playbar+sub+rear surrounds room. To get around the latency and echo issues that your group will encounter, simply go to your playbar settings and adjust the lip sync as needed. My current group in my living room consists of a playbar+sub+four play 1's, and it sounds great. So great that I'm considering adding another pair of play 5's to this configuration to achieve an even fuller room filling sound!
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You can add a bunch of more play components to your physical room. You will simply have to create additional sonos rooms and group them to your playbar+sub+rear surrounds room. To get around the latency and echo issues that your group will encounter, simply go to your playbar settings and adjust the lip sync as needed. My current group in my living room consists of a playbar+sub+four play 1's, and it sounds great. So great that I'm considering adding another pair of play 5's to this configuration to achieve an even fuller room filling sound!
wow, that's amazing :) 
Userlevel 6
Badge +16
You can add a bunch of more play components to your physical room. You will simply have to create additional sonos rooms and group them to your playbar+sub+rear surrounds room. To get around the latency and echo issues that your group will encounter, simply go to your playbar settings and adjust the lip sync as needed. My current group in my living room consists of a playbar+sub+four play 1's, and it sounds great. So great that I'm considering adding another pair of play 5's to this configuration to achieve an even fuller room filling sound!
The problem with grouped speakers added to the Playbar 5.1 setup is that when you adjust the volume on the Playbar/Sub/Play 1's using the TV's remote the volume on the grouped Play 1's doesn't adjust. It does if you use the controller. You can use the sonos connect:amp and have upto 4 wall/ceiling speakers as your surround sound, and volume would adjust to match playbar/sub when watching TV https://sonos.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2248/~/set-up-a-sonos-connect%3Aamp-as-surround-rearshttps://sonos.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2248/~/set-up-a-sonos-connect%3Aamp-as-surround-rearshttps://sonos.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2248/~/set-up-a-sonos-connect%3Aamp-as-surround-rears
You can add a bunch of more play components to your physical room. You will simply have to create additional sonos rooms and group them to your playbar+sub+rear surrounds room. To get around the latency and echo issues that your group will encounter, simply go to your playbar settings and adjust the lip sync as needed. My current group in my living room consists of a playbar+sub+four play 1's, and it sounds great. So great that I'm considering adding another pair of play 5's to this configuration to achieve an even fuller room filling sound!

That's exactly what I was looking for.... So you can have a playbar, sub and 4 Play 1's... then add 2 Play 5's at the back of the room to completely fill the room by adjusting the lip sync till it sounds right?...the sounds awesome to me
Userlevel 7
Badge +22
I don't think it would work.

You can add a Sub and surrounds (Play1, Play 3 (?) or Play 5 Gen 2) to make a 5.1 set-up - You can then group other speakers but that will add a 70 mS delay BEHIND the Playbar. So you can't adjust so the additional grouped speakers are synced with the Playbar or video.

The only think I'm not fully clear on is the 70mS delay that I know is added when you group speakers to the Playbar/Sub/Surrounds I just don't know if the Playbar audio stays synced.

Don't think it matters much as I think if they all sync they will likely be so far out of sync with video as to be unwatchable
I don't think it would work.

You can add a Sub and surrounds (Play1, Play 3 (?) or Play 5 Gen 2) to make a 5.1 set-up - You can then group other speakers but that will add a 70 mS delay BEHIND the Playbar. So you can't adjust so the additional grouped speakers are synced with the Playbar or video.

The only think I'm not fully clear on is the 70mS delay that I know is added when you group speakers to the Playbar/Sub/Surrounds I just don't know if the Playbar audio stays synced.

Yeah I get where you are coming from.... Perhaps adjusting the video sync on the TV or video source device might alleviate some of the lag and then tweak the sync on the playbar and continue tweak until it looks and sounds acceptable....

Don't think it matters much as I think if they all sync they will likely be so far out of sync with video as to be unwatchable
And they won't be the surround channels, you'll be getting the front stereo channels coming from behind you, which will sound stupid.

That's exactly what I was looking for.... So you can have a playbar, sub and 4 Play 1's... then add 2 Play 5's at the back of the room to completely fill the room by adjusting the lip sync till it sounds right?...the sounds awesome to me


You can do it, but honestly why would you want to? You will be negating all the effects of surround sound, taking all the carefully crafted directional effects and diffusing them around the room. It will be a muddy mess. In a surround sound system, each discrete channel should be anchored to a certain speaker position, so that when a car goes across the screen, you can hear it go from the left to center to right speakers, or when a bullet whizzes past your right ear, you hear it go from front right to surround right. Adding more speakers playing all channels will do nothing but confuse the ear, because you will be hearing the car/bullet out of all the grouped speakers, causing the directional effect to be muddy and non-directional, ruining the surround effect.

More speakers does not automatically mean better sound. Matter of fact, when those extra speakers are not playing discrete channels, you are going to get worse sound. Stick to the standard 5.1 setup of 1 Playbar, two surrounds and a Sub. That is all you need, adding more to be grouped will ruin the effect. If you are bent on spending money on extra speakers, use those speakers in another room, where the multi-room features of Sonos can shine.

That's exactly what I was looking for.... So you can have a playbar, sub and 4 Play 1's... then add 2 Play 5's at the back of the room to completely fill the room by adjusting the lip sync till it sounds right?...the sounds awesome to me


You can do it, but honestly why would you want to? You will be negating all the effects of surround sound, taking all the carefully crafted directional effects and diffusing them around the room. It will be a muddy mess. In a surround sound system, each discrete channel should be anchored to a certain speaker position, so that when a car goes across the screen, you can hear it go from the left to center to right speakers, or when a bullet whizzes past your right ear, you hear it go from front right to surround right. Adding more speakers playing all channels will do nothing but confuse the ear, because you will be hearing the car/bullet out of all the grouped speakers, causing the directional effect to be muddy and non-directional, ruining the surround effect.

More speakers does not automatically mean better sound. Matter of fact, when those extra speakers are not playing discrete channels, you are going to get worse sound. Stick to the standard 5.1 setup of 1 Playbar, two surrounds and a Sub. That is all you need, adding more to be grouped will ruin the effect. If you are bent on spending money on extra speakers, use those speakers in another room, where the multi-room features of Sonos can shine.


Yeah.... on reflection, you are right.... I have a huge square open living space on the 1st floor of my house, bedrooms are downstairs... the 1st floor has a vaulted open ceiling , wooden floors and solid walls, so I was just worried I wouldn't get a full enough sound with just the playbar, sub and 2 play 1,3 or 5's...granted I only have a soundbar and sub now, but they are fairly decent ones, we sit quite far away from the TV hence why I was looking to expand, but I might try the bundle and see, I'm sure it will be an improvement on what I have today so that can only be a good thing.
The PLAYBAR lip-sync setting is pretty coarse, so tinkering with it to attempt to sync grouped Players won't be exact.

Also, as Stuart says, the entire group could be too far behind the video for comfort. This could, however, potentially be addressed by bypassing the TV for the audio. Audio taken direct from an external TV box (PVR, DTT, cable, etc) is often 100-150ms ahead of the picture. One may then need to dial in some delay at the external box, to stop audio being ahead of the picture (which the brain dislikes a lot more than when audio's behind).
I have a question that is very similar, but more about listening to music rather than TV out of this proposed setup.

I understand what is being said regarding the 5.1 surround sound setup and why it wouldn't make sense to add a grouped speaker (in my case a play 3). However, what would happen if you did the following for music listening?

1 Playbar - Front Speaker
2x Play 1s - Added as surrounds
1 Play three in back, grouped with the others

Would this sound good? What happens from a stereo perspective when you listen to music out of the Playbar + sounds, does it play "mono" out of the playbar and as a R/L stereo pair out of the play 1s? If this is the case, would the play three in the back be playing the same as the playbar, would their be a delay?
For music there'd be no delay, and the group would play in sync. However a single PLAY:3 would have its channels the wrong way round. Its left would be on your right since it's positioned behind you. All in all, it would not sound that great as channel separation would be somewhat muddied by the PLAY:3. Unless you just want a wash of sound, say for a party, you'd be better off without it.

As for the PLAYBAR it plays in stereo. L from the left, R from the right, and a combination of the two from the centre. The tweeters on the ends in particular would each render their specific channel.