5/17/2023 0 Comments Sonance amplifierThat makes it far more capable of powering bigger, more demanding speakers. The biggest improvement in this regard over the Connect:Amp is an increase in power from a very respectable 55W to a genuinely substantial 125W. Generally speaking, though, the Amp is designed to be very flexible when it comes to partnering speakers. If you connect the Amp to a pair of Sonance speakers, you can use the Trueplay feature to tune the sound to your room. It’s important to note that these are not typical Sonos speakers - they’re simply passive speakers designed to work well with Sonos components from aesthetic and audio perspectives. On the subject of ceiling and outdoor speakers, Sonos has partnered with Sonance to create a range of speakers under the Sonos Architectural by Sonance banner. This can be useful if you’re using the Amp to power ceiling or outdoor speakers from which you’re not intending to create a proper stereo image. 4.0 or 4.1 (with a subwoofer) is the maximum system possible, and we think that will suit the intended audience just fine.Īt the other end of the audio spectrum, the Amp can also be set to output in dual mono, so each of the two speakers connected to it receive the full, stereo signal. Surround-rear and Dolby Atmos setups are predictably unsupported, too. Instead, it creates a so-called ‘phantom’ centre through clever processing. That will make for a far more consistent surround sound presentation than mixing traditional hi-fi speakers and Sonos’s wireless speakers.Īnd yes, we really are talking four-speaker systems here: the Amp is designed to work without a dedicated centre channel. The latter is actually the better choice, sonically speaking, as it enables you to create a system using four identical speakers, or at least four from the same range. You can either, as you can with Sonos’s soundbars, add two of the company’s speakers ( Play:1s make the most sense), or you can add a second Amp and two standard, passive speakers of your choosing. That said, ‘proper’ surround sound is an option, should you want it. That will make it too limiting for power users with umpteen sources, but that’s sort of the point. Like the Beam, the Amp is intended for quite simple systems with only a couple of sources that are connected directly to the TV, with the audio then being stripped out and sent to the Amp via HDMI ARC. There’s almost no setup required, and the result is a seamlessly integrated AV system. Plug the Amp into your TV and HDMI-CEC will be used so that the two become interoperable: the Amp will automatically switch to TV sound whenever you turn on your TV, and your telly’s remote will change the Amp’s volume, for example. It’s perhaps the latter that’s most interesting, because it means you can add a sub to an Amp-based system without the need to fork out for Sonos’s own, expensive, wireless Sub.īut yet more interesting and useful is the addition of an HDMI socket that gives the Amp all of the TV-partnering features of the dinky Sonos Beam soundbar. You get a pair of speaker terminals, of course, two ethernet sockets (the amp can act as an ethernet bridge for other devices, should you require), a stereo analogue input, and a subwoofer output. ![]() Predictably, the rear of the Amp is where you’ll find its connections, which are almost identical to those of the Connect:Amp. You won’t hear it in action, either, thanks to a chimney-like design that passively keeps the densely-packed innards cool and quiet. Only available in matte black and with just three, touch-sensitive ‘buttons’ on the front (play/pause and two that are context-sensitive, but usually used for changing volume), it blends in incredibly well. Sonos products have always been intentionally inconspicuous in design, but the Amp is the stealthiest yet. We can’t imagine many non-audiophile buyers finding themselves with the need or desire to stack Amps, but it’s an option all the same. These same conversations have lead to the Amp being stackable, so that a tower of them can be created and hidden in a central location, with speaker cables snaking into various rooms of the house. The new dimensions are apparently borne of conversations that Sonos has been having with custom installers, who’ve long used the Connect:Amp in customer setups, despite that never really having been its intended use. In terms of volume it’s very marginally the smaller of the two, but its proportions are markedly different, with its shorter, deeper and slightly wider design making it better suited to placement on a hi-fi rack or being hidden out of sight. ![]() The Amp’s appearance is at once more serious and more svelte than that of the Connect:Amp.
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