Tom Salinsky

Since the last Media Centre update, we’ve gained Sonos One speakers in three rooms, which by-and-large have worked very well, although in our loft conversion, the WiFi signal sometimes drops out which can create issues. However, the incredibly good value Sony Blu-ray player-cum-AV receiver has been wheezing and groaning a lot and keeps turning itself off when not in use, so it is clearly going to fail some time in the next six months. At the same time, I totted up everything I was paying to Sky and realised that replacing my dish-based solution with a single Now TV subscription would save me hundreds of pounds a year, so I rang up and cancelled everything. That makes the Sony device even less needed. It’s a Blu-ray player but I have all my Blu-rays on my NAS drive. And it’s an AV receiver which never switches inputs because now everything is on my Apple TV. So really it’s just a 5.1 amp. And there are better, more modern versions of those.

I took delivery today of a Sonos Beam and two Sonos One SLs (SL for speechless, i.e. they don’t have mics) and took the opportunity to clear out some of the clutter in my AV cabinet, untangle some cables, label things properly and so on.

The ideal way to connect a Sonos speaker to an Apple TV is to use your TVs EARC HDMI out, which requires a newer TV than I’ve got. You can use an optical connection, but that would mean taking my TV off the wall to access it, and I wanted to do some future proofing, so I also got an HDMI switch/splitter which will take two inputs and send the video of one to the TV and the audio to the speaker. In practice, I didn’t bother hooking the Sky box up to the other input because it doesn’t do anything now I’ve stopped paying – I can’t even play back old shows I’ve recorded. But now (I think) if I upgrade the Apple TV HD to one which provides Dolby Atmos, then that will work, and if I ever have occasion to add another device, then again I have the option.

Configuring the Sonos Beam was very straightforward and so was adding the rear surround speakers. As well as hard-wiring the speaker with HDMI cables, I also hard-wired it to the Internet, fearing WiFi drop outs, but that’s not possible with the rear speakers. I did order a Sonos Boost, a £99 device which creates a Sonos-only WiFi network to keep devices in touch with each other, but DHL declined to deliver it, for reasons so far unknown. However, it doesn’t look like it’s going to be necessary (fingers crossed).

Final hurdle was the Harmony remote. The Harmony range of remotes was by far the best solution available to operate multiple devices from a single controller, but Logitech announced that they would no longer be supporting or updating them a while back and now I live in fear that mine will wither on the vine. It was very unwilling to have my HDMI switcher added to its configuration, and although it seemed to understand the Sonos Beam, adjusting the volume over WiFi was very hit-and-miss. After much experimenting, and Googling, I ended up putting the old Sony system back into the Harmony database, then telling the Sonos speaker I was using my old Sony remote to operate the volume over IR and finally telling Harmony to adjust the volume using the Sony amp and denying to it all knowledge of anything made by Sonos. It’s a kludge, but it works.

It also works with the three existing speakers, so I can potter down to the kitchen, and have the TV audio briefly playing on the Sonos One in there and not miss anything, which is nice. And I don’t think I’d realised how loud the fan in the dust-filled Sony amp was until it wasn’t on the whole time.

I didn’t bother with the Sonos Sub Mini, which costs almost as much as the main sound bar, and which was frustratingly millimeters too large to fit in the cabinet, so this is a five channel system, not true 5.1, but in my small TV room I haven’t noticed the lack of bass so far. Maybe if I feel the need, I can get it for my birthday.