Sonos Amp, Sonos Connect and C$

[johnnyboy]

Sorry if this is a little long and I am a newb. My questions have to do with Sonos. I know it may be a bit disfavored in C4 circles, but it is what I have in all 4 of my AV rooms. My original dealer went out of business and current dealer is doing best he can. But it is hard to track/fix everything a prior Programmer did. Before getting into any discussion about whether Sonos should be there at all, I wanted all C4 gear and I had Triad amps, etc, but the out of business dealer switched them out for Sonos gear (the four items listed below).
Here is my setup and all speakers are wired, and all devices are ethernet connected. Each room has its own Alexa device, and most music is called up with "play XXX" and Alexa responds with "playing XXX on Sonos." I have an Alexa "group" for each room. Each room has its own SR260 other than the Living Room and Kitchen share one (those two rooms are really one big room physically.)
1. Master Bedroom. EA1, Frame TV, Sonos Amp, four wired speakers.
2. Guest Room. EA1, Frame TV, Sonos Connect and Pioneer AVR with 5.1 system.
3. Living Room. EA3, Frame TV, Sonos Connect and Integra AVR with 9.1 ATMOS system.
4. Kitchen. No controller, no TV, Sonos Amp and four wired speakers.
 TVs, controllers, and streaming through C4 all work fine. Its streaming through the Sonos devices that seems weird to me because of the following:
     a.    Sonos shows up on the room's OSD as "Sonos in Living Room" or "Sonos in Kitchen" etc., but every room's Sonos experience is different. 
     b.    In some rooms the use of the Sonos cuts off the OSD of the C4 icons for other devices and for Sonos itself. If I use Sonos and then hit the C$ red button the Sonos music stops even though               it still appears as a session and can be resumed by deselecting and reselecting that room.
     c.    Some rooms permit adding the music session to other rooms and some do not. 
     d.    In the Master bedroom, Sonos works perfectly. It uses my Sonos favorites and still allows me to use the interface with C4's OSD without any interference.
     e.    Maybe because stuff is different, the experience will be quite different from room ro room.
     f.    Maybe some of the settings in the AVRs are causing problems. There are so many HDMI and AV software settings in those AVRs I am not sure they are right. (The Integra has a Sonos                        software setting; the Pioneer does not.
     g.    Maybe is is how the Sonos Connects are hooked up, e.g., should the audio out from the Sonos Connects go to the “CD” on the AVRs or should it go to the audio in of the EA controllers?
     h.    Do AVRs have a source that permits the HDMI OSD to be transmitted and used at the same time an audio source is playing? Again, the selections in the AVR set up are myriad!!
 

Is there a treatise out there on proper Sonos connection to a C4 system with AVrs even if Sonos use is “disfavored.” Should a good dealer know everything there is to know about this?
 

[Matt Lowe]

Sonos needs to work on its own using its own app. So start there. Set all of the devices to the correct device inputs and make sure you have full control over the devices from the sonos app. After that make sure those connections match in control4.  You can run sonos into control4 but then you will have trouble matching the audio up. It can be done but it is fairly advanced to get it setup. WE talk about some of these pitfalls in our Composer Home video tutorial on you tube.