Sonos Amp Wiring Question

B

bugman61

Audiophyte
Last summer I installed an outdoor audio setup with two Sonos Amps. One amp for a patio zone with 2 episode 8" wall mount speakers (wired in parallel to R) and 2 episode 8" SVC rock speakers (wired in parallel to L), and one amp for a pool zone with 4 episode 8" SVC rock speakers (2 wired in parallel to L and 2 to R). My problem is that I have always noticed a volume difference between the pairs of speakers wired in parallel. The wire runs are between 50 and 150' with 12 gauge wire buried in conduit. The speaker with the longer run of a parallel pair is always quieter than the speaker with the shorter run. It is more pronounced with the rock speakers than the wall mount. I did a test running white noise to the system and the far speaker would read a lower volume than the near (80dB vs 85dB). Assuming this was a result of the uneven wire lengths, I added addition wire to the short runs to make them even. This brought the volume closer together, but there still was a 3-4dB gap. It's less noticeable, but I can still tell that the difference is there, and it is driving me crazy. Has anyone encounter a similar problem, or have any suggestions? All of my searching on parallel wiring gives results about the benefits of series vs parallel, and searches on wire length gives results about the effects of length between different channels.
 
TLS Guy

TLS Guy

Seriously, I have no life.
Last summer I installed an outdoor audio setup with two Sonos Amps. One amp for a patio zone with 2 episode 8" wall mount speakers (wired in parallel to R) and 2 episode 8" SVC rock speakers (wired in parallel to L), and one amp for a pool zone with 4 episode 8" SVC rock speakers (2 wired in parallel to L and 2 to R). My problem is that I have always noticed a volume difference between the pairs of speakers wired in parallel. The wire runs are between 50 and 150' with 12 gauge wire buried in conduit. The speaker with the longer run of a parallel pair is always quieter than the speaker with the shorter run. It is more pronounced with the rock speakers than the wall mount. I did a test running white noise to the system and the far speaker would read a lower volume than the near (80dB vs 85dB). Assuming this was a result of the uneven wire lengths, I added addition wire to the short runs to make them even. This brought the volume closer together, but there still was a 3-4dB gap. It's less noticeable, but I can still tell that the difference is there, and it is driving me crazy. Has anyone encounter a similar problem, or have any suggestions? All of my searching on parallel wiring gives results about the benefits of series vs parallel, and searches on wire length gives results about the effects of length between different channels.
The problem is that it is a badly engineered system. The wire runs are too long for low impedance speakers.

There are two acceptable ways of doing this.

The first is to use a 70 volt system and transformers.

The second and better alternative is to use either powered speakers, or speakers with the amp close by and use XLR balanced connections out to the speakers.
 
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