Those speakers usually were installed with an in-floor or even in-ceiling subwoofer just like a regular acoustimass system.

What about using the new Bose sound touch amplifiers. Essentially the same thing as Sonos, but maintains the Bose centric theme throughout.

Agreed.  I know KEF has a small 4" speaker and I'm sure others do too.

I just need to help set the expectation for the client and then have a backup plan for replacing the Bose speakers.  I'd need to pull every single speaker out to ensure how much room I have to work with which is probably at least a half day labor.

The client really wants to do away with the Bose remote controls that are in each room and just control using an app so I think retaining the Bose amps in any fashion is going to be difficult to use and not really what the client wants.

Only have SA-3 in three of the 10 zones... if each zone had the SA-3 I think what you suggest would work.  I'm hesitant to have the system powered with a combination of Sonos & Bose.  Would prefer to leave with the Bose amplification if possible, but if not, swap everything to Sonos Connect Amps.

In agreement... this isn't the type of thing that I'd normally pursue, but came as a referral through a good client and even though I haven't met the homeowner in person (this is a vacation home) he seems like a nice guy and I actually have a little breathing room between phases on existing projects.

There's also networking/wifi upgrades needed on the property and a total of 6 Panasonic Elite plasmas all manufactured in 2006-2007 so likely some video upgrades in the future too.

That was the first thing I checked... I can't find a spec on the speakers, but the amps are rated at 6ohm minimum and each amp only has a single pair of speakers connected so I'm guessing they are 6-8ohm (or higher).

Thanks for the info

This seems contradictory to what I've found.  The amps are rated at 6ohm minimum and there's only a single pair of speakers connected to each amp so they have to be at least 6 ohm.

The amps are SA-2 & SA-3 which seem to be designed for DA systems and are setup with optional in-wall volume controls which are resistance based.  The only room with surround has a totally different amp (TA-2) which does appear to be designed for home theater with LCR, surround & sub outs.

Subs would sure make the system sound better, but none of the DA zones had subs (only the Family Room with surround sound).  in teh Family Room, the sub was an acoustimass module placed inside a cabinet with solid doors and had wire spliced and wire nutted and connected to a RCA sub out on the TA-2 amp.  I never tested it, but to me it looked like they had a passive sub connected to a line level out so I'm not convinced it was even working...

I'm not a Bose dealer, so don't want to get involved with adding any new Bose equipment.  I did suggest to the client that he contact a Bose dealer for a competing bid to see if they might have a better upgrade path than converting to Sonos.

SB Smarthomes,

I suspect that there is equalization for the Bose speakers, somewhere. If you have the means, do a frequency response sweep of the Bose amplifiers and the controller. If there is equalization, would the CONNECT:AMP's tone controls provide a reasonable approximation? You should also measure the impedance (not the DC resistance) of the Bose speakers. CONNECT:AMP will work down to 4-Ohms, then take action against the load. If you are really ambitious, you could brew up a little filter network to be inserted between a CONNECT and a flat amplifier that would approximate the Bose equalizer.

Another strategy would be to drive the Bose speakers with an unequalized source and ask the customer if the result is satisfactory.

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I always let the customer tell me what sounds good enough. Over the years I've sold plenty of stuff that I don't enjoy the sound of, but the customer loves. I always ask if 'A' sounds better than 'B', I never tell the customer which sounds best. When they tell me which sounds best, I then ask "why?" This will lead the conversation where it needs to go.

From what I've been able to find the little Bose speakers are 6-Ohms which is also the minimum rating listed on the Bose amp.  I also found some pictures online of the inside of the Bose speakers and they appear to have a small internal crossover made up of several capacitors so I'm sure it's just a low quality high-pass filter to keep bass from damaging the drivers.

The internal passive crossover seems to make sense because the same model amplifiers are driving 3 different types of Bose speakers (indoor in-wall/in-ceiling, outdoor surface mount and in-ground garden) which all seem to have different sizes of drivers.  Since the amps don't have any settings for crossovers or DSP to match the different speakers, I'm sure all the speakers have their own internal crossover.

Before Ernie corrects me... I guess they aren't really crossovers since the speakers only have full range drivers.  The more correct term would be filter.

Because of this, I'm fairly certain the Sonos Connect Amp will drive the speakers without issues.  I'm sure it won't sound very good, but probably not any worse than it already does.

I tried call Bose years ago to try and get specifications on similar speakers so we could use our own amplifiers. They were unable to provide any information! We had limited success. If I remember correctly, they run their speakers at very low impedance, 4 ohms or less??

We have had not much luck running the ConnectAmps at impedance near 4 ohms, they seem to shut down when we kick up the volume.

Good luck!! Lets know how it goes.

Impedance keeps coming up, and that was my first and initial concern but the Bose amps are clearly labeled 6 Ohm minimum and this is also stated in the manual for the amp.

I can't find any impedance information for the speakers, but they have to be a minimum of 6 Ohm to work with the amps.