I have a customer that has a small theater room with existing in-ceiling speakers. He wants to convert to Sonos for ease of use. Can I use a Beam at the TV and then wire an AMP to the front left and right and a second AMP to the surrounds? I can see that you can use two amps in a four-channel surround setup but I cannot find any confirmation on adding a Beam or ARC for a center channel.

Thank you for any help you can give.

Couldn't you plug a sonos into the existing system?

Sonos won't necessarily make for an easier system. Add a universal remote to a standard surround sound system for the win.

In your configuration, the Beam/Arc will act as L/C/R. I'm not familiar with a way to make it act as a center only.

Basically the Beam represents the front soundstage. So you cannot do what you are proposing. Here are your options:
1. Do not use a Beam and simply use an Amp for the front speakers. Adding a 2nd Amp for the rear speakers.
2. Use a Beam/Arc for the front speakers. Abandon the other front speakers. Add an Amp for the rears.
3. Go with option 2. but use the same rear speaker Amp and connect that to all 4 speakers that are in-ceiling/wall. This would only work if the front speakers are in-ceiling speakers vs. in-wall. If they are true front left/right speakers this won't work. If they are in-ceiling and all 8 ohm speakers, you could try this.

They are already using a universal remote and somehow regularly goof things up to the point where the remote won’t work. I’m trying to just use the Apple TV remote to turn things on and off and run volume. They are OK just using the TV speakers, but I want to give them an option to have surroundsound with using just the Apple TV remote.

Then 1 or 2 Amps is the only solution.

Don’t locate the Amps too far from the TV. Extenders for ARC are not 100% reliable. Amps at the TV would be most reliable.

BTW, my personal opinion is that universal remotes are only as good as the programmer. That being said, the right programming should never put the client in the position where he can’t do what he wants to do, or get back to just watching TV. That situation you describe tells me the programming was not done well.

+1

What remote are you using? What components are in the system that makes it difficult?

How exactly are they "Goofing things up"?

They have bought a house with a video distribution system and can’t get their head around any source available at any TV. It is a Savant system and most of my clients, and the previous owners, use this style system with no issues. If I had designed the system specifically for these homeowners, I would not have used a distributed system, hence the reason we are getting rid of the distribution and just going to an Apple TV at every TV. They have also had some equipment failures that come from buying a system that is 10+ years old. For some customers, you have to make things as simple and streamlined as possible and they don’t need a more advanced feature set.

I'm pretty much with drewski's #3 option. This is when I'd throw the technical definition of surround sound out the window and use 4 in-ceiling speakers with one Sonos Amp. They get their Sonos, it's reliable, there's no remote to program and you'll sidestep the whole 'I can't hear the rears' conversation.

Ive done several system where there is a Beam/ARC at the front with the TV, then an Amp running four inwall/ceiling speakers. The amp is stable to 4ohm.

The customers have been very happy. Cost effective, reliable, and the customer can operate it day to day.

I know it's not the way it "should" be. But it works. And it works quite well for people who want simplicity of use and sound that is pretty darn good.

I've had it with universal remotes. Customers just don't like them. Give them an Apple Tv or Roku remote and maybe a cable box remote (if they have a box) They can handle that. Input switching can be done via CEC or input locks.

+1

As long as CEC and ARC work.  Failures starting to mount.  Some claim Samsung TVs at fault; a Sony I set up with a Beam kept switching from Beam to TV speakers until I ran optical output from TV to Beam.

I had a situation with Beam where the ARC connection would do this with a Sony TV. The system had worked well for a few months, then started with this madness. I moved to optical as a workaround. This worked well for a few weeks. Then we started having Volume control issues with the remotes and I was able to switch back to the ARC connection and everything worked fine for a few more weeks, then the Sony TV started responding to Samsung TV power ON IR commands from another room. (No, it was not some sort of IR interaction with the Samsung native remote) I then mechanically isolated CEC from the cable boxes and a shared DVD player. It's been working OK for a few weeks.

This is what i do for AirBnB Install’s. 4 in ceiling speakers hooked up to an amp & TV. Easy peezy! If there’s already 5 speakers in the ceiling I install a in ceiling subwoofer at the center speaker location. Sometimes I add a rear center sub as well.

If they want “surround sound” then amp for front speakers and amp for rear speakers. Or do beam & 1 amp tied to all 4 speakers.