last played source line-in

Hi @RNewf 

Welcome to the Sonos Community!

I’m not 100% sure I understand the situation correctly, but if you have Line-In autoplay enabled then the Five will switch to Line-In whenever something starts playing on the Line-In source. Therefore, if the Line-In source never stops playing while you are listening to the AirPlay source, you’ll need to stop playback on the HD radio tuner for a few seconds and then restart playback - this will trigger the Five to switch over.

I hope this helps.

Thanks for your reply.

I didn’t explain the situation well. 

My question is not about the Sonos Five in the Living Room connected directly to the radio tuner (line-in source). That works beautifully with auto play under all situations. My issue is with speakers (Sonos Ones) in the Dining Room remembering “last played” under some situations. Here’s what I mean.

I turn on the line-in source and it plays automatically on the Sonos Five. I can then use the Sonos App to also play it on the Sonos Ones. I then turn off the source. I can come back later, turn on the source and it plays automatically again on the Five. I can also simply hit the play button on the Sonos One to start playback there. No need to use the app at all! I can do this forever as long as I don’t play from another source on the Sonos One. So far, great. Now comes my issue.

After I finish playing from an airplay source to the Sonos One, the airplay source times out (as it should), and then Sonos One shows “no music selected”, so if you hit the play button on the Sonos, nothing will happen. I would like the Sonos One revert back to the “in-line” network source as last played, rather than showing “no music selected”.
 

I know this works if you play a network source other than line-in on the Sonos One from within the Sonos App. For example, I play Classic FM station from within the Sonos App and then stop. Then I play an airplay source - after it stops and times out, the Sonos One reverts to Classic FM as last played source. That’s what I would like to see for the line-in source.
 

Long winded but my overall goal is to avoid using the Sonos App as much as I can to play the line-in source.

Thanks

Hi @RNewf 

Thanks for clarifying all of that - much clearer now.

That’s interesting. I’m not sure if it’s related to the AirPlay timeout or not, but it’s hopefully irrelevant as I believe I have a solution for you.

If the Five is playing, then holding the play button on either of the Ones for one second will tell them to include themselves in any current playback in other rooms (creating a group in the process), regardless of their queue state. If there’s more than one currently playing source on your system, each hold for one second will cycle through the currently playing sources. One more hold will stop the playback in that room only, ie. remove the room from the group.

Of course, if the Five (or another room) is not playing Line-In, then you won’t be able to use the button on the speaker to select Line-In. 

I hope this helps.

A further thought.  Airplay doesn’t really use the Sonos system.  You are really just using an Airplay-compatible speaker with a Sonos badge on it.  So Sonos just carries on where it left off after you Airplay to a single speaker. 

However, one way to Airplay to multiple speakers is to group them in the Sonos app. 

Are you playing the line in on the One by specifying it as the Autoplay Room or by grouping and setting “including grouped rooms”?

I think when you Airplay directly to just the One you may be breaking the group that the line-in depends on to play on the One.  Or somehow breaking the link.  This would not be relevant for other sources.

So I suspect everything is working consistently already.

I haven’t played around with this, so not totally sure.

Edit: I don’t think I am totally clear on whether you are using the line in to play just on the One in the first place, or to the Five and One.  Nor am i clear how you are stopping the music before you switch to Airplay.

I play to the Five first and then switch to the One. I want to have separate control, so I can pause the One for example but keep the Five going. I think when you group, pausing one speaker also pauses the other. Correct? 
 

I stop airplay in the app. I tried also pausing with button on speaker. Doesn’t matter except it takes longer to time out if you pause on the speaker.
 

Thanks, very helpful!

Grouping in auto play doesn’t work! But I have grouped otherwise, and I cannot pause just one speaker if I do that?

Related question. Is there a way to set a default network source for a speaker? That way I could set the line- source as the default.

Even more!

The real question is why the speaker treats the line-in source differently than other network sources. As I mentioned before, other network sources become the last played after airplay source times out. Shouldn’t the line-in source do the same?

Thanks.

Hi @RNewf 

Correct.

If there’s a playing group, holding Play button for one second in one room will stop playback in that room only. It’s not really paused, as it’s removed from the group, but that’s effectively what happens. Hold for one second again to get it to play with the other room again.

No, there’s no way to do this.

Line-In isn’t seen by the software as a queued-up item - more of an input selection or mode, so it cannot be restored to the queue once AirPlay has finished. However, I will mark this thread as a feature request and it will be seen by the relevant teams for consideration - perhaps the behaviour can be changed.

Line in is different and I would not expect it to behave the same.  It is just playing whatever it is fed as an analog stream from an external device.  The only way to genuinely stop and start the stream is on the external device.  How could it be otherwise?

Grouped speakers does work.  You would set the Five as Autoplay Room, enable Include Grouped Rooms, and group the One to the Five.  It still isn’t going to do what you want though.

You can stop individual speakers rather than all speakers by using long presses rather than taps.  This actually groups and ungroups.

Thanks very much. Very thorough answers - I appreciate it!