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Good day everyone,

Apologies if this is a common topic/issue, but its a bit of an odd one.

So I have client at a restaurant that has had me in to do some work primarily with their POS ipads and receipt printers. While there, I setup a new ipad for their upstairs bar and asked me if it was possible to push different music up stairs than down as they sometimes do different events upstairs that require a different mood/soundtrack.

I checked the site over and found they physically have 3 Amps onsite, one downstairs and two upstairs. According to what I saw on the Sonos Central app, they are called:

Downstairs

Event Space 1

Event Space 2

They don’t appear to be grouped from what I could. So here is what I’ve done to test things out:

-Client uses Spotify to stream music (paid account with 2 seats), in my test I used both the ipad for upstairs and downstairs.

-I first opened the Sonos app on the downstairs which was already set to stream to downstairs and got one of their play lists going.

-Next I opened the Sonos app on the upstairs one, chose event space 1 and picked a different play list

-Music for downstairs immediately stopped and upstairs began to play

-I pressed play on the downstairs ipad and it began playing again

-This didn’t stop upstairs, it kept playing. So both were playing something different, volume controls were independent for both

-The song upstairs finished and moved onto the next, causing downstairs to pause again. Hit play for downstairs and both played along fine again until I skipped a song upstairs, causing downstairs to pause again.

-Got downstairs playing again, so both were playing something different. Wanted to test and see if the same issue would happen in reverse. Skipped a song downstairs, but upstairs continued playing without pausing

So the issue only appears to be happening one way.

Has anyone come across this before or know what the cause is?

It sounds like you have setup two separate systems: Event Space 1 and Event Space 2, with a shared Spotify account?

The reason that music stops when starting music in the second space is that Spotify will consider that two stream.  If you setup one system with two Sonos Rooms: Event space 1 and 2, then you’ll be able to stream different songs to the two rooms from the same Spotify account.

3 systems, Event space 1, event space 2, and downstairs. I’m gonna shorten their names to save some typing. Event Space 1 (ES1), Event Space 2 (ES2), and DownStairs (DS).

Forgive me on my ignorance with this as I’ve only dealt with a couple of Sonos systems in the past and they were pretty basic home setups. When you say setup one system with two Sonos rooms, does that mean one of the amps would need to be eliminated or does that mean within the Sonos software I need to set those two amps as one room?

I had missed mentioning this before as I was trying to remember the testing steps I’d taken, they also have a wireless mic system upstairs (hooked to amps,ES1 and ES2) because they will do a trivia night every so often.

Perhaps if I explain the Sonos terminology first:

System is a Sonos implementation, normally on a single subnet and a single location

Sonos Room is either a single Sonos device, a stereo pair or a TV setup consisting of a sound bar, optional surrounds, and 1 or 2 optional subs.

Grouping is a collection of Sonos Rooms within a System

A simple test would be to open the Settings>System menu, and check that each (EDIT: Controlling Device) device you are using can see all of the Sonos Amps?

Does each area, ES1, ES2 and DS all have Sonos Amp’s or are there other Sonos devices connected?

From what I saw while I was there, there are 3 physical amps. I didn’t go under settings but when I was choosing which device to control ES1, ES2, and DS were all options, they didn’t seem to be grouped together.

I did notice while I was in there, that they seem to still be a part of an electrician’s account. The sign in had his name at the top but most of the email is hidden behind *******. Gave my client a little homework to get a hold of that company to see if they could get that removed so it would be under their account instead.

Do they have playlists setup already?  If not, they could reset the devices and set a new system: https://support.sonos.com/en-gb/article/set-up-your-sonos-amp

BEWARE:  This will lose all music settings, playlists, and services.

The playlist they have appears to be in Spotify, I believe. They have a login for Spotify, but I’m not certain if the login for the Sonos is being used for the Spotify option or if its pulling their account from the spotify app.

I’ll wait and see if we can get a hold of the electrician who installed them, is there an export option for settings?

The playlist they have appears to be in Spotify, I believe. They have a login for Spotify, but I’m not certain if the login for the Sonos is being used for the Spotify option or if its pulling their account from the spotify app.

I’ll wait and see if we can get a hold of the electrician who installed them, is there an export option for settings?

You could try this: https://support.sonos.com/en-gb/article/transfer-your-sonos-system-to-a-new-account

Awesome I will give this a try next time I’m up that there

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