Feature Request - Negative delay for Sonos Port

I dare say I can’t remember the last time this subject came up on this dedicated forum (and the useless search facility means any attempt to find out is futile).  Though the latest I’ve found is from 3+ years ago, and it is lameting a request going back “17 years”;

Which doesn’t bode well for any new requests to convince the “powers that be” any differently. 

I forgot to address your second paragraph. Yes, adio gap/skip is taboo, but keep in mind that this would only affect users who wish to utilize this feature, so people not using a Port are unaffected, as are those that use Ports and leave this value at 0.  Purists who do not want any gap/skip would simply not use this delay correction.

The exact same thing was/is said about the Line-In delay being eliminated when used as a standalone player; “it only affects those who wish to use it that way”, etc., etc.  Sonos appears to have decided that the problems which could arise from exceptions like these fringe cases are not worth the juice from the squeeze. 

There’s also the very real software phenomena of users switching something on “just because”; where if a setting/configuration is there, someone is going to turn it on and fudge with it, whether it applies to their situation or not.  The complaints and/or support hours which arise from things like this often times are not worth accommodating the very few people who actually have the problem.

Well line in delay exists, so they’ve allowed that feature. Like I said above, adding a one liner under the setting warning of audio skip/gap when joining/removing this device if this setting is adjusted above zero would at least make users aware.  I can’t speak towards the hours of sonos support for this, do you have any insight into how many hours of support were needed when line in delay was added as a feature?

Line-In latency has been a designed-in characteristic since product introduction in 2005.

You misunderstand.  The request regarding the Line-In wasn’t to add the delay, the delay was there from the get go.  The request was to eliminate the delay if the Sonos device was being used as a “standalone speaker”, for the purpose of a live performance such as Karaoke, public address, or DJ’ing.  (Of course the “standalone speaker” part was tacked on only after the requestor(s) found out the reason for the delay was for multi-room reliability).  This was never implemented, and instead, they just state that Sonos is not suitable for live performance. 

Look, I love my Sonos products, but avoiding new features with real world use cases over speculation on man hours for support on users who might randomly or accidentally turn it on, seems a bit out of the blue. That type of reasoning can be used for nearly any feature from any software in existence and only stands to prevent growth or improvement of the product.

Take “truplay” for example. A user might turn it on by accident and not enjoy the changes to the audio quality of their speaker. Maybe they’ll call support and have to troubleshoot why the speaker sounds off from when they turned it on. Is that reason enough not to implement that feature because someone didn’t know they were turning it on?

Sigh.  I dare say the benefits of Trueplay far outweigh any backlash from users who randomly or accidently turn it on.  It’s also a feature Sonos encourages you to turn on in any circumstances, so they should be supporting it.  That’s a bit different from something they only intend for a bare minority of users, which would be detrimental to the majority of those turning it on out of curiosity or by accident. 

Also, the users complaining about being able to match the DSP delay of their receivers when using a Port are miniscule compared to those who use Trueplay.  The very fact that the last thread on the subject is from 3 years ago tells you the relative urgency of this request. 

Alright, close this thread then.

Before I was into Sonos I owned a succession of Marantz Homecinema receivers that where connected to the CD-player I still use today. Even then, I always used the “Direct” setting to avoid having CD sound pass through unnecessary components. In your use case this would also eliminate the delay.