Contributor I

Answered

AirPlay 2 initial volume too high

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
January 18, 2021
19 replies
1769 views

I am in UK. I use the BBC Sounds app to play radio shows via air play 2 on my SONOS system. I have a Play:3 grouped with a One SL. I only use the One SL to access air play - it will always be muted, so I am only really using the Play:3 for the sound. I know it sounds nuts but I couldn’t afford to upgrade my whole SONOS system just listen to the radio in my kitchen when the BBC decided to remove their shows from services like TuneIn in order to “improve my experience” and the One SL is very tinny on its own.

Here’s the problem: when I start a radio program and connect it to SONOS via AirPlay the volume on the One SL and Play:3 always reset to a high level and I have to race to mute the One SL and lower the Play:3. This happens every time I make the AirPlay connection, it always resets. I have searched iOS, BBC Sounds and SONOS settings but can’t find a starting volume setting anywhere. Is there a way of avoiding this annoying habit of high initial volume over AirPlay?

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Best answer by John B

@Iggit . As an experiment, please take the mute off of the Airplay compatible speaker and see how the volume behaves when you switch between iPad audio and Sonos. Airplay doesn’t know your Play:3 speaker exists, and i suspect you are confusing it by asking it to play to a muted speaker.

Still a bit speculative, but seems to fit the experiments i have done.

Edit: a possible workaround may be to slide the One’s volume slider to zero then tap once on the bar to leave the speaker virtually inaudible rather than muted. Or maybe you can set a very low volume limit on that speaker. Depends on how you subsequently control volume.

Or sell the Play:3 and get a Five, or a One SL to make a stereo pair.

Show previous replies

J

John B

Are you using the control centre on the iPad as illustrated in this screenshot?

bockersjv

Local Superstar

@John B Do you have Group Non-Airplay Products set on in the settings?

J

John B

@John B Do you have Group Non-Airplay Products set on in the settings?

Hi @bockersjv . Thanks for that. I discovered this shortly before your post and edited post above. Subsequent experiments are making me think the issue the OP is having are related to the unusual situation of Airplaying to an Airplay speaker that is muted, grouped with a non-Airplay compatible speaker that isn’t muted.

J

John BAnswer

@Iggit . As an experiment, please take the mute off of the Airplay compatible speaker and see how the volume behaves when you switch between iPad audio and Sonos. Airplay doesn’t know your Play:3 speaker exists, and i suspect you are confusing it by asking it to play to a muted speaker.

Still a bit speculative, but seems to fit the experiments i have done.

Edit: a possible workaround may be to slide the One’s volume slider to zero then tap once on the bar to leave the speaker virtually inaudible rather than muted. Or maybe you can set a very low volume limit on that speaker. Depends on how you subsequently control volume.

Or sell the Play:3 and get a Five, or a One SL to make a stereo pair.

I

IggitAuthor

Contributor I

I owe you both many thanks for your help so far. @John B , I am indeed using the iPad control centre to switch to AirPlay. @bockersjv - I have it set to group non AirPlay speakers so they do indeed stay grouped.

I have tried @John B suggestion to unmute the One SL, and that was a very good idea. With the One SL(AirPlay compatible) speaker unmuted the volume does not change when I switch to AirPlay and your explanation makes a lot of sense.

As far as the iPad is concerned, I am telling it to send the audio to a muted device so either Sonos or AirPlay then unmutes the OneSL.

Either Sonos or AirPlay then makes the amusing decision to increase the volume of the One SL to an almost random (certainly not restoring it to the setting it had when I muted it) level and Sonos then increases the play;3 volume because it is grouped with the One SL.

The subsequent drawback with having the One SL unmuted is that it’s volume increases when I increase the group volume if it is not muted. If I start off quiet (when wife is asleep) and then increase volume (when wife is awake) the loud One SL tinniness becomes noticeable.

I only have the one AirPlay device so can’t test with non-Sonos devices but my money is on Sonos causing all this behaviour. I would much prefer the software to do what I tell it and leave any extra behaviour to be configured via settings. So, I would have everything leave the AirPlay speaker as it is set, muted or unmuted, and have a Sonos setting under the AirPlay settings to unmute when switching source to AirPlay. That would leave the locus of control with the user, which is a recommended objective for software developers. As it stands I am not in control as I do not feel it is doing what I am telling it to do.

Buying new kit is the obvious solution but has the drawback of being rather expensive for me right now. I should have followed the Sonos chief exec’s (?) very amusing suggestion a while back by replacing all my Sonos kit (circa £1000) because he had decided it was all obsolete two years after I had invested in it. Remember the uproar after that one?

I’ll make do with what I have for now but I am pretty sure it’s down to a failing of Sonos since Sonos is doing the grouping and most likely it is Sonos that is trying to adjust the volumes in response to an activation from AirPlay.

Thanks again for all your help on this.

I

IggitAuthor

Contributor I

Oops, missed off the volume limit idea. Have set extremely low volume limit one One SL. This works just as I need it, genius.

With volume limit set to naff all, I can leave the One SL unmuted and the Play;3 volume does not jump up. Brilliant, problem solved.

I have finally found a use for a volume limit setting, having avoided them for 50 years!

J

John B

Hi. I am pleased to have helped, but I have to challenge a couple of points. In particular:

“I should have followed the Sonos chief exec’s (?) very amusing suggestion a while back by replacing all my Sonos kit (circa £1000) because he had decided it was all obsolete two years after I had invested in it. Remember the uproar after that one?”

I do indeed remember the uproar, but you have totally misrepresented it here. Neither of the speakers mentioned here was in any way affected by that - both are compatible with the S2 system, are fully supported and can benefit from future enhancements. Even the devices that were affected - older devices having only 32MB of memory - are still usable in an S1 system.

Airplay is a different matter. This was a free upgrade when brought in. Sonos made it available on all speakers that had the hardware necessary to support it. So my gen 2 Play:5s got a freebie. But some speakers simply could not have this added. Nevertheless, Sonos made it possible to Airplay to speakers that could not do Airplay, by grouping. Big tick for Sonos, in my view, and the opposite of trying to force people to upgrade.

Your use case of trying to Airplay to a muted speaker is very rare and I am not surprised things go a bit haywire. This is not, IMO, a ‘failure’ of Sonos.

In short, your criticism is wholly unjustified.

I

IggitAuthor

Contributor I

I guess we remember it differently. My Play:5 1st gen and bridge are not Sonos 2 compatible and at the time of the first announcement there was no mention of S1 and S2 apps - they just said all old kit will stop working. That’s what the uproar was about. The result of the uproar was the creation of two apps and I recall getting an apology from Sonos saying that they got it wrong and were sorry.

I guess I’m still upset about the way they handled it.

I was incorrect to say that I would have to replace all my kit. Just the Play 5 and bridge - a total of £600. Later they offered upgrade discounts to bring that down to £460.

I’m fine with old kit not getting new features just less fine with it ceasing to operate after two years, especially when it is otherwise such great kit.

There is a bug in there somewhere because, in my opinion, unmute should restore the previous volume setting, but I happily accept that my use case is an odd one.

I think there is still a bug in there somewhere as unmute should restore the previous volume setting rather than choose a new one.

This is getting off topic, so enough said. Thanks so much for helping with my problem - I no longer surprise the dog or wake my wife when I turn on the radio.

J

John B

Hi - OK. I think there was a lot of misunderstanding around at the time, and Sonos certainly handled the communications badly. But there was never any suggestion that the devices affected were any other than the Bridge, Play:5 gen 1 and some older Connects and Connect:Amps and their predecessors, all of which had to be at least five years old, and in many cases were much older. Sonos can operate with any Sonos device wired, or with none - a replacement for the Bridge is not required.

You also need to bear in mind that when you use Airplay, you are not really using the Sonos system, just a bunch of Airplay compatible Sonos speakers. And thanks to Sonos you are airplaying to a speaker that isn’t Airplay compatible, and controlling its volume from the Airplay control centre (which doesn’t even know that speaker exists). I think its an achievement that it can be made to work at all, not that it is imperfect.

But anyway, I am very glad we managed to find you a workable solution.

Btw, the Five is a much better speaker than the gen 1 Play:5, and definitely worth the upgrade! £350 with the upgrade discount, less whatever you can recoup by selling the Play:5.

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