Lower minumum volume level

Once again, Sonos employees are clearly marked as such. It is a lazy form of debate when one resorts to calling others shills and plants just because they disagree with you. Very lazy.

As to the request, this thread is over a year old and is at barely a page and half of posts, some of which disagree. Not exactly a pressing issue, and certainly not worthy of the accusations that "Sonos doesn't listen to its customers". More like "Sonos listens when customer disapproval reaches a certain limit".

And other systems? All but one don't have a mesh, some rely on Bluetooth, some use more bandwidth, some don't have Home Theater components, the vast majority are more expensive, by all accounts all of them are less reliable, all support far less music services, and at least one of them (the one who copied the mesh) is being sued by Sonos.

Need more?

I stepped in mainly because you immediately resorted to the typical lazy response by throwing the out accusations of being a shill or plant. In addition, in a thread which calls for Sonos to assign valuable development and testing personnel to a feature, others who may not need this feature should certainly be able to express an opinion. This isn't the Star Chamber, it's a forum where all opinions are both welcome, and subject to the critique of others. You want the volume lower, others would rather they spend the resources required on something else. Both are legit ideas, so may the best opinion win.

A shill or a plant is someone being paid by Sonos to pose as a normal poster in order to talk up the product. Since you asked "But you are working for them, don't you?", you accused John B of being a shill or plant. You attacked the poster as being illegitimate so you wouldn't have to contend with his message, which is a lazy way to debate.

As to your ideas of what a forum should be, you are welcome to your opinion, but that is not the reality. You post your ideas and opinions on a public forum, you should expect them to be critiqued. This is no "safe space" for people to always agree and sing kumbayah, it is a forum for the exchange of ideas, which by definition entails criticism of said ideas. And accusing us of not welcoming all opinions is the height of irony. Only you have called for people to not post or demanded people leave the conversation, whereas I most certainly have not.

As to making it a battlefield, maybe you shouldn't come in guns a blazing, making baseless accusations of both the company and the posters if you do not wish it to become a battlefield. Accusing posters of being a shill or accusing the company of not listening to their customers was you firing the first shot. If you thought you could shoot up the forum with your rhetoric and not have anyone defend themselves, you thought wrong.

It's funny. I haven't seen anyone in this thread defend themselves. Only three people defending others. Which is what I don't understand why you have the need to do. If you are not a shill.
I am certainly in right to accuse the company of not listening to their customers - because they obviously don't, when a forum sponsored by the company contains old threads which aren't responded to by the company. If you believe that is "to come in guns a blazing", I say you are in want for some reality adjustment.

But thank you nonetheless for explaining the lingo to me. Apart from that, none of the three "pro-everything-sonos-do-is-great" posters have contributed with anything but criticism of something that is not their business. That isn't lazy. That is useless. Thus not to be argued.

If you DO use sonos in the bedroom to fall asleep to gentle tones, then feel free to share your experience and thoughts. Because that's what was being discussed originally. However, I have observed an utter lack of this subject in the last posts. And that, my friend, was "the first bullet". But I guess we never will agree, so I'll call this an interesting debate and get on with something important. Like life.

It's funny. I haven't seen anyone in this thread defend themselves. Only three people defending others. Which is what I don't understand why you have the need to do. If you are not a shill.
I am certainly in right to accuse the company of not listening to their customers - because they obviously don't, when a forum sponsored by the company contains old threads which aren't responded to by the company. If you believe that is "to come in guns a blazing", I say you are in want for some reality adjustment.

But thank you nonetheless for explaining the lingo to me. Apart from that, none of the three "pro-everything-sonos-do-is-great" posters have contributed with anything but criticism of something that is not their business. That isn't lazy. That is useless. Thus not to be argued.

If you DO use sonos in the bedroom to fall asleep to gentle tones, then feel free to share your experience and thoughts. Because that's what was being discussed originally. However, I have observed an utter lack of this subject in the last posts. And that, my friend, was "the first bullet". But I guess we never will agree, so I'll call this an interesting debate and get on with something important. Like life.

I have a Play 1 in my bedroom that I use as my bed side radio and alarm clock. I'll admit I thought about it a fair amount before I took that plunge - it was my 4th Sonos unit so I was familiar but had never had the need to use alarms (on the Sonos units).

The use of Sonos as an alarm clock is going to depend on which controllers you have and whether they are portable - I expect most people will have at least 1 tablet or smart phone that is Sonos controller capable but not all will have. It is obvious that the Sonos eco-system was not designed to be an alarm clock and in my opinion it is testament to it's extraordinary quality of sound, array of audio sources, ease of set-up and looks that people like me actually use Sonos for this purpose. There are even people on this forum who mention they have a Play 3 or 5 in their bedroom and sometimes even 2!!

Now, of all the shortcomings of a bedroom replacement for the alarm clock volume is NOT one of the problems I have had. I set an alarm in the evening that plays Radio 5 Live - a speech based news and sport channel and that starts at level 27. In the morning for my wake up alarm the level is set to 25 on Radio 4.
At times I have to raise the volume in the evening (that is rare) and maybe if there is a boxing commentary or similar I may turn it down. But those volumes are fine for me. Certainly not loud, I wouldn't describe them as quiet either but then I do actually want to hear the discussion or news event or whatever.

I just sold my Samung because of being too loud and having too coarse volume control. Next on the list to try was Sonos Play:1 but now I am confused, as it seems to have the same problems as Samsung. Were there any updates about lowering the minimum volume (1/100) or giving more fine tuning of the lower volumes?

Could I buy a Play:1, try the volumes and return it if it is too loud?

Related question: can I have my alarm clock volume (e.g., TuneIn Internet Radio) to rise from 0 to 25% over a first minute or so? My samsung sometimes scared me to death, because it just played the radio immediately at the final volume that was definitely too loud for the first seconds of a day. I put a lot of hope in Sonos to implement it better than Samsung.

Regarding alarms, you can't adjust fade in. I don't really notice but I think there is a slight fade in and fade out 10-15 seconds.
Thanks a lot!
I would really appreciate if you could check the fade-in at the next occasion. 10-15s is much better than 0.

A whole two months? Considering the next release is in public beta right now and this feature is not on it, your expectations (not to mention knowledge of software development cycles) are a little unrealistic. Also, I'm very familiar with the lowest volume settings as I listen to sleep music every night, and in my opinion the volume goes quite low. I cannot help but think that if your ears are sensitive enough that the lowest setting is still too loud for background music, you are probably not going to find a competitor that goes low enough.

So what is wrong in not using a product that does not fit my requirements? As an engineer, I know, that you can always turn volume lower. The main question is if this is possible to implement in the software/firmware or it is a hardware limitation.
If releasing a software hotfix takes Sonos 2 months then they should think about optimizing their software development cycles. I would help if the software were open source, but it is not, so I may only request a fix.

Nobody said there was anything wrong with not using the product or getting rid of it if it does not fit your needs. I would recommend it, in fact. However, to expect this to be fixed in 2 months time, or to expect them to listen to a couple posters in this thread and interpret this as a widespread complaint affecting a large number of users, is a little overboard. As I said, I find the lowest volume setting, when set by tapping on the right of the slider when set to zero volume, to be more than low enough for sleep sounds, never mind background music in an office. You may be more sensitive than that, but I doubt you are going to find a competitor with a volume control matched to your personal sensitivities, which seem to be beyond the norm.

As to 2 months being too long for a software fix? Sonos likes to release software which works, is complete, and is tested in full; unlike the last multi-room streamer that used Open Source.

Would be great indeed if the minimum volume could be lower and selected in smaller steps. It's just too loud for a comfortable bedtime tune.

Any news from Sonos on this? Any news at all? Volume management for an hifi system is core.

John, the lowest volume is still too loud and cannot be used in a bedroom.