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We spend a lot of time grouping and ungrouping rooms. The issue is stems from my wife's use of Party Mode. She likes to use Party Mode while she is cooking. I ungroup the outside speakers so as not to offend the neighbors. I ungroup the upstairs when the kids go to bed. I turn everything off and then create a new group to set the morning alarm. In the morning, I create a group in the kitchen and family room to read the paper. There has to be a better way! Why can't we just create groups of rooms and label them something easy to remember like "Cooking", "Kids in bed", "Alarm" or "Morning Coffee"?
Hello, This is an excellent idea, so I'm going to move this from the Questions forum to the Share an Idea forum. This will allow others to comment and +1 your idea as well.
I immediately ran into this problem as well. When you read that 32 different rooms can be configured, you don't assume it means '...with 32 different components', but rather different configurations with existing components. Please fix!
I'm running into the same issue. But simply labeling groups doesn't resolve the bigger issue that a room can only be in one group at a time. A work around is to connect the audio out of an Apple AirPort device to the line in of one of the Sonos components. Then just use AirPlay to play any music from your favorite apps (Pandora, Spotify, iTunes, etc.) to the AirPort device. Any room can then use the line in without the need to destroy any groups you have set up. It effectively just uses Sonos for volume control and AirPlay for audio switching. Not the most elegant but nor is the Sonos groups feature.
Indeed this is a problem for me as well. I'd like to create custom zones and put specific equipment in those zones. And put custom zones in custom zones. For example, create a zone "whole house" that contains the zones "ground floor", "first floor" and "attic", "ground floor" contains "living room", "kitchen" etc.
Nick describes it perfectly. The ability to set up and store groups of speakers and then select a particular group to play with one touch would significantly increase the functionality of the system.  If I'm honest, when I bought the system I expected this functionality to already exist, so it was a bit of a disappointment to find out I couldn't do it.  The current grouping method does let the system down a bit. That said, I still love my new Sonos system and will continue to expand it!
Awesome idea!
This is a great idea. 
+1.  This is a much needed feature that I know can be done, as a third party provider created an App a few years ago that works with the HomeSeer home controller software to do just this.



So all was well in our household, until Sonos introduced the Playbar and stereo pairing of Play units.



The third party App supplier has unable to spend the required time updating the App for the linking / unlinking of any Zones (rooms) with a stereo pair in it!



I think Sonos should think about making this idea mainstream and remove the need for third party Apps to create a workaround.
I thought this would be standard! Having to change the group each time is tedious. i want to be able to just click from a pre set number of groups ive named
+1

I am a new Sonos owner/user with 6 zones.  It took me about 20 minutes of learning the system to realize that this is a big missing feature.  Please add it.
This exactly. Keep current menue setup but add a second column on the groups page that you can load presets into... and if possible add the ability for alarms to use these preset groups..
I want this, plus I want a roving zone which moves with me as I move about the house.  My iPhone is usually with me, so define "me" as the iPhone.  The Sonos App on the iPhone can then determine were I am based on all that secret google/nsa code which determines my precise strikable location in 3 dimensions based on bluetooth and wifi and {3,4}G triangulation, plus sonar from all the fracking-induced tremors, so that all speakers within some distance of me are in my group as I move about.



Once you have that working, it should, of course, take into account my wife's iPhone for the same purpose, assuming we start out in the same group at one time.



conflicting groups will be resolved in my favour, natch.
Please add this feature and allow us to choose predefined speaker groupings. With the summer months upon us the constant speaker "group changing" with the deck speakers and inside speakers is brutal. Its hard to believe with all the technical challenges Sonos has conquered they have not addressed this issue. Please help !!!!
Great idea!!
agreed! multiple groups would be great and the ability to switch up groups w/o having to stop the music.
IH !

Does this feature is in the way ? Thanks
Just bought Sonos and this is the first thing I see lacking from the current software. We need way to have multiple groups and the ability adding any device to any groups.
Great Idea!!
We bought a bunch of Play:3 and Play:5 speakers to implement a public intercomm/bell system for a new grade school. It work great when all are grouped together, but it is a really a limitation to not also have the ability to group rooms in their own sub-groups, because they are already part of the main group. Please consider adding this feature soon!
I need this too. Using Play 5 as a TV soundbar and have a Play 1 in kitchen and one in bedroom. Would like a bedroom and kitchen group for morning alarm, and tv and kitchen for evening TV. Having to re-do the group and volumes each time is annoying - please let us save preset group/volume combinations!
It seems like there is a lot of demand for Sonos to pay more attention to room grouping in general. Between this request to be able to pre-define different group configurations plus the often expressed desire for room groupings to persist through a power failure (or self repair if a single member loses then regains power) there is plenty of justification for Sonos to dedicate some resources to updating the whole room grouping experience.
I completely agree - I'm somewhat astounded that the Sonos system doesn't already handle this nicely... I use the Android and PC controllers rather than the Mac controller, but I imagine and hope that if it gets sorted in one of them it would be sorted in all of them! And I hope it does soon!
I agree, having the ability to create different groups would make this much more useful.  A Party Mode is nice, but often need different modes for different events such as Dinner party, cocktail party, etc where there are a different grouping of speakers.  To make this more user friendly without requiring users to setup group each time would be a great feature to have.
Please add this to the next release. It can't be that hard and would add tremendous value.
Would also be very interested in this obvious feature. Is it on the way?
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