changing volume on grouped speakers

Not sure I understand the difficulty. You’d just group the four speakers in a normal group. And then adjust that group’s volume. The Move’s can’t be used as surrounds, so that group wouldn’t include the Arc. You’d just not want to include the Arc in that group (don’t use ‘everywhere), and the group’s volume controls in the controller will just change the one group of speakers. 

If you want the Arc and Moves to play in sync then you are going to have to Group. With that you get a single master volume control for the Group and individual controls for each speaker, no option to adjust part of the Group.

Thanks Stanley.  Yes, that is exactly the issue.  Unfortunate that the Sonos app doesnt support this feature.   You cant group portable speakers independently from another group/zone and then adjust the group volume as you please.  Its either everything together, or all individually. Bummer

Still that is an interesting idea, maybe Sonos will pick it up as a feature request.

If I understand you right, you are using the group function to get the portable speakers to play the sound of the Arc, but want to only change the volume on the portable speakers, not the Arc. A group within a group, so to say?

Yes.  I guess that is correct.   I have the arc (inside) and the portables (outside) all playing the same music.   And I want to change the volume of the outside speakers only... as a group.   

Ah, there was nothing in the original post that suggested to me the Arc was included. There is no easy way to change the volume of a subset of rooms that are grouped. You’d have to do them individually. 

Not what you want but change the Group volume to where the outside speakers are good then individually change the Arc.

Can you set up the Move 2’s as a group, say called Outside, on your wifi network? Then group Outside with the Arc. When you tap on the volume bar, two volume sliders should appear: adjusting Outside won’t affect the Arc volume. 

Interesting.   Not sure how to do that though.   Any additional advice?

A named group is still just a group of devices. Not treated as a separate entity. Really just a convenience to select all the same devices easily. I had that same thought.  So, no that won’t work.

Yeah.  Would be a nice feature for them to add.  To allow grouping of speakers, and those groups to have their own volume slider.   Similar to a zone.    

Sonos does have zones, which sounds a lot like what you’re looking for, but it does not support Move or any portable speakers.  Likely because it the portable nature makes things more complicated 

https://support.sonos.com/en-us/article/set-up-a-zone-for-multiple-sonos-products

But I can see a need for a separate functionality just for this flavor of volume control.  Would it suffce to not even define subgroups, but just have a volume control for speakers that are not the source?  For example your Arc would be the source of TV or music (parent), and the 4 Moves would be the children.  It seems like it would meet most needs, but the parent/child relationship is not always easily apparent.

Yes that is correct.   The zone functionality does not include any of their portable speaker options.   Which seems silly, as they are all on the same wifi network as the non-portable ones.   🤷🏻‍♂️

Zones is an escaped corporate feature, not really designed for ‘home’ use. Most corporations don’t use battery powered/portable devices.