Hi Community,
First time posting on this community but I’m a long suffering Sonos customer!
In the “good old days” if my memory serves me correctly, a “group” was called a “zone”. When we wanted to play the same audio source simultaneously on different zones, the app just copied the source to the various zones but control was independent i.e. you could pause a specific zone or change the volume of the zone and it didn’t impact the rest of the speakers.
Now the current iteration is by a far a great improvement in so much as “party mode” (as think it used to be called) is true everywhere play controls house is in sync.
What I am missing however is, what if I want to control a group as part of “everywhere”. For example, “upstairs”, “downstairs” & “garden” each have 3 speakers in them in various rooms. I want to turn “garden” up but leave the rest unchanged - I have to change all three individually within the “playing now” control for “everywhere” - OR because the “garden” group exists but to control it I have to separate it from “everywhere”, add a different music source, do what I want then add it back in.
tech support clearly didn’t understand what I meant as I was told no one has every asked for this but it is old functionality that was lost with the improvements made to grouping but this core function has been lost.
you may ask “is it such a big deal to change the speakers individually to adjust the volume?” - the answer would be “no” if it were just a simple change but the point is I have pre-determine the relative volume of the speakers to each other based on their location, power, vicinity to other speakers etc so would like to adjust up and down “in sync” with each other.
Long term user, work in tech, if you think there’s a simple fix I’ve missed then I’ve probably done a bad job explaining the issue as opposed to me being incompetent using Sonos! Apologies in advance if I am, in fact, useless but please take a second look at my question before suggesting anything “basic”
At times I wish that relative Volumes could be embedded was part of a named Group setup.
If you touch, not drag, the Group Volume slider, individual Volume sliders will become available.
As suspected, I can’t have explained it very well.
Unified (group in the non-Sonos sense) volume control isolated to a specific sub-set of units/speakers which are part of a wider “group”
use case - turn “garden” down when playing “everywhere.
S2 update Q1/Q2 Sonos brought back “zones” which is pairing without the confines of stereo pairing. Units are treated as one speaker regardless of the model. Limited however to Eras, Sonos Ones but nothing else. Even then, the relative volume is preset and whilst trimming is available it is a semi permanent setting change. I could live with that if “zones” were available across all speakers supported in the S2 app
Not ideal, but might be worth playing with. Create your main named Group that contains the appropriate Rooms. Next create a named Group that contains only one Room, hopefully the Room that will least likely need a Volume adjust when you load the main Group. You could adjust this single Room Volume here if you like.
APPLY this single Room. All the other Rooms will Mute. Next, call up the main named Group. All of the Muted Rooms will remain Muted, but you can adjust the Volume that they will use after APPLY is executed.
Admittedly, this is a little weird, but it can lower the risk of an unexpected blast from yesterday’s party.
Thank you but I must be missing something basic here - I can’t access a group once I’m in the “now playing” menu. I mean, I can get to the group but any changes just result in removal / addition of rooms (the selection boxes)
“Groups” seems to be just a preset config. of rooms you might like to play together.
Are you using the S2 app?
At some point I think that someone in marketing thought “Zone” seemed ‘complicated’ and changed it to “Room”. This flustered old timers who had been using “Zone” forever across virtually all manufacturer’s product. OK, I eventually got used to it. Meanwhile, SONOS established a professional branch that makes managing multiple sites, such as restaurant chains, much easier. A pro feature named, you guessed it, “Zone” was developed to conveniently manage large, open areas with multiple speakers that should always play the same music. This avoids the frustrations that you are experiencing as you attempt to manage your main Group. Eventually, someone decided to bring “Zone” into the consumer side. I’m sure this was a relatively easy software project. Unfortunately, as you have discovered, “Zone”is mono and doesn’t include subwoofers. This does not fly well for most home users.
As far as controlling the volume of individual speakers within a group @buzz is correct. So, follow his advice.
Regarding naming of a Group vs Zone. I believe a Group has never been called a Zone. The Term Zone gave way to “Room” referring to a Single Speaker, Stereo Pair or Home Theater setup. For example:
- A Single Speaker in the Kitchen was once called a “Zone” but now referred to as “Room”. Multiple “Zones” now called “Rooms” when joined together comprise a “Group”.
Sonos about a year ago (or so) revived the term “Zone” but under a different heading. I’ll not try to explain what a Sonos Zone is because I’ll surely “muck it up” and confuse you. 😂 That said click this link to learn more about the Sonos Zone feature. I think you’ll find the information very interesting.
EDIT: Looks like I was tying while @buzz posted his remarks 😅
Checkout “Saved Groups”. i created two Groups, one with a single Room and the other with my multiple Rooms. Anywhere I can select Groups, I’d start by Applying the single Room Group, with or without adjusting its Volume. Then I called up the multi-Room Group, adjusted the individual Volumes, then APPLY. The Muted Rooms then started playing at the Volumes I set.
I’m sure you’ll need to fuss with this a bit.
Looks like I was tying while @buzz posted his remarks 😅
Happens to me frequently because I’m a slow typist and often get distracted by another project while typing.
One more point about Zone vs Room. IMO it makes more sense (for simplicity) to identify a space as a “Room” such as Kitchen, Bedroom, Living Room, or Den; versus Zone 1, Zone 2, Zone 3, or Zone 4 respectively. Multiple “Zones” would be extremely difficult to identify the exact speaker or speakers' location at a glance in the Sonos App. Once again JMO.
Hi Both,
Thanks for your ongoing support.
As suspected and stated previously, I don’t think i explained the issue very well. I am fully aware of how to change the volume of individual speakers within a group.
In short, i am looking for control of groups within a group...”zones” in essence as per the pro release over to cunsumer app. e.g. change the volume of ALL the speakers in “kitchen” when they are playing as part of “everywhere”.
Aside from the “zones” release, am i missing something else? If you still think i can acheive this with my current set up, could you please reply with a screenshot or even a video as I am not following how your suggestions are a solution for my problem
@SimmoUK - I understand your request, but it’s not currently possible in your setup/system to do so in the Sonos app. It would be a feature request to adjust the volume in multiple rooms within the one group, whilst leaving other rooms in the same group unchanged.
It would be possible using zones, but as you are already aware, not all the products you own can be used with the current Zones feature.
