Lower minumum volume level

John B, indeed, your hearing is poor or your bedroom noisy 🙂. It's truly not nice to have music on Sonos 1 in the bedroom. What unit do you use?

I've got a Play 1 in my bedroom on the table right next to my bed. I set the radio to play in the evening and mornings by an Alarm and is set at level 27. In the mornings and evenings it is set to speech radio and I certainly don't find the volume too loud.

Get yourself a Sound Pressure Level meter and take some measurements with some reference tracks.

I'm with Stuart and John on this issue. I have two Play-1’s in my average-sized-bedroom, set as a stereo pair and the first touch of the slider volume control is not too loud at all and that is with two speakers. My wife and I get up at 6am most mornings and we can still hear the birds singing in the garden as we listen to the radio etc.

I have perfect hearing, as far as I know. I have no issue with any other audio devices in the bedroom or other rooms of my premises, such as TV radio etc. If anything other relatives and guests to my home often may ask for me to raise the volume on my TV (and other devices) when they visit. So I am quite happy that my hearing is fine, by all accounts.

I think you must have over-sensitive hearing sti/mjamin... or maybe a faulty speaker... or perhaps even lots of hard surfaces in a small bedroom that is reflecting the sound towards you. I certainly do not find the Play-1 speaker too loud at its minimum setting.

Turn the "Loudness" setting to off.

I have noticed at night when I am sleeping my PLAY:5 (Gen2)'s and PLAY:1's are slightly too loud for my liking but that's with the speakers basically right beside the bed. In this instance I turn off the "Loudness" setting and the volume is more normal, nothing is boosted or overplayed. If the bass end up being too cut turn it up in the EQ menu.

Hey kmjy,

thank you. We've already turned off Loudness and turned the EQ levels to minimum and it's still too loud.

Again, everyone has a different feeling on this, but looking in the average no one uses the Sonos above 60%. Why not making it simply more "sensitive" to satisfy all users.

Regards
Sti

I'd be interested in a Sonos response to this and what the volume gradient is between devices. I was listening to my Play 1 in bed late at night at the weekend and had it low. The wife said to turn it down and I pushed the hard button once and it was silent. Up again and I'd say it was too loud to consider it to be quietest it should be capable of. I'd never describe it as 'loud' but can imagine other use cases where it may be desirable to go quieter. If I remember I'll try it tonight to see how the lowest setting compares on that - as I'm sure its higher volumes come much higher on the volume bar in comparison. It may even go up to 11..

I mean I will try it on my Gen 2 Play 5.

Just tried it on my Play Gen 2. Turned the volume right down on the unit and then pressed 'Up' once. I thought I hadn't done it properly but when I got my head in close it was playing - but much quieter than the same thing on the Play 1.
As I said earlier, it's not at all 'loud' on the Play 1 - it's really quiet. But in a quiet room or late at night it's certainly far more noticeable than the 'same' position on the Play 5.

There seems to be a lot of negativity around this issue but I'm going to add my 2c just to confirm that there are others out there struggling with this.

We've had our Play 1 for about two years now, it was set to replace our older Logitech Smart Radio for quiet 'off to sleep' listening. We were attracted by the Google Play Music support. Unfortunately the Sonos unit has sat unused for the vast majority of this period and we are still to this day using the Logitech instead.

The minimum volume level is quite simply too loud for this listening scenario in our case, and as others have mentioned already, the scale is dramatically tilted towards the loud end, where granularity is far less important. On decreasing the volume, it really feels like there should be another step or 5 before complete silence hits.

If this is not a problem for your particular scenario, then great. But it undeniably makes the product unusable for those of us who bought it with this specific purpose in mind. I otherwise love the unit, so my disappointment is doubly so as it's truly a great product otherwise.

I've been hoping for an update that might help with this for ages now. I know it's a somewhat niche request so my hopes were never that high. Sadly I suspect we will have to look for an alternative solution.

I've had my Play 1 in my bedroom for 2 or 3 years and the Radio (BBC 5 Live) plays me to sleep every single night. Radio comes on with an alarm at level 27 and I am more than happy with the volume level.

I did buy this Play 1 as a direct replacement for an alarm clock radio so my experience makes your statement factually incorrect (proud pact unusable for those of us who bought it for this purpose).