No individual volumes for hubbed speakers

As had already been said, this Community area is a Users forum. Other users offer help and advice based on their knowledge or experiences, and some Sonos staff may also see and respond to posts.

It is not the Sonos Support forum.

If you want support direct from Sonos it is available, but not here.

pmantos,

You will get noticeable sound from your Sonos HT Surround speakers when playing a Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound audio stream, you won’t get much from the rears when simply playing a PCM stereo audio TV programme. Setting the speakers to 'Full' instead of 'Ambient' will only apply to music audio, rather than the TV audio output. So check the 'surround sound' output by playing a DD 5.1 movie (perhaps try Netflix etc.)

Thanks, but even if using the "music" setting (7 levels into the menu) "solves" my problem for a Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound audio stream such a Netflix DVD, it emphasizes the fact that I cannot change the volume on individual speakers when playing "other" things, like music from my Sonos Connect, MP3's off my phone, the nightly news, or Youtube off my Roku, etc., People have a lot more uses for their SONOS surround sound systems than listening to actual surround sound streams.

I’m still a little unsure why you want to change the volume from a single speaker in a HT setup?

In all 3 home theatre systems i’ve owned, I’ve positioned the speakers, run a setup or calibration process, and then used the system. The rear speakers in the first 2 systems were good speakers but only received surround signals. When listening to music it played through the main FL and FR speakers in stereo. I could opt to process the source to play through all speakers but it was then not a pure signal.

With my Sonos Playbar and One’s as rear surrounds, I can listen to music and have the Ones play the full source or contribute an ambient sound. To change the volume from any one speaker, were it possible, would upset the balance of sound meaning Trueplay would need to be run again.

If you want your rears to be the main speakers when listening to music, you could set them up as a stereo pair rather than as surrounds, but then you don’t have a 5.1 HT system.

I cannot run trueplay on an android

But you can select Full rather than Ambient sound. Have you tried that yet?

Thanks. Yes, I tried the Full versus Ambient and the difference was negligible.

One person asks why would I want to change the volume on an individual speaker The answer is because I am not satisfied with the current settings and volume settings and would like to customize it to my tastes.

Sonos advertises as being android compatible, yet I cannot calibrate using the Android app. I cannot calibrate the speaker volume and I cannot adjust them. That's a problem. Even if I could calibrate, I would be calibrating via their algorithms versus my personal preferences.

To mitigate this problem, Sonos should add the following:
1) An "off" button on the app as it is not obvious how to turn it off in android.
2) An optional setting whereby manually adjusting the speaker volume (using +/- on the physical speaker) does not affect the volume of other speakers.
3) A balance function when using one or more speakers. (A previous message on this thread said that a "...More>Settings>Room Settings>[Room name of your surround system]>Advanced Audio>Surround Settings. ... is a "balance" feature", but I did not see one.)
4) A fade function when using one or more than two speakers.

I am surprised more people aren't outraged that these simple and obvious user functions are missing. These functions are available in a $100 car stereo, but not in a $2000 Sonos. It's sad that SONOS keeps adding all kinds of features to a very confusing and deep set of menus, but won't ask customers what they want. As an example of a company that does otherwise, I gave Sirius feedback through its app to add a sleep timer and was happy to see it added by them within a couple of months.

Does anyone know how get these features onto SONOS' radar? If SONOS uses AGILE software development, I would love to submit a few "User Stories" for them to include in a future release.

I’m surprised the difference was negligible, but it is what it is.

it seems that Sonos doesn’t have the right product for your needs.

I took another look at "Full" versus "Ambient" last night while my visiting brother-in-law was watching what must have been a 5.1. stream. Yes, the music coming from the two rear speakers was louder in FULL mode.

No Sonos does NOT have the right product for my needs. They speakers work well, but their android software and documentation stinks from a user perspective. Set-up is NOT wireless as advertised. It is a miserable process involving hard resets to temporarily re-purpose a speaker; for example, stealing a play one from a surround sound to bring to the back yard for the afternoon and then reintegrating back into the surround sound. The app is missing basic controls mentioned above including lack of an off switch, balance, and fade. The system cannot be calibrated using Android, not can individual speaker volume be set using the app or even manually. The menu system is very deep finding a function is hard.

Because of these issues, I think SONOS is a crummy product and that I have been deceived out of $2000 for a system that is lacking and which could be easily fixed by systematically incorporating user input into software design process.