Party Mode is a problem. We need ability to create multiple groups of rooms!

Surely as a software developer you would know that if there is an 'illogical concept' then software can be programmed to deal with it.

In your example while Led Zeppelin is blaring out in Group A and the wife wants to play Chopin in Group B, it is simply greyed out and cannot be done. Speaker 3 would still be available to play Chopin or Group A virtual zone could be ungrouped and Group B would become available. It is not a difficult concept really.

All that is unnecessarily complicated, especially since the original concept was for permanent groups. Why should you have to ungroup a permanent group in order to do what one wants? If that's the case, why have a permanent group in the first place? As I said above, if this functionality is to work, it should be implemented as transient "moods" setting that does a group/ungroup macro. Permanent groups make no sense when they contain multiple instances of the same speaker.

I don't see a request for permanent groups, they are your words. The original request is to create multiple groups or virtual zones that can be selected depending on the circumstances. I'm not going to debate the solution with you as you have your opinion on this but there is nothing complicated about the concept and this could be developed. Therefore this request still gets my vote.

Thanks for all the feedback and suggestions guys. We've heard the request for more flexibility and expanded grouping controls in a number of ways in various threads, but we always like to hear your ideas. We don't publish any plans for the future of Sonos in terms of what's coming out, but thanks for sharing. We'll pass the word on for you.

If you have suggestions for how you'd like this sort of feature to work please feel free to share.

If you have suggestions for how you'd like this sort of feature to work please feel free to share.
Hi Ryan,

Since you ask, I would do something like so:

Let's say I have the following speakers:
Kitchen, Dining Room, Outside, Bedroom, Livingroom

It should be possible to create an arbitrary number of groups, each with any combination of the above speakers. Groups are essentially views of speakers. So I could define the following groups:

Downstairs: Kitchen, Dining Room, Livingroom
House: Kitchen, Dining Room, Bedroom, Livingroom
Party: Kitchen, Dining Room, Outside, Livingroom
Dinner: Kitchen, Dining Room
Evening: Livingroom, Bedroom

So obviously, if I select any group from Downstairs, House, Party, Dinner or Evening, it should start playing my selected music on that group.

If, as jgatie suggested, and you start complicating things by playing a group at the same time as another group is playing that both contain the same speaker, you would 'move' the speaker from the initial group and into the newer group.

Say for example, you select Downstairs and start playing a Radio stream. This starts playing on Kitchen, Dining Room and Livingroom.
Whilst this is playing you then select Evening and start playing an iTunes playlist. There's a conflict here because Livingroom is in this group, but is already in the group being played above. So Livingroom is effectively removed from Downstairs which causes Radio to stop playing on it, and iTunes starts playing on Livingroom and Bedroom (Radio continues to play on Kitchen and Dining Room). If you happen to stop playing this group whilst Downstairs is still playing, that group continues to just play over the two speakers it has left. If you want to re-instate playing over Livingroom you would just select the group again.
If both groups above are still playing, and you select Downstairs again, it would take back Livingroom, so your new selection would play over Kitchen, Dining Room and Livingroom, and the iTunes playlist would now only be playing over Bedroom.

So I guess this is creating soft groups on the fly, from pre-defined group templates.

In addition, as well as being able to select a group to play on, you should be able to select the individual speakers that were added to the group. So this would allow me to just select Livingroom to play over. Of course this is a moot point if the above is implemented, as I could just create a group Livingroom that contained only that speaker.

Thanks for the details Mekon! We'll get that passed on for you. No promises of course as we don't share what's coming or going to be added, but we love getting the feedback.

The Mekon solution is well thought out. Nice to see a suggestion that works through the real world application of the requested feature.

Is this still true? I've been told that you can make different groups by sonos and dealers. My client just bought 4 amps, because I was told him he could make different zone groups.

Is this still true? I've been told that you can make different groups by sonos and dealers. My client just bought 4 amps, because I was told him he could make different zone groups.

Hi Fedz,

You can already create groups using any combination of Sonos speakers on your system. The feature request here is to be able to save custom groups so you can switch presets on the fly. At this time you have to specify the Sonos units in each group rather than selecting a preset group of rooms.

Oh my good...
I am always wondering when this feature will be released. During beta testing there is so much new stuff introduced but basic things like multiple groups is still missing. What a feature lack, really Sonos, it is time to wake up!
The feature proposal of "The Mekon" looks promising, but at first it would be great to have even the possibility to group speakers in multiple groups and just play from the last group selected without automatically removing them from other groups.

This is a great idea. When are you guys going make it happen?