Volume normalization

There are, what, five million Sonos users. 1% of that would be 50k users. I don’t see 50k requests on this forum, or even 50.

Not really an answer to my question but thanks for your insight. Let’s assume your numbers are accurate, are there features that reach anywhere close to 50k requests?

I too think this miss is of a feature that would be a far more important contributor to the quality of the listening experience, than that achieved by all the pandering to the Hi Res nonsense that Sonos also has now started doing.

I don’t expect, like most companies, it is a ‘voting’ decision. I would assume that Product Managers weigh many various factors, but likely the most important one would be how a feature impacts sales. Or what management wants, which is likely much the same thing. Not so much ‘how do we make people who already purchased happy’, but more ‘what will increase sales’. Fortunately, for those of us who are already customers, there is a lot of crossover there, but it isn’t 100%, I would think. 

It seems Sonos' intentions to co-operate with Spotify are limited (and vice-versa). Which won't be beneficial for either party.

As this has been a problem for several years now and the hardware gets old and needs to be replaced every now and then, it's something to consider in the next buying decision.

But is there any option that does this well?

That’s exactly what I will try to find out. Plus honestly, there is not much to lose in that aspect - even in case a replacement option is not doing it well, it will hardly carry out volume normalization worse.

I now use Sonos as dumb kit having largely moved my interface to Echo front end devices that are wired to Sonos line in jacks. But even Echo does not offer this feature which is disappointing, and I suspect that there isn't anyone else that does. If you come across any that do, post the details here!

I have found that it is better to listen to albums as opposed to shuffled playlists just to do away with the large swings in sound levels that seem to be inevitable when using the latter.

I’m surprised there are not more people complaining about this topic. I have been annoyed with this so much. I cannot mixed playlists as one songs are on different levels of loudness. I often have to change the volume manually multiple times. I would expect such as premium product to have solved this issue. For me this is something to look for alternatives. Especially if one looks how long this topic has been discussed here. Sonos product management must be sleeping. 

It’s a long thread, but take a moment to read through the first page to get an idea of some of the possible complications/reasons with volume normalization through Sonos.  And honestly, 129 replies over 4 years is really not a ton of complaints, particularly considering that many are duplicate posters and some people aren’t really complaining about it, just commenting.

I’m not at all against the feature, whatever way it would need to happen, but I just don’t see how it’s it’s terribly surprised given a little background history.  Also think it’s understandable to want to look elsewhere if the feature is that important to you, although I wouldn’t be surprised if the feature is hard to fine in other multiroom audio systems.

Have you look at using airplay or casting directly from streaming apps?