14.18 Broke Desktop Volume Controller

Try ungrouping them in the desktop app.  Then group them back up.  That happened to me yesterday and ungroup regroup ‘fixed’ it, sorta.  Once grouped the one I grouped on Office for me, i couldnt control the volume or mute in the Windows app but the rest I could. 

I’d also be tempted to reboot the machine, if you haven’t already, to force a reset of the OS and the application, too. 
 

I’ve not seen this issue on the Mac side, but probably not an equivalency. 

Mac seemingly unaffected here.  I know I did try rebooting the laptop and no change.  Windows 10, MS Surface (older one).  All updated stuff via Mac desktop app.

I’d probably submit a diagnostic, then, and contact Sonos support directly. Sounds like a slight bug in their Windows controller code….or a change that they didn’t anticipate in Windows ;)

Yes, I’m seeing the same behavior now. It’s different from what I saw initially as well. I can now adjust the volume of all the individual speakers except the group controller. In the pop-up, the icon to the left is grayed out on the group controller, and the slider on “Office” won’t move.

I did reboot the desktop PC before my post this morning.

Diagnostic 1092604331

I’m having the same issue. I can control the Group volume but not the individual room speakers.

Sonos please please fix this.

Even if there is a workaround it shouldn’t do this right after an update.  I have been a computer programmer for 25 years, and this appears to be a bad enough bug that the update should be yanked and the issue fixed.  Then a new update pushed.

Even if you do the workaround of ungrouping them and grouping them again, there is high chance that 1 or 2 of your rooms are grayed out in the desktop individual volume control pop up.  the workaround if there is only one grayed out is to tweak the master volume so the grayed out room is the volume you want, and then tweak the other rooms individually.

I had noticed this graying out issue happening before this last disastrous update.

I’m having the same issue. I can control the group volume but not the individual room speakers.

Same issue here.

Ross.

Came here to see if others were having this issue, and glad I’m not alone.

I’ve been able to duplicate the issues mentioned above, including the sorta-workaround by ungrouping/regrouping.

At least the similar function on iOS still works, so I guess I’ll just wait for a fix.

Heh, just went back to that laptop/surface.  Opened the application, and its doing it again.  I dont think I changed the groups in the 24 hours but guess it thinks so.  But cant control individual volumes again.  Assume remaking the group would temp fix some of it, but meh just grabbed my phone.

I really hate that us with large local libraries and like desktop control are now second class citizens.  All focus is on streaming and mobile devices.  If nothing else make it work like it used to, some of us have it setup and want to forget about it and it ‘just work’ like it once did.

Hi @Master T et al

We are aware of this issue and are working on a fix.

Thanks for the info.

I just tried the PC app and I note that all of the device speaker icons are greyed out, which is probably a clue. (The icon next to Group is white).

I also checked my own PC app, and it works fine. This proves the issue is in the Sonos PC controller app, not the firmware of the speakers.

Yes, this is as noted in the images provided above.  When you group and ungroup the speakers using the Desktop app, all but the group controller icon revert to normal (white).

Agreed, and perhaps I should have been clearer that “14.18” in the OP was meant to refer to the version of desktop controller software, not the firmware (although at the time I did not know if this was happening on iOS as well).

Same for me, I can’t control the individual speakers after installing the update.  Or sometimes I can control one of my three speakers.  On top of that the update said it “failed” with an error code but later said my system was up to date.  That happens a lot these days

3 days later and still working on a fix? Not only should something like this not happen if there is a proper QA but more importantly the quickest and appropriate fix would be to downgrade all systems to the previous version that used to work just fine. Sometimes I loathe having invested in Sonos.

Oh the drama. It is weekend and as the PC controller isn’t as essential to controlling Sonos as the Android and iOS apps are we’ll have to wait patiently.

-

@loungebob . With a system as complex as Sonos, bug-free releases are probably unknown, although this is a bigger bug than one would hope to see sneak through. But it happens. Everywhere.

And you obviously haven't read the threads  oomplaining about updates being too frequent. The vast majority of users either don't ecer use the desktop app or can manage without it for a while. Nobody died.

That’s true, but for people like me with an older generation of Sonos devices the quality has progressively declined.  The mobile app works less reliably than before, updates like this for the desktop controller cause problems, and half the time the desktop controller reports the “update failed” when it seems to have actually succeeded.  Plus if you have the older generation of speakers you have to use 2 Sonos mobile apps which is incredibly confusing.  Luckily I am relatively tech savvy and can workaround these issues but for someone who is not Sonos would not be a good option.

My experience is there has been no reduction in the reliability of the Sonos software. Every time I’ve thought there was a potential issue, it turned out to be in my own network, and not a Sonos issue.
 

I’ve been a customer since before 2009. 

I don’t know if there has been a reduction as it’s always been a bit unreliable. To the extent, that I don’t recommend it to my clients. And then it takes surprisingly long time to fix the issues they have, if they ever do get fixed.

Sonos customer since 2019.

Odd. Since I assigned reserved IP addresses to all my Sonos devices, I’ve only experienced two cases of instability. One was due to a failing microwave that was spewing interference across all sorts of radio frequencies, and the other was new neighbors who installed a router that used the same broadcast channel I’d been using. It would be nice if LANs didn’t have all sorts potentials for failure, but the nature of networking is such that in order to be as expansive as it needs to be, it has inherent potentials for failure. WiFi itself is even more fragile, since it uses radio frequencies, rather than Ethernet cables. 

What is most strange about this bug is that why was the volume code change AT ALL on the PC app anyway? It’s not like that version gets new features, and nothing in the underlying tech on the volume APIs has changed, ever.

Obviously one can use other apps or devices to work-around this issue, but it’s just so strange to me that (i) this was changed at all and that (ii) no-one tested it afterwards. It’s not some test corner-case, it just flat doesn’t work at all.

I’d assume it was a change in Windows, and not that someone changed the code in Sonos. Which suggests that Sonos may have been using a non-standard/approved way to enact the appropriate action. And when Windows “fixed” that code, it broke the way that Sonos was doing it….however, that’s merely a guess, based on the fact that I’d think Sonos hasn’t touched that area of the code in likely years.