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AutoPlay doesn't revert after signal goes away? Excuse me? What good is that?...

  • 3 April 2018
  • 9 replies
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Title says it. some posts seem to indicate that's how autoplay works (or doesn't).

After the signal that triggered autoplay goes away, why doesn't it revert to what it was playing before?
maybe with a configurable timeout?

This seems like such a big oversight...
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Best answer by Kumar 3 April 2018, 04:56

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9 replies

It is meant to get a silent system to start playing and it does this job. In its absence one would need to invoke the app every time.

The use case you are looking at would usually arise when you use the app to stop the auto play started source. At that time the app is already invoked for any other music to be started in its place. It isn't therefore a big oversight, more like a small missing part.
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um, no.

the use case i have is i like to listen to whole-house radio internet, and the system is great for that.
in one room, where i have the computer connected to the zp100 line-in, i would like the computer audio
to 'override' what's happening otherwise. that works. but when the computer is no longer generating a signal,
i expect the system to revert to what it doing before. seems pretty obvious to me. what am i missing?
Nothing; it is a nice to have and for you, a big miss. Not for me though because I don't listen like that, so I don't notice any miss and contrary to your title, auto play just as it is, is plenty good for me. And probably many don't feel the miss either because in the design brief there would have been an input of what the majority of use cases are.

Also, in your case, it is a lot easier to restart what the system was doing before before you leave the computer. By that I mean easier than, for example, getting a turntable or similar input driven system to start from silent if auto play was missing. The list of things to be done there would start from searching for the phone.
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kumar, i appreciate your response and your (huge) presence here, but i just don't see the point of auto-switching something based on input if you're not going to auto-switch back when that input goes away. how hard could it be? can i really be the only one (as you suggest) who has this opinion about this feature? Please elaborate for this noob your 'autoplay' use case that does not encounter this limitation...
I don't know and did not suggest that you are the only one; just that you may be in the minority. Read again what I wrote.

How hard could it be? No idea. Only Sonos can say.

My use case is very simple. I have a Dot wired to the Line in of a Connect Amp, set to autoplay. When I command the Dot to play music, the Connect Amp kicks in automatically and instantly, even if it has not played for hours and days. When I command music to stop, or if the chosen song/album/playlist is over, it goes silent. I don't need a computer or a phone to access the Sonos app to do this.

Many others have a use case that is more complicated at the source end; they use a turntable with all the associated rituals of getting the thing to put out an audio signal! But the rest of what follows is the same. None that I have read from have complained that the auto play feature is not good enough for them.
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fine. you're happy with it. that's great. it's a half-a$$ed implementation, as far as i'm concerned...
For your use case, perhaps. But Sonos is a business and therefore has to be employing cost/benefit assessment funnels for development spends, and if/when your use case goes through that funnel, it will get served.
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why do you think i'm making a stink? 🙂
It may get attention and a boiler plate response. Do you think it will affect the cost/benefit by anything more than just one data point? My suggestion: don't hold your breath, figure out how to deal with it. Then if ever the feature comes, it will be a big bonus.