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


Userlevel 3
We spend a lot of time grouping and ungrouping rooms. The issue is stems from my wife's use of Party Mode. She likes to use Party Mode while she is cooking. I ungroup the outside speakers so as not to offend the neighbors. I ungroup the upstairs when the kids go to bed. I turn everything off and then create a new group to set the morning alarm. In the morning, I create a group in the kitchen and family room to read the paper. There has to be a better way! Why can't we just create groups of rooms and label them something easy to remember like "Cooking", "Kids in bed", "Alarm" or "Morning Coffee"?

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105 replies

Userlevel 5
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Hello, This is an excellent idea, so I'm going to move this from the Questions forum to the Share an Idea forum. This will allow others to comment and +1 your idea as well.
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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.
+1
I am a new Sonos owner/user with 6 zones.  It took me about 20 minutes of learning the system to realize that this is a big missing feature.  Please add it.
Userlevel 1
Indeed this is a problem for me as well. I'd like to create custom zones and put specific equipment in those zones. And put custom zones in custom zones. For example, create a zone "whole house" that contains the zones "ground floor", "first floor" and "attic", "ground floor" contains "living room", "kitchen" etc.
Nick describes it perfectly. The ability to set up and store groups of speakers and then select a particular group to play with one touch would significantly increase the functionality of the system.  If I'm honest, when I bought the system I expected this functionality to already exist, so it was a bit of a disappointment to find out I couldn't do it.  The current grouping method does let the system down a bit. That said, I still love my new Sonos system and will continue to expand it!
Userlevel 7
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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.
This is crazy. I was expecting this out of the gate as well.

What's crazier is this thread is 3 years old. This seems like a pretty easy addition guys, I can sketch the screens up for you if you'd like. Mobile apps are what my company does.
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I too am a new user to Sonos and thought this was just a no-brainer. Can't believe this missed opportunity, so please add me to the list of users looking for the ability to create speaker configuration groups that are re-usable.
Userlevel 2
3 years old and still not implemented. It is really a relatively easy task for sonos, so just do it.
This could then be called "smart speakers"...
I immediately ran into this problem as well. When you read that 32 different rooms can be configured, you don't assume it means '...with 32 different components', but rather different configurations with existing components. Please fix!
I thought this would be standard! Having to change the group each time is tedious. i want to be able to just click from a pre set number of groups ive named
This exactly. Keep current menue setup but add a second column on the groups page that you can load presets into... and if possible add the ability for alarms to use these preset groups..
It seems like there is a lot of demand for Sonos to pay more attention to room grouping in general. Between this request to be able to pre-define different group configurations plus the often expressed desire for room groupings to persist through a power failure (or self repair if a single member loses then regains power) there is plenty of justification for Sonos to dedicate some resources to updating the whole room grouping experience.
I am about to add a system with about 20 zones, on the recommendation of our audio installer,  and I can't believe you can't specify multiple groups. Some speakers are indoors, others outdoors.  So groups would be "First Floor", "Second Floor", "All Inside Speakers", "Patio and Pool", etc.

Please add this functionality.
That's a simple question of software design. Frankly I don't care if they do something silly like having the first alphanumeric by group//zone name take precedent,or simply pop an error (trapped of course) if you try and play a zone where a device is active (at which point you'd probably exclude it). But I'm not sure it's a practical use case unless you had an unholy complex layout, and users who stomped on one another's usage. Most use cases I've seen on the forums aren't overlapping zones but the basic need to group N number of devices into a permanent zone with a custom name and be able too treat them as a single output. Synchronizing them across devices is just a method to ensure devices aren't double-assigned. It's a basic feature that I verified, through Crutchfield, exists in most systems. I'm demo'ing a legrand system this evening and they do this, as well as managing (including ripping!) your music very well.

That all said, perhaps they could follow Apple and simply look at what competitors do in that situation and copy what works.

I wish Sonos would be clear that a zone is simply a device unless you permanently pair things like a surround sound system. Their approach is basic, and I suppose not terrible. But it seems to me it's a tad misleading. Again, it would be great if a sonos employee would take the time to address this question in detail. After all, maybe I'm just plain wrong.
I've been waiting 8 years for this function so don't hold your breath people.
Once again, it is logically impossible to have the same speakers in multiple groups. It's easy to demonstrate:

Given speakers 1 2 3
Group A contains speakers 1 & 2
Group B contains speakers 2 & 3

If I play Led Zeppelin in Group A and Chopin in Group B, what is playing on speaker 2?
Well that's easy - either just play on the speaker the most recent group selected, or throw an error when you try to play a group when that speaker is already in a different group that is playing. It doesn't really matter - it's not a situation that most people would configure, and so long as whatever method is consistent, who cares?

As a software developer, I care. I support creating permanent groups. I do not support the illogical concept of a speaker belonging to more than one group. It's stupid.
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I'm a software developer too as it happens, yet I think it's a great idea. It's like Gmail allowing you to label emails rather than putting them in a single folder - genius!


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.
The Mekon solution is well thought out. Nice to see a suggestion that works through the real world application of the requested feature.
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.
Userlevel 5
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I think the title should be "favourite groups". Or "favourite layouts"

Any player can only reside in one group at a time, but you should have the ability to select a particular layout at a time.

As a simple example

Four players. Bedroom, kitchen, lounge and outdoors.

Favourite layout 1 could be "all": all players in one group for when you may be cleaning the house and garden.

Favourite layout 2: "party" this could put the kitchen, lounge and garden in one group and the bedroom in another.

Favourite layout 3: "indoor party". This could put the kitchen and lounge in a group and leave the others alone. For when you aren't using the outdoors or don'the want to annoy neighbours with late music.


So each player is only ever in one group at a time, but you can select favourite layouts for groups. Its easy to see how this would be more beneficial the larger the number of players in a system.
I had the same idea. Could it be set up with logical groups for upstairs and downstairs. Also, the mute switch cancels the whole group, would it be better for this to ungroup that zone only? e.g. If the wife takes a call in the kitchen, and mutes the Sonos, the 'party mode' would continue to play in the rest of the house?
In for creating new groups. Just got my second Sonos speaker today and it was the first thing I tried to do.