Super Groups?

I am mostly dismayed that it has been a feature years in the asking. And the speakers are nice, but I'm not super-keen on the annoyance of "oh, i shouldn't play music in the bedroom and wake up the girlfriend" :regroup regroup regroup: "oh she's awake and now music can be everywhere" :regroup regroup regroup:. I've really got better things to do in life and didn't know other systems actually solved the problem. I may be far from some Sonos-style power-user however.

I actually bought a bunch of Google Audio casts, and they work beautifully. But sadly none of my Sonos:1's even have an audio-input jack, which sort of leads to lots of suckitude.

If you are looking for some Sonos:1's I'm happy to help you out :P

I started on the Sonos bandwagon but also came up against some of the software's limitations. The attraction of Sonos is the software. If asking for more features/flexibility in the software makes posts (small "t") troll-worthy then the writting is on the wall. I think it is unfortunate that the manufacturer rarely provides feedback to the comments even though they read them all. The people who will most proselytize the product are those for whom the product has eliminated the most pain as they best understand the many different pressure points the product addresses (or should).

In the meantime I will look into some of these third party solutions suggested by experienced WHA installers in this group and see if anything makes sense.

If people have been asking for what I deem to be an entirely reasonable feature request that marries perfectly with the intentinded use of the product for 3 years without it materializing, nor the company responding as to why or when, that speaks volumes to me.

Ironically I came on the site tonight looking to purchase a couple of Play 1's to add to my existing Sonos family but the snarky responses to people's legitimate feature requests and the response from Sonos to one post and their silence on most others have left me very concerned about continuing to buy into this boutique ecosystem.

If I thought that the featureset would continue to grow I would bear with it while they improved/expanded it. If I thought it wouldn't and there were other cheaper or better (or both) options on the horizon I would be likely to wait it out.

I will wait it out for now. If anyone has any additional feedback on creating multiple concurrent groups, playing Youtube content, using third party products to improve the experience etc. I'd be thrilled to hear about it.

I am looking for something I believe is conceptually similar - but not exactly since grouping and ungrouping would solve my requirement which includes trueplay a great feature. t here needs to be an ability to selectively take sonos speakers from multiple groups thereby creating an additional group - without disrupting the tone balancing of the original groups. For example it would be great to select the sub from my TV Room group and 1 play 1 from the TV Room group and another play 1 from the Kitchen group to create a new "hallway" group that can be trueplay balanced....while not affecting any properties of either the TV Room or Kitchen groups. Is this possible

I don't get it. Google Audio Cast is practically brand new, yet it lets me bind each of my speakers into multiple groups. Works OK for my Play:5 since it has audio-in, but I'm starting to feel that I have to sell them all so I can use Google Audio Cast instead. I am growing tired of grouping/ungrouping my Sonos speakers every weekend.

Is this feature still really not on the roadmap?

You're seriously telling us that you are "tired of grouping your speakers every weekend"? And as a result you're going to sell your Sonos system. Sonos may or Sonos may not have plans re groups. We don't know and they won't tell us. In the meantime keep grouping, it really is very easy to do.

Also it might not be a priority for Sonos because there are a lot of 3rd party options to accomplish this. I often use Homeseer to set different zone groupings based on time of day or in response to a button push on a wall switch. I think if you search the forum you can also find where people have suggested various 3rd party apps that can do it as well.

Sonos never say what they are going to do, so you will never get answers to future changes they are or are not working on.
Chromecast does it with a nice graphics screen just for permanent groups, so I guess it would be a major edit to sonos software. Maybe this would effect legacy hardware or controllers.
Seems strange they have not done it, as multi-room and hence grouping is one of their main selling points.

Bump for saving group settings please.

Why is this so hard to do?

They keep implementing changes I don't need, and refuse to do the one that so many people keep asking for.

The lack of permanent groups is my main issue with Sonos, and has been for ages. Having to constantly set up a group every time I want to use Sonos is the item that consistently pisses me off about Sonos....

Dave

i had posted to the original post and so am adding my two cents here.

I have not even had my SONOS speakers a month - started with PLAY1 and then scored a PRIME DAY deal on PLAY 3 and then got another PLAY1 for a third room... and then went to the ROOMS and tried to set up permanent groups.

silly me, it seemed such a natural thing to do and yet oops its not available.

further searching here and i discover that its been a feature request for YEARS... REALLY ... thats kinda unbelievable!

I have come to ADORE SONOS - in just three weeks my music and radio listening has morphed to exactly what I wanted ESPECIALLY with the addition of PLEX as a music service (I have a huge music library).

That was the MAIN reason I had put off buying SONOS - i had finally just given up (had tried ECHO but the fact you could not control multiple ECHOs was a game changer) coincidentally I purchased the PLAY3 and then TWO days later beta for PLEX was announced (for once i was in the right place ... )

SO MUCH of SONOS is beautifully thought and planned and the hardware is gorgeous that I am truly amazed and perplexed at this issue.. how can it be so hard to add permanent groups? even if it is, its such a HUGE selling point that i cant understand the decision making not to give this a priority in development!

so adding my (more than) two cents - PLEASE add permanent groups !!!!!!!!!!!

Oh. Saw the thread title, though it was about Cream, CSNY, et al. Dates me, I guess, lol. Back to my nap.

Grokism,
I also do large installs with multiple zones as well. What has worked well for us is just using multiple Connect players in conjunction with multi zone amplifiers for house music. This makes it easy for us to drive multiple speakers for large rooms and out side areas. We also have found the Playbar, Sub and Sonos Amp a pretty good solution for "basic" 5.1 surround in rooms that are not designed for ideal surround configurations (Open concept Family-Kitchen). In rooms where the client is looking for the true theater experience we would just add a Connect player to the receiver and control the room with some type of universal remote. Since most of our control systems (Crestron, RTI, URC, Pro Control, Savant) can control basic functions as well as grouping we have not had many issues with syncing volume levels or even adding simple on/off, volume and preset options to in wall keypads for easy access.

As for memorized groups that everyone keeps asking for, the option is available just not in the Sonos software directly. It would need to be configured with third party controllers and software. I understand that this adds more cost to your system and that incorporating it into the Sonos software would be much easier but let's face it, Sonos has made music listening much easier than what we were accustomed to in the past and they have some pretty cool things coming soon.

I have to apologize for my last post. Volume levels for the different speakers in a group just showed up. I'm back on the Sonos band wagon.

I would like to see more group options available in the Sonos app.

I would also like to preset the default volume for each individual speaker in a group. This way, when the group is enabled, the speakers are at a known volume.