Home theater grouping and regrouping after watching TV

  • 19 July 2017
  • 6 replies
  • 939 views

I love my SONOS system. I live in a log home and SONOS is a perfect solution to enjoying great audio without worrying about wires. That said, I have two rooms with a home theater (Playbar, Sub, 2 Play 1s), plus a mix of Play 3s throughout my house. Do anyone know of a way around having to regroup all my speakers after watching TV? It is annoying that when you turn the TV/Home Theater system off, I have to regroup everything when I want to listen to music throughout the house. I like using the home theater speakers when listening to music throughout the house.

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6 replies

Userlevel 7
Badge +22
No there is no way around it I'm afraid.
Not within the Sonos apps, but it is possible with some third party smart home hubs. I use a lutron hub for controlling my lights and the sonos zones. You can setup what they call 'scenes' where you specify which preset zones to play a preset sonos favorite at preset volumes. So, if you commonly want to play a particular station or playlist, you could setup that up to work at the touch of a button.

You can also setup a schedule so that all that happens on a preset time and day. I actually start my day with music coming on in the bedroom, bathroom, and living room...with lights coming on in the same rooms. If you have echo/alexa, you can also trigger this with voice commands.

And it's purely speculation on my part, but I wouldn't be too surprised if Sonos has named grouped zones functionality implemented before the end of the year. It just seems like it would be a needed feature with the integration of sonos and alexa.
I've just got my Playbase hooked up, and when I turn on my TV, the Playbase will un-group from the other speakers I have and play the TV audio.

I'm dismayed, however, that when I turn off the TV, the Playbase doesn't automatically re-group with the other speakers, and play whatever they are playing.

Why in the world is automatic un-grouping available, but not automatic grouping? How does that make any sense?
Badge +4
Just hooked up my new Playbase and now understand the issue. I too would love to see this feature added.
Someone at the start of this thread mentioned using a Lutron hub to achieve this. I wonder if the sonos plugin for homebridge on a raspberry pi would be able to regroup the same way with scenes. Homebridge is a workaround to get non supported devices to work with Apple HomeKit.
I don't know anything about Homebridge, but if it can connect and control Sonos, then I suspect it would be able to handle grouping and volume controls. Probably not the ideal user friendly solution though.