I’m not following this.  You can setup Roams to work as a stereo pair over WiFi. I’m not sure why you want a Roam to ignore to your setup and pair with a different Roam than what you intended.  It also wouldn’t need to use the mic to hear another Roam (how would it know it’s a Roam and not a different speaker?), it would communicate over WiFi...which is also where it would get the audio stream from.

If you’re referring to bluetooth audio, well Sonos would need to support a stereo pair over BT before supporting anything else.

Not sure if auto trueplay already covers this, although it would not automatically break the stereo pair.

I would not want this feature.  I have 3 Roams, and two of them are defined as pair to form a single room.  I don’t want Sonos deciding different speakers need to be paired instead of group for whatever reason.  Even if I had two that were not paired, I would want them to remain as mono speakers, partially so that my predefined automations don’t get messed up, and partially because there are cases where mono is preferred.

Separate as in no longer be a pair?  Again, create a separate Sonos room automatically like this causes issues.  Sonos actually did this at first, when one speaker was powered off, and it was annoying to have re pair it each time. I would not opt to have the speaker automatically pair based on what it hears.  However, if you want autotrueplay to switch from stereo to mono if it determines the paired speaker is too far away to do stereo pairing properly, that make sense to me.

I think setup is pretty simple already.  From my experience, a lot of this automation ideas start to fall apart when you consider all the possible scenarios that can happen in a typical home, and the effort it would take to properly test them all

I’m happy with the way two Roams work together …and that a user can choose to use them ‘standalone’, ‘grouped’, or ‘paired’ …and when ‘paired’, they remain that way even when powered off/on again.

The various configurations work fine for me as they stand at the moment. I would hate it, if I had them setup ‘standalone’, say with one speaker located upstairs in my Home and another one downstairs and they suddenly auto-stereo-paired… that would make no sense. I prefer to see them work as they do now, which is perfect for my use-case.

‘Grouping’ options, by cycling through current playing rooms, and SoundSwap features, using the different play/pause button presses works well too, when I quickly need to use the Roam(s) ‘grouped’, or with my other Sonos Speakers  …and using their Bluetooth pairing and/or BT (line in) grouped-playback (on WiFi) on other Sonos rooms too, means that my entire Sonos setup has many more audio sources that it can use aswell. 

Personally speaking, I love the features of the little speaker and wish my Move had some of those new/extra features too. That said the larger Move speaker is still one of the best ‘portable’ speakers on the market for use both in and around the Home in the Garden etc. The Roam I find is great when travelling and going on Holiday. 

There are a bunch of limitations with the dedicated stereo setup and then using a single speaker powered-on and hoping it will play again as a stereo “half” later.  Also, I dislike the idea that I can use Google Assistant on one separate Roam and Alexa on another but if I pair them, I have to use only one voice assistant and I can’t think of a good reason.

I was describing being able to hear the other speaker and knowing that it’s close enough to benefit from being in a stereo pair.  That means a bunch of obvious prerequisites, like:

1. Both speakers being Roam speakers, capable of working in stereo in the first place.
2. One speaker playing content and the other idle but ON.
3. Both speakers being close enough to work well in stereo, not one upstairs or in your neighbour’s garden shed.

The point is these are portable/battery-powered speakers that can easily be turned off; the mechanism for dedicating a pair of fixed, plugged-in, always-on speakers isn’t applicable and is too constrictive.  They are designed to be moved around and have all the necessary hardware to be more reactive to each other and placement, like the ethos of Trueplay.

Still not for me - I take my Roam’s ‘glamping’ and one might be inside the camper and another on the table outside the open window - I would hate them to suddenly ‘pair’ automatically, even though they could be in proximity of each other. I don’t want to just be listening to the left, or right, channel outdoors, or in, when the other speaker is perhaps not ideally placed. 

I don’t use different assistants that often, so can’t really comment too much, other than to say I use Alexa and SVC mostly on both Roams now. (I have a small Google Home, but it’s dwindling).

I also use Alexa ‘enabled’ groups to auto-group/ungroup the Roams, but that’s only when I choose/need/want them to do that grouping/ungrouping and similarly SVC allows that too.

Unfortunately Google on Sonos is poor and does not support room grouping, so I set that aside when I discovered it didn’t work alongside SVC.

Thanks Ken_Griffiths - let me suggest another “use case”.  You might still prefer no, but just as food for thought.

If you have two identically coloured Roams in a stereo pair and then one day take them out glamping, how do you know which is Left and which is Right?  Wouldn’t it be nice if the speakers decided for themselves, based on a Trueplay-ish adjustment, which channel to play?

Alternatively, if you take just one of those speakers in a stereo pair outside into the yard in range of wifi, do you hear just the Left or Right channel?  Wouldn’t it be nice if both reverted to a standard non-stereo group as they can’t hear each other, in a twin mono group?

Sure, some people might have their Roams in a fixed position (which, to me, isn’t exactly the point of a Roam) but wouldn’t it be nice if the speaker could optimise its role in a dynamic stereo pair, a bit like Trueplay detecting features of the environment and speaker orientation?

“Automagically” doesn’t mean the magic can’t be turned off in settings for a fixed pair.

The price of the ‘little’ speaker would undoubtedly increase to cover such development costs and some perhaps already see it as quite an expensive product already, for its size/appearance.

Plus, when it comes to auto-sensing/selecting the left or right speaker  - surely that depends on if I’m looking towards the speakers, or facing away from them?  If I’m not sat at the ‘sweet-spot’ there’s every chance I would want to adjust their stereo balance too anyway.

I just personally think it’s sometimes best left to the user to choose these things for themselves and keep development costs to a minimum, particularly as I don’t think it would be a feature that I (and perhaps others too) would want to enable. I would rather see development costs spent on the devices ability to ‘roam’ (pardon the pun) seamlessly between mesh WiFi access points/bands/channels, compared to the current ‘stickiness’ to the AP when powered on, but that’s maybe a discussion for another day. 

There isn’t a technical reason.  Google simply doesn’t allow it.  You can have Alexa and SVC, but not Google and Alexa, Google and SVC, or all 3.

First off, in your scenario, you’d have to have WiFi available, which I would think isn’t that typical for an away from home scenario. 

Second, I’m not sure auto trueplay is sophisticated enough to tell whether the speaker is on the left or right side.  To do so , it would have to know what direction it’s facing.  Maybe that’s possible since it does know whether it’s standing up or laid on it’s side.  It was also need to know which direction audio coming from the other Roam is coming from (and know that it’s a Roam).  I’m not sure the mic(s) and related software on the Roam are that sophisticated.  For one thing, the stereo pairing setup of the Roam requires you to manually identify which speaker is on left/right with a test tone.  If the speakers can’t identify position with a test tone, I am doubtful that it can do so with any audio.

That said, the ‘sound sway’ feature can id the nearest Sonos speaker with an audio signal outside of human hearing, So maybe something can be done.  I still can’t imagine I’d have a frequent use case for this where the manual pairing wouldn’t be just as effective.

Why would you take just one?  Since they are normally a stereo pair, I would assume they are near by each other and just as easy to grab both as they are one.  And if you are only going to take one and stay on WiFi, then it would only take a second to separate the pair.  Personally, if this was a common use case for me, I’d just leave the Roams as separate rooms.

I do have a pair of Roams set in fixed position, always plugged in.  Their form factor and water proofing is ideal for a bathroom setup in my opinion.  I get that it’s not typical, but it’s the best product for the job.  The Ones are little too big, and overkill for the job.  I would be happy if Sonos made a speaker the size of the Roam without BT capabilities and battery, but they do not.  I have a 3rd Roam that I would use as if I need a small BT speaker, and as a general use SVC mic for rooms that don’t have that.  I really don’t need a BT speaker much these days since I don’t travel that often.

The Move is generally the better speaker for BT for me, and I would use that over the Roam any time the size isn't an issue..  That neither here or there though. I really don’t think the tech can predict how you want to use a pair of portable speakers based on their location to each other via the mic.  Sounds good in theory, but I just thinking there are too many scenarios over WiFi to handle

melvimbe wrote:

There isn’t a technical reason.  Google simply doesn’t allow it.  You can have Alexa and SVC, but not Google and Alexa, Google and SVC, or all 3.

Ah I didn’t know that.  Hmmm… and yet I can “group” the two separate Roam 1 (with Alexa) and Roam 2 (with Google Assistant) and then ask Google to play something from Youtube music… and, yep, it plays on both.  Now I ask Alexa to play something else from Spotify and both play that instead.  So the only difference (between keeping a dedicated left/right pair with two different voice assistants, one per speaker) is that both speakers are mono in this “standard” group.  Maybe someone should tell Google?

The glamping scenario was from Ken_Griffith’s use case, but I guess not hard to have a similar wifi setup in a campervan. 

I’ll explain my scenario and why I think it would be a commonly useful feature to have portable speakers behave as standalone but “smarten up” when they detect another of their kind (especially with wifi connectivity, not bluetooth):

We have multiple family members, each with their own unique taste in music.  Sometimes two of us like the same thing and/or are in the garden at the same time - it would be great to share that experience in stereo.  And sometimes we are in different rooms or different sections of the gardens and listening to our individual choices, both at the same time. 

I just don’t want to keep reconfiguring for stereo pairing via the app and/or re-adding the voice assistant each time I “break” the pair.  These are portable speakers and have an environmental awareness in auto trueplay already, so this doesn’t feel like an impossible ask.

In the garden scenario mentioned - I would just personally press the play/pause button and group my Roam with the other ‘playing’ family members speaker - I wouldn’t want it stereo-paired, unless I was sat bang in the middle of the playing speakers, I would just ‘group’ them instead and it doesn’t get much easier than pressing the play/pause button to join a group. See this support link for ‘grouping and swapping audio’:

https://support.sonos.com/en-us/article/get-to-know-your-sonos-roam 

…or of course I could just ask SVC to group the speakers together.

It's hard to piss off all of the people all of the time, but this suggestion sounds like a recipe for pissing off nearly everybody with 2+ Roams at some point. 

@senecan,
The play/pause button ‘room-grouping’ feature, allows the Roam to ‘group’ or ‘cycle-through’ (& group with) different playing rooms that are in use by other (family members) speakers on the same local network/Sonos household. …and to also ungroup the Roam from those playing room(s). You can also swap the playing audio to/from the Roam with another speaker (room) in the HH, without ever opening the Sonos App.

SVC voice instructions can also do these things too and much more besides. These groupings are usually just ‘temporary’ and so are not the more-permanent option, which is usually the case with stereo pairing of the Sonos devices, especially as they are portable.

You’re conflating how a command is made with the actual process of the command.  Whether you use Alexa or GA, your command is sent to a cloud server were is then translated and sent back to the Sonos speakers to execute the command.   Google doesn’t get to look a the state of your Sonos speakers (grouped) and see that a command came from something other than Google (Alexa, SVC, the Sonos app, some third party controller) and say  “nah, not going to do it”.  All they are saying is that they don’t want GA to be implementing on the same smart speaker with other voice assistance.  They will say that it is so they can provide a better customer experience.   My opinion...it just makes things more complicated, if it has any impact at all, and made it easier for me to just not use GA at all.

So you want this feature so that you don’t have to buy more speakers?  I see your point, but essentially, this is not what the Sonos portable speakers are for.  Sonos at it’s heart a wireless whole home audio system. The goal is that you try out speakers in one room, or a portable speaker, and are then motivated to build out speakers for the rest of your house.  You could solve that issue by getting a pair of Ones in the room you use the most and then take the Roams outside when you want that.  Slowly add rooms as budget allows and see the need.  To be fair, I think you could argue that making it easier to split/pair the Roam automatically might still result in customers buying more speakers, but I can’t see it being an additional motivator.  And I’m not saying that everything Sonos does has to be for more sales. This just seems to be a particularly difficult one that many people wouldn’t want to use, and may end up hurting sales more than helping.

Also, I think you will find that having speakers pernanently in the rooms you need them to is better than having to move them around all the time.  Portables are good for the backyard if you can’t wire outdoor speakers. And being able to regularly group several rooms together is a huge plus.

I hadn’t really though about having to redo the voice assistant every time.  That would prompt to just give up one of the assistance (well, I was already done with GA) ...but I never would have used your strategy anyway.  

Thanks for your help Ken_Griffiths - I do use the grouping feature a lot.  I sometimes grab a Roam to take with me to the kitchen to continue listening to the audio of a TV programme playing via a Sonos Arc, using the fast grouping feature. 

I didn’t mean to overplay the inconvenience - but as I’ve become older and sadder I’ve found myself wondering, “Why in 2022 am I not hearing stereo when these two identical speakers are alleged grouped?”  I do think the benefits in soundstage and expanse are worth it, even if you can’t always be sitting right in the sweet spot.

I’m sure the Sonos Staff will forward your suggestion onto their engineers, as many such suggestions are of course worthy of consideration.

I just wanted to put my ‘pennies-worth’ here, as I’m just not convinced that such random auto-stereo pairing (or even auto-grouping of speakers) due to their proximity to each other etc; would be something that I would like to see, particularly with Sonos portable devices moving often around my Home & Garden etc. 

I’m more than happy with the way the ‘temporary’ grouping options work now, and at the very least, I would want a user-option/intervention (button press etc.) that allows the user to decide to ‘pair’ two near-identical devices together, rather than it is just allowed to occur automatically.

The first thing I do when installing new software is to disable all the “smart” auto correction features, which always try to do something I don't want to. This idea request sounds like some of these “smart” features to me.

Do you recall this little guy?

I keep saying that the existing mechanism can’t just be disabled - remember, there are Roam SLs out there that have no mic and therefore can’t auto trueplay.  This is a value add - an optional one - for those with full Roams and who want to exploit the portability to the fullest, separating them often.

No-one needs to get p*ssed off, unless that is just your thing.

Melvimbe wrote:

You’re conflating how a command is made with the actual process of the command.  Whether you use Alexa or GA, your command is sent to a cloud server were is then translated and sent back to :

...

They will say that it is so they can provide a better customer experience.   My opinion…

Respect and appreciate your opinion, but just for clarity I do know how it works and my observation was that if I have two Roam separate speakers I can install Alexa on one and GA on the other, but if I combine them to make a pair I have to choose one voice assistant for the “pair”, and one of the mics is then redundant.  IMHO that’s a loss of functionality by pairing - and my (just in my opinion) very good reason is that I want to play Audible, Spotify and Youtube Music and the spat between Amazon and Google means their voice assistants don’t cross-pollinate.  And yes I really do have subscriptions to all those services - my household is … complicated and needy!

On the other hand if a “Group” them I can use both mics, both voice assistants and the output plays on both.  So it seems like a Sonos decision to restrict to one voice service on a stereo pair.

Melvimbe wrote:

So you want this feature so that you don’t have to buy more speakers? 

Ah we’re not going to personal accusations and I’m certainly not making any or going to defend against.  I admit to being a bit disappointed that this thread didn’t become more interesting with actual examples of how this feature would inconvenience existing setups or be a bad idea other than “I like how it is now” or “this will just p*ss everyone off” and the strange drone that “likes” every casual negative without actually contributing one.  It is interesting to hear opinions and I appreciate anew the tough line Sonos have to walk with innovations versus the “I always turn off every smart feature” stalwarts, although they might want to discourage the guy that plugs his waterproof speakers in, in his bathroom.

If it helps (it shouldn’t), MY SONOS SETUP includes fixed speakers in stereo or surround in almost all rooms except bathrooms and outbuildings (and I also have a shed full of S1 speakers that I’ve replaced now).  I even have a Move that rarely does (move that is). 

All I want is for my portable speakers to be flexible, because they’re portable.  Automatic trueplay is an impressive example of innovation that sets them apart from permanently-plugged in, fixed speakers, as they react to their environment.  The next stage is to add a “prefer automatic stereo pairing” checkbox on Roams with a mic and let these great speakers sort it out for you.

And then these lower-price point speakers might sell to households don’t want to have to buy fixed speakers for every room but might be one per household member instead and use them… like portable speakers.