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I have just received a Sonos roam for Christmas 

I have connected it to my wifi and it plays music from the various radio options 

I want to play music from my Ipad

I put it in discoverable mode and the I pad found it using Bluetooth in settings and shows that it is connected

I go to Spotify on my IPad and select a tune but nothing happens the little up and down bars show that it is playing

However I now see a small logo at the bottom of my screen that says AIRPLAY

I select this and and I get a logo called airplay or blue tooth

I select this and a screen comes up showing the devices I can play from 

one is iPAD and the other under the heading of speakers and tvs is Sonos roam

If I click on IPad the music starts coming from the iPad speaker

if I click on Sonos roam nothing is heard despite the little bars going up and down and the play line moving along and when it gets to the end the next song on the list is displayed but I never hear anything 

I have tried to turn up the speaker using the controls on the top but nothing happens

I only wanted the Sonos roam because it was recommended to be the best little speaker on the market

I wanted to improve the sound from my iPad when I was listening to ebooks, listening to music and watching things like utube. I really didn’t care about all the “smart features” I just want a speaker for my iPad and it appears it is the only thing it wont do

Put the Roam in WiFi mode, not Bluetooth mode. The LED on the Roam should be solid white. Then open the Spotify app on the iPad and follow the instructions in this article:

https://support.spotify.com/us/article/spotify-connect/

Fantastic Thanks!

works very simply with Spotify

But

the little button at the bottom to select iPad or Sonos roam does not appear when I go to my local radio and chose a podcast

so I still can’t use the Sonos as a simple speaker for my ipad

why can’t connect

Is your local radio station available in one of the radio services that SONOS offers? If so, I recommend that you play the station using the SONOS controller. Once radio play is started, you can turn OFF the iPad. If you use Bluetooth or Airplay 2, all of the music flows through an iPad App.

For your use case, at least while you are at home, I think that you will be better off using Airplay 2 while playing content that is not available directly through the SONOS controller. Spotify is a special case. because you can start Spotify music play  through the SONOS system by clicking the little icon within the SPOTIFY iPad App. At this point SONOS takes charge of the music play and you could shut down the iPad while SONOS works through a Playlist.

At least on ROAM, Bluetooth is not a permanent connection. This is by design because SONOS can do much more than a dumb Bluetooth speaker. I don’t have a lot of experience with iPad and Bluetooth, but I found that it takes some getting used its Bluetooth quirks. The ROAM status light will turn blue when it is paired with an active transmitter.

I have a Bluetooth headset and I find that there are quirks when using it with the iPad. There are no quirks when using the headset with my computer.

Fantastic Thanks!

works very simply with Spotify

But

the little button at the bottom to select iPad or Sonos roam does not appear when I go to my local radio and chose a podcast

so I still can’t use the Sonos as a simple speaker for my ipad

why can’t connect

Follow the instructions in this article to stream the podcast audio using AirPlay:

https://support.sonos.com/en-us/article/stream-airplay-audio-to-sonos

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