I have no doubt that there will be potential purchasers who don't buy the Roam because this feature is missing. Just as there would have been those who would not have bought it if it hadn't had Airplay, or autotrueplay, or the ability to bring Bluetooth to the rest of the system, or its waterproof capabilities, or sound quality, or…
Nobody would vote against stereo over Bluetooth. All things being equal, having it would be better than not having it.
But Sonos must have considered including this feature, alongside otber features, and decided the development budget was best spent elsewhere.
I have no way of knowing if that was a good judgement or a bad one, but it has to have been a deliberate one.
I don't imagine Sonos expect to capture 100% of the Bluetooth speaker market. You can't please all of the people all of the time.
If Sonos wanted to add stereo pairing they mostly likely can make it happen. But I have a feeling that they don’t do it because it would hurt their other products especially their soundbars. Most likely a business decision !
lol I’m not confused at all you think everyone thinks like you or lives the same lifestyle as you ? Some people would gladly use two Roam or two moves as Stereo speakers to get better sound then their tv speakers have to offer instead of large sound bars but fire stick roku or whatever other streaming device or certain smart tv don’t offer WiFi streaming they only have Bluetooth option and WiF streaming is out of question. I would love to use 2 Roam or move(Move especially) in a Small living place instead of sound bar not everyone wants surround sound or large sound. stereo is sufficient for a lot of people and that would make people skip purchasing sound bars. Then again that’s just probably A reason Sonos didn’t put Stereo pairing feature in sure other business and profit related reasons. Definitely don’t think it has to do with technical issues. Not all the people in the world need soundbars for the most fancy setups. As a company sometimes you have make decisions that one product doesn’t cannibalize other products in your catalog.
I am happy with my new Roam Wifi stereo setup in my working from home desk setup.
But I would also like a bluetooth stereo option.
Wifi stereo demonstrates that two Roams are better than one for sound quality and volume.
Also the competition supports stereo speakers (Bose Revolve comes to mind).
STILL no BT stereo pairing? How disappointing.
It’s now available in certain configurations. See the S2 14.6 software release note here: https://support.sonos.com/s/article/3521
Excellent insights Danny. It shows how daft a comment is “There are $20 BT speakers that can pair” (apart from probably being incorrect). To dredge up an old analogy, a Dacia Duster can go off-road and a Ferrari Testarossa can’t, but it doesn’t mean that the Dacia is a better car, or that you’d want to modify the Ferrari.
Roam, and Move to a lesser degree, IS advertised as speakers for people “on the move”! Defending Sonos for not supporting stereo “on the move” is quite appalling and bordering on being fixated in fandom. I am a big Sonos fan and I have a lot of their devices (Arc, Sub, One, Play 1, Play 5 (2nd), Move, Roam etc) and they are great for home usage. When they run videos where you use the Roam in the woods I expect them to be equally good there! I have 1 Roam and its amazing for its size but I would buy a second one in an instant if stereo was supported as the sound is so much improved. The arguments about needing so much development to support bluetooth stereo etc is from people with no technical knowledge/feeling a need to defend Sonos. It is quite frankly a strange oversight by Sonos, no less, no more.
I am coming to much the same conclusion as @melvimbe , whilst recognising that everybody’s use of Sonos is unique to them. I think the Roam’s sound quality is amazing for its size, but stereo is of little value unless you are sitting in the ‘sweet spot’ and listening fairly attentively. And I don’t think the Roam is quite good enough for that. I would rather have a single Move, or possibly even a single One playing in the kitchen, than a stereo pair of Roams. Purely a personal view, and I don’t expect everyone to agree.
On a different point, just as an experiment, I managed to play by Bluetooth to both my Roams simultaneously using ‘Dual Audio’ from my Samsung S9. I think ‘Dual Audio’ may be a Samsung customisation rather than a core Android function. But it worked for me and may be of interest to some users, who perhaps want the greater oomph of two speakers more than they want genuine stereo. (And, possibly, own a recent Samsung device.)
Edit and further thought - I wonder if I can Dual Audio to my Move and one Roam? Can’t think why I couldn’t. Can’t think why I would want to, either.
Edit 2. This thread has more on Samsung dual audio
I bought the 2 Roams fully expecting to stereo pair on Blue tooth .
I am very disappointed it can’t be done.
Surley this could be achieved with a software update .
A comment from Sonos would be nice, we are your customers after all.
At this point, I would be satisfied being able to simply pair my two Moves to my phone via Bluetooth. Don’t even really need it to be a stereo pair, just run each individually but simultaneously synced to my iPhone. To increase the volume and expanded listening area when outdoors away from WiFi (tailgates, bonfires, camping, beach, etc.). Which is what I’m able to do with my Ultimate Ears Wonderboom 2 mini speakers. In fact, I can simultaneously pair as many of those to my phone as a I like and space them out. They’re not stereo paired, but they don’t need to be in an outdoor setting. Those little guys just don’t have the quality and strength that the Sonos Move has though.
I agree that the Roam is at the level of personal sound. I don’t listen to them from any distance. It is asking too much of small speakers. If I remember my physics correctly, for a point source like a speaker the power will drop off at an inverse of the square of the distance. So smaller, less powerful speakers just can’t push sound out as far.
Mine are mostly sitting on either corner of my computer work area, no more than a few feet away from me. When I take a speaker to go out to the BBQ I am still fairly close. And obviously very close when I am in the shower. And the small enclosed space is perfect for the Roam.
For the kitchen a pair of Play:1s replaced my kitchen stereo a while ago. They have the power to fill that space at levels I listen at.
I haven’t turned on any of my stereos since I have been able to stream the local radio stations to my Beam, Playbar & Play Ones, my Play:1s, and now my Roams via Wi-Fi. And being able to sync up the same music whatever room I am in is great.
But it would be nice to augment the sound from my laptop in stereo using the Bluetooth. The Roam speakers are close and the sound would be awesome, much the same as the way I can enjoy the Roam Wi-Fi stereo right now. Not enabling stereo for such great sounding personal speakers is a crying shame.
You can use Airplay to play anything on your iPhone to a pair of Moves when attached to your home network. And how many users will be chucking a pair of Moves in their backpack when they head for the beach? I suspect this feature was omitted because it would have had virtually no impact on sales.
@John B You have made 16,000 replies which hopefully helped a lot of people but you are not helping with this discussion, that is why I said you must be trolling. Your last comment from 20 minutes ago on an unrelated thread is also not helpful but merely diminishes the frustrations of another user: “You had a bad experience. Every speaker I have added over the last 10 years has taken a minute or two and been trouble free. That includes a gen 3 Sub. Whatever the reason for your bad experience, a sample of 1 is not a logical justification for your assumption that it is always that way.” Why is this a helpful comment?
Hardware already supports. It’s an app change. Guess you are not a technically savvy person.
You’ve looked up the Bluetooth chipset and confirmed this?
Network stack doesn’t matter with BT. That is for tcpip protocol.
each Bluetooth device has a unique identifier known as BD_ADDR. your phone/tablet can connect to multiple BT devices simultaneously.
as with UE, it will be the app that does the work of addressing the 2 speakers in stereo.
so yes, the chipset supports it.
@Diablo60 You spent “upward of 3K” on Sonos devices… they must be doing something right.
My speculation is that this feature is coming. They have built the capability into the Sonos app to view Bluetooth devices, which is new. Stereo devices over bluetooth requires streaming to one device, which then streams one of the two audio channels to the other bluetooth device.
There is lots to go wrong in this process, and I am assuming that they have been having difficulty making this super reliable. They concluded there is value in the devices being sold without this capability while they iterate on making this feature reliable, and will release it through a software update once they get to that point.
It’s also worth noting where Sonos is coming from: at their roots they’re a software company that only recently shifted their focus to high quality hardware. Just a few years ago, their device tear-downs show how they effectively were reselling low quality audio components in a custom designed casing, and their differentiation was how the devices worked together over wifi. Competition led to them needing to compete in the acoustic space (which is why I am now a fan of them). However, my speculation is that this has led to a focus in acoustics and less in software capabilities.
For background: I work in tech in a leadership position and have been part of this type of decision making for new product releases.
Thanks for your perspective. This is one of the more helpful and seemingly knowledgeable posts I’ve seen on this forum.
I sure hope you’re correct that the feature is coming soon!
Sonos have never yet allowed different speakers to be stereo paired, even on WIFI. There are, apparently third party workarounds.
Stereo pairing a Roam and a Move is likely to sound terrible, IMO. A travel router and a battery pack won't be sufficient to bring that about.
I am an idiot. I have bought 2 Sonos Roams and stupidly thought that they would be like my other portables - ieUE Wonderbooms and pair on Bluetooth easily, but no. Very surprised at Sonos for releasing Bluetooth speakers without the capability that every other vendor in this category would not dare to release without. I have gave my Wonderbooms to my daughter, I think I may ask for them back. Come on Sonos - give us an update!
Also, whether they are stupid or not is irrelevant. But it IS ridiculous that speakers that were designed to travel speakers with stereo pairing CANNOT BE USED IN ANY HOTEL CHAIN IN THE WORLD as a stereo pair. So it is is not a stretch to say, “Yeah, that decision (or oversight) was pretty stupid.”
Sorry, I disagree. Your statement is only valid if this is how a worthwhile proportion of users want to use the speakers, and don’t buy them because this feature is absent. I don’t know if that is the case or not. My guess is that Sonos think not, or at least that its absence at launch would not significantly affect sales. I suspect they are right, but of course I don’t know that. It cannot possibly be an oversight, because the same things were said about the Move. Right or wrong, it is a deliberate choice.
But anyway, there are clearly some users - and potential users - out there who would value this feature highly, and they have every right to make that request on here. I would not be at all surprised if this feature were added at some point, and I shall be happy for those who want it if it happens.
The question that really matters, surely, is: "For how many potential purchasers is lack of stereo pairing over Bluetooth a deal breaker?"
I would venture to suggest that the answer is "hardly any".
If so, Sonos' decision not to have this feature is neither embarrassing nor inexplicable.
I don’t agree, this is an important feature that my old Bose micro speakers support and I love! I am also sure that many Sonos users would buy more than one roam or move if they could be paired!
I bought two Roam SL’s today but I didn’t do my due diligence. I didn’t realise that you couldn’t create a stereo pair when using them away from home in Bluetooth mode. I bought them to replace two Megablast speakers which sound excellent but they are too big/heavy to take away on holiday. I also bought the Roams for garden duty and to compliment my existing Sonos system. I’m quite disappointed that I can’t take them on holiday as a stereo pair but it’s my own fault for not doing my homework properly. For the more technical members of the community and aside from any business considerations that Sonos have made, could Bluetooth stereo pairing be introduced by an update if Sonos chose to do so or has the mold been set? Thanks all.
There are dual-audio mobile streaming BT transmitters on the market, like this example:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07J58KY3X
…such devices will ‘pair’ to two BT speakers and play the streaming BT audio in sync to both. I’ve tried this and they do seem to work okay - handy to play to two Roams at a remote location and the device linked above, also has a built-in rechargeable battery that will last the day.
One aspect of this that has not been mention is that the feature needs to be easy to use. Sonos surely would not want to implement a feature if it’s too complicated for most customers to want to use. And although bluetooth stereo pairing is an easy feature for a device that only does bluetooth, it gets a bit more complicated when the speaker also does WiFi.
So in the case where a Roam/Move can be paired in WiFi (Sonos room) or bluetooth, you can configure two speakers (call them A and B in the following ways.
1 - A is a Sonos room, and B is a separate Sonos room
1a - A is a Sonos room, B is bluetooth
1b - A is bluetooth, B is a Sonos room
1c - A is bluetooth, Bi is bluetooth, but not a stereo pair
1d - A &B are a bluetooth stereo pair
2 - A&B are a stereo pair Sonos room
2a - A is a Sonos room, B is bluetooth
2b - A is bluetooth, B is a Sonos room
2c - A is bluetooth, Bi is bluetooth, but not a stereo pair
2d - A &B are a bluetooth stereo pair.
(1) and (2) would be done through setup, but all the variations need to be able done quickly, likely through hard buttons on the speaker, in order for them to meet an ‘ease of use’ standard. You also need to easily be able to get them back to their original Sonos room(s) state….something they don’t do very well right now, in my opinion.
Oh, and lets not forget that a Roam can be on Wifi and bluetooth at the same time, which complicates things a lot more. How would that work for the different scenarios? Say you had a stereo pair Sonos room, that you wanted to split to two different bluetooth sources, and then share the two audio streams with the rest of your system. How can you send two stream from what Sonos sees as a single Sonos room? Or perhaps you have two Sonos rooms, but you want to use them as a stereo pair over bluetooth, while sharing the audio stream with the rest of your system. Maybe you have to put in some rules that allows some situations but not others?
There’s also auto trueplay tuning, and smart home control impacts that need to be looked at. Not sure they are more complicated with bluetooth stereo pair, but that would need to be thought through.
The point is that although bluetooth stereo pairing is easy to do in abstract sense, when you get down to the practicality of a pair of speakers used for WiFi and bluetooth in multiple ways, ease of use gets a lot harder to accomplish.
Thank You for the response
Hi,
Main reason why I am interest in Bluetooth Stereo is because it improves sound quality for video calls in these COVID times and 1 Sonos Roam is great in terms of sound quality but 2 in Stereo would be better + limited (quality) wifi coverage in the garden for my Moves … Using wifi based speaker in Zoom/Teams etc. setting creates echo because of delay (latency) while you do not have that issue with bluetooth. Would be great to have. That being said - both Move and Roam are top of their class speakers.
Grts,
RB
