Returning my Sonos Roam today. Google Assistant is shouting like crazy and it is impossible to lower it’s volume and keep volume of movies or music up. AirPlay from Macbook just doesn’t work. It takes few seconds to start playing (very annoying, because movie is already running), when you pause for like 5 minutes, it won’t start playing at all and you have to switch to internal speakers and back to Sonos. If you play from VLC, many videos will completely loss sync between video and audio. Useless. 

I think that is more of an issue with airplay on the MacOS end rather than the Sonos end.

I had exactly the same issue when trying to use AirPlay on a different speaker too.

I gave up with AirPlay for this scenario.

Google yelling at me every time I ask it for something is enough if a reason to return it. Sonos promised change like 2 years ago and nothing. This is simple SW tweak. Also if I give up on AirPlay is there any other way how to play from Macbook on Roam?

Bluetooth?

I just set my first Sonos ever, a Roam.

Im not so sure I’m happy with the feature set, though. In today’s world, it is ESSENTIAL to be able to use your speaker as a speakerphone for conferencing on Zoom, Teams, even WhatsApp, Facetime. I find it RIDICULOUS that this isn’t a supported feature.

Odd. Sonos has never sold, nor advertised, that as a feature for their networked home music speaker system. 

If you are replying to me, I understand and agree, it has not been offered. Perhaps it is important that they hear from their customers what they actually want, and I want my portable speaker to be able to be used as a speakerphone for my phone and I want it to work transparently on any app that does modern communications: Zoom, Teams, WhatsApp, Facetime, Telegram, anything. You have all the hardware you need in the device, it can’t be such a hard thing to do. 

Speakers that are good for voice conference are usually terrible for music and speakers that are good for music usually are terrible for voice conferences.

In Teams you can separate the mic device from the speaker…. I do this all the time and have the best of both.

I seem to remember you can do the same in Zoom, not sure about the others though

What particular reason powers this opinion? in my opinion, a good speaker is a good speaker period. The roam has a far field microphone, i don’t see why this would be so hard.

I happen to have a speaker, the Creative iRoar Go (https://us.creative.com/p/speakers/creative-iroar-go), that does this without a problem, and it isn’t even a new design. I don’t particularly find excuses unsupported by science a good explanation.

Well, I can’t quote science.

but I have used quite a few speakerphones from plantronics, Cisco, Philips etc

I have used Bluetooth speakers from Sony, Jambox, Anker, JBL etc

All did their thing in their primary field, but we’re not great in the other field.

I spend a lot of time on conference calls and have done for decades….. not saying it can’t be done, just saying I have tried a lot of them and I have not found one that does both well…. YMMV 

Seriously? I should now look if speaker with microphone will work in particular apps? I though I am buying speaker and microphone and they should do, what they are expected to do - hence work as a speaker and microphone. It should not matter if I am playing my favourite song or listening to zoom call. Yes, sound might not be super optimised for voice or music, but I can’t find any excuse why it shouldn’t work as a speaker or microphone. When it essentially is a speaker and microphone. Just quite expensive one (for what it is).

Genuine question…. Can Echo speakers or Google nest hub’s be used as speakerphones when connected to a laptop?

not tried, I have an echo plus I no longer use, might test it

While I understand why the assumption is made, perhaps consider some of the potential complications.

• Device is speaker with microphone
• Device  can connect to phone via bluetooth
• Device can connect to WiFi
• Device can connect to bluetooth and WiFi at the same time.
• Device can share (group) audio from bluetooth with other speakers in your network
• Device uses microphone for voice assistant while on WiFi.
• Device can continue to play bluetooth audio while responding to voice request (I tested to confirm)
• Sonos app can play/pause bluetooth audio.  Does not need to be on same phone as bluetooth source (I tested to confirm)
• Device uses microphone for auto trueplay in WiFi or bluetooth mode.
• From what I’ve seen, when a device is enabled for bluetooth calling, the ‘receiving’ device (speaker) can be use for voice control in the sending device (phone)
• Roam can be stereo paired while on WiFi, but not if it’s also connected via bluetooth.

Now, considering these features, do you see any problems when you add speaker phone to the mix?  The primary problem is that while you are on a call, someone in a different room can listen in to your call...without you knowing it.  They can also turn off the audio entirely.  The second issue is that it may get rather confusing when using voice assistant.  If on WiFi and Bluetooth, should the command be carried out by Roam or the device it's connected to via Bluetooth?  As far as auto trueplay, I’m not sure how that would work if Roam mic needs to pass audio back to your phone as well as process it for tuning.  Maybe tuning can be off during a phone, but not completely sure if the Roam can know that it’s currently on a phone call.

I’m not saying this issues can’t be worked around, or that Sonos can’t give options to turn off certain features if you want to enable speaker phone use. Just that perhaps it may not be as easy for the Roam to do speaker phone the way a bluetooth only speaker could.  Sonos also tries to keep things simple, and perhaps they felt it was better just to not implement speaker phone feature than add complication to an already complicated device

@Hobbit_CZ just as an FYI…..

I tested the echo plus and the answer is no. The speaker can be used, but the microphones are not visible in teams.

(Tested on Windows 10)

So I got one.  It only works with S2 and I didn’t want to break my S1 setup, so I thought I’d use is as a separate system - just portable.  And this worked at first and sounded surprisingly good.  The next day, the S2 app couldn’t find my “system”, so I let it “look for it” and it proceeded to, with no warning, update all my S1/S2 components to S2 breaking my setup while also never finding the Roam.  And it looks like I cannot use the software to “downgrade” (repair) the chaos. I’ll probably have to reset and reset up most of my system.

“While we don’t recommend downgrading your products to S1 after updating to S2, it is possible to downgrade cross-compatible products by resetting them and adding them to an existing S1 system.”  - even though the S1 app is telling me to update back to S1, then it errors out. Great.  So reset is probably the only option.

Between this and the annoying nag screen on S1 to update to S2 which won’t work for me and that I have dismissed numerous times it seems like Sonos is hell bent on pushing users to S2 to the point of screwing them over and wrecking the S1 setup.  I’m boxing the Roam up and sending it back.  This entire S1/ to S2 mess is the end of Sonos purchases for me - I’ll just ride out what I have until it becomes obsolete or dies and find whatever has moved in to take its place.

It’s actually worse - that quote above is one of several suggested ways to fix things - it doesn’t work.  So then there is the product removal tool:

“Remove products using the removal tool
Open the Sonos S1 Controller app for iOS or Android.
From the Settings tab, tap System.
Tap System Tools, then tap Remove Products.
Follow the on-screen steps to select and remove your incompatible products.”

It doesn’t work either because the incompatible units make the app unusable and it wants to upgrade first, then fails.

So then you are down to: If Remove Products is grayed out or missing, you can remove any products that are not compatible with S2 by resetting them to their factory settings."  I.e., remove power and repower while holding a play/pause button of the link button.

That’s a pain if any of your units are in difficult to reach places or if you have stereo pairs or if you have eq tuned them or any combination of theses.  And then there’s the Playbase which refuses to reset using the online instructions.

All this for trying out a stupid portable speaker. Jesus!  If you have an S1 system and want to keep it, do not bother with any S2 only products - it’s a mess.

Hi @stevepow, thanks for reaching out to the Sonos Community!

I took a quick look at your account, and it looks like the Playbase, as well as the rest of the S1 system, are still running the S1 software - it sounds like the S2 app was just unable to find the Roam at the time, and it certainly shouldn’t have updated your S1 system without being told to.

I’d recommend getting in touch with our Support Team via live chat or phone call so they can take a closer look, and go through some live troubleshooting with you :)

Please support two Roams over Bluetooth, like competitors do!

I’m an audiophile. I have iterated five time on my home theater setup, and avoided Sonos until they released the Sonos Arc. Since then, I’ve transitioned almost completely to Sonos, with the Arc in the living room, a beam for the master bedroom, three Amps powering Bowers and Wilkins surround sound speakers in different rooms, and a Port for when anyone wants to perform.

The Roam was a device I was excited for and waiting for. The Move is heavy and hard to transport, as wonderful as it sounds. I therefore ordered two. 

Given it’s 2021, I assumed I could use two together over Bluetooth, like almost any other competitor’s device. After configuring, the user interface changed. It was easy to connect both, and they both showed in the app.

But I can’t play with two Sonos Roams together!

I understand that you must be prioritizing features that work well before launch, but given the competitive landscape, I do think this is a table-stakes feature for a mid to high range priced device.

If it’s close to completion, please let us know when it will be released. I am close to returning both of them at this point, as I could instead purchase a competitor device that released this feature years ago.

Yes, they are all running S1 now as I had to reset every S1/S2 component to get them back - climbing up ladders several times (reset, then setup, then pair - up and down to do all that on 3 systems).  But yes, it is all back now.  I did most resets last night, all except a Play:3 that was in our bedroom up high.  I agree that the S2 shouldn’t hijack my S1/S2 components, but in “finding my system”, that is what it did and there was no way to get it back right without doing a reset on each component that was showing an “incompatible” error in the S1 app - the app wouldn’t function with those devices showing an error.  Still no idea why the S2 app suddenly couldn’t not see the Roam.  On Windows, I had to reset that app and create a new system to get it back.  We’ve had this system for 10 years, gradually expanding it, and this was the first time anything like this has happened. Of course, it is also the first time we ever tried out any S2 stuff.

Can the Roam be paired to another BT speaker? 

No.  It can paired with another Roam while in ‘WiFi mode’, but not while using bluetooth.

I pair Roam with One SL in my pool area directly across from each other and i find the sound quality and power to be equal (at levels 30-60%, as to not tick off my neighbours). The test was to close my eyes and turn multiple times and try to decipher which was which. I couldn’t!  

In Sonos parlance, that is ‘grouping’.  Meaning you are grouping two rooms to play in sync.  ‘Pairing’ is when you semi-permanently link two like models together in a stereo pair, so one plays the left channel and the other the right channel of a stereo signal.  Then there is ‘bonding’  which is used to add a Sub or surrounds to a room.

To add to this, the main difference between a One SL and Roam would be at the lower bass frequencies.  Those are omnidirectional, meaning you aren’t going to easily tell where the source of the sound is coming from.  If you did a test where you played the Roam and then played the One SL separately, you likely would notice the missing bass when playing the Roam alone.

Bonjour, Je viens juste d’acheter une paire de Sonos Roam. Pour leur taille très compacte, le son est vraiment bon, et permet de diffuser sur le système installé via bluetooth, ce qui est une bonne chose.

L’autonomie (9h) est un peu juste, certains concurrents font mieux. Mais le gros point noir est l’impossibilité de diffuser le son en bluetooth sur 2 Sonos Roam (et pas de possibilité non plus d’appairer 2 Sonos Roam en stéréo via bluetooth!). Cela est vraiment dommage, car la majorité des enceintes nomade bluetooth (Sony, Anker, Bose etc) permettent d’appairer 2 enceintes en bluetooth pour bénéficier de la stéréo. J’espère que cela sera amélioré par une mise à jour !

Hi ! I just bought 2 Sonos Roam. For their very little size, the sound is amazing. You can play your music via bluetooth on your home based system. 

Battery only allow 9h of use, this is quite less than some other similar products. But the big lack is that you cannot pair 2 Roams via bluetooth for stereo. You cannot even not play music via bluetooth on 2 Roams This Is soooo bad ! Almost all competing nomadic speakers (Sony, Anker, Bose, etc) even less expensive offer this feature! Hope this will be implemented with a future update!