It sucks you are limiting this to a few select speakers. 9 months of app BS and the first new feature is this 🤦

Will a zone appear as a single speaker in third party apps like Alexa?

Hi ​@melvimbe 

Good question! Yes.

It sounds Ok. It solves my concering. Music from Sonos + sound from tv during sport watching 😬

You can’t add a Sonos Amp or any Sub to a zone 

I’ve been waiting on Zones for years; I have Era 300s in one end of my living room and Ones at the other end. And then a Sub for added bass. I’m flabbergasted as to why I can’t add my Sub to a Zone.

Unfortunately, it's a dud. Someone correct me, but it doesn't work the way I want it to. I have a beam2 under the TV in the saloon. Next to it are Sub3s and two Era 300s on the walls at the back.
The zone for Era 300 appeared when I disconnected my set.
So zones are not for me. If I had a long living room with eight Era 100s or 300s, it might make sense, but not in my case. There's probably some subtle difference between grouping and zoning, but I don't notice it. Maybe someone can explain it to me in simple language?

Disappointed user 😔

Zones are used to have more than one speaker play the same source - it seems you want them not to play the same? 
 

Essentially zones are named groups (that cannot consist of surround or stereo set ups), that share a volume setting. Unlike predefined groups, it is more permanent because they won’t break if there is a power outage or a system update that causes the units to reboot.

I think the issue is likely more technical than ‘no one would want that’ kind of thing.  The problem is likely that the sub needs to be bonded to a Sonos speaker, which isn’t possible with how zones work currently.  Maybe that’s something that can change in the future, but as first release, it does make sense that this isn’t available.

The other thing to note is that when a sub is bonded to a speaker, it plays the lower frequencies and the speaker no longer plays those frequencies.  So say you could add a sub, and you added it to your zone of 8 speakers spread out over a large space.  Which one of those speakers should stop playing lower frequencies (because the sub is near by) and which ones should still play low frequencies since the sub is much further away?  You would definitely need the ability to manual tune, or a version of trueplay that deals with this issue.  It’s just not something that can be plug and play and sound good.  

Maybe the answer is that they allow a sub to be in a zone, not bonded to any speaker.  It receives the audio directly, just like a speaker, but only plays the bass notes.  Likewise, the speakers in your group play the full spectrum of frequencies as if a sub isn’t present.  Not sure that really is an ok solution for a lot of customers.

To me, it makes more sense to think of zones as a new type of room rather than a named group.  They will show up in the app as a room and be able to group with other rooms.  Like a room, the speakers share the same volume setting, and don’t break during a power outage.  They do replace the need for a named group in many situations, yes, but they don’t really behave like a named group.

So I’ve been asking for and waiting for this feature for 15+ years and this weak implementation is what they finally deliver?  Is there a technical limitation that prevents amps being included?  Why is this more difficult to implement than just having the members of a zone saved and then creating the group on the fly when it’s selected as a destination?  Alexa can do that with my Sonos system but Sonos can’t manage it?

Moderator Note: Modified in accordance with the Community Code of Conduct.

From r/sonos regarding amp or other speakers included 

Question: I have an Era100 in my kitchen and two One SLs in the office next door to it (set up as a stereo pair)

I often play music through both rooms as I move between them frequently but would a Zone allow this to be a permanent pairing without messing anything up i.e. would I then be able to choose the Zone as an option rather than having to link them every time in the app?

Maybe clearer to say would that Zone appear as an option in the app AS WELL AS both those rooms - so I can always choose between Kitchen or Office or Zone as my destination for the music? I still want the option to choose either Room individually.

Hi ​@ainsley002 

Thanks for your question!

You can add 3 speakers to a zone, but you cannot add a stereo pair to one. So, you could have all three speakers act together as a zone, but all three speakers will play stereo sound. Maintaining the Left + Right stereo aspect of your Office room will prevent it from being added to a zone.

Any speakers in a zone will lose their individual names and can no longer be addressed independently - they all must play the same content at the same time.

I hope this helps.

It does, thanks. The Zone doesn't work for me then, as I still want to be able to chose just to play in the Kitchen, for instance, without messing round changing things. Would be more useful, for me anyway, if the Zone was an ADDITIONAL “room” I could choose when required 😊

Thanks for the quick reply, though. 

Hi ​@ainsley002 

The zones feature was originally thought up for the Era 100 Pro, designed to work in commercial spaces. We saw no reason not to port the feature over for home users too, but it is still largely geared towards commercial installations. There a few users who will find it handy, but I think probably only those with larger spaces, like a private gym.

The grouping function is better suited for your use case, as it is not semi-permanent. If you have more than 2 rooms, you should be able to save a group of any two (or more, if more than 3 rooms in total) of them (utilising all speakers is a pre-made group labelled “Everywhere”). Please see our Saved groups help page for more details.

I do see what you mean - maintain rooms for each speaker, but then also have an addressable zone that contains some or all of those same speakers. As I understand it. this is unlikely due to the way speakers are gathered into a zone, but I may be proven wrong in time.

I hope this helps.

I’d personally choose to simply leave one speaker in the physical room outside of the zone and bond a Sub to it. Then ‘group’ that speaker/sub with all other zoned speakers.

I must be obtuse or not have enough speakers to see why Zone is much different than Group

You aren’t. Probably similar situation to me in that it’s so limited to be useless.  Maybe future updates will make work with more Sonos devices in a few years 

But personally I would rather they fixed the app firmware reliability and missing features first. 

After a bunch of reading, this would seem to be a confusing feature for residential users…unless your home dining room seats 30 I suppose. Room?Bond?Group?Zone?Pair? Could you make it anymore confusing?
 

i think what many of us users want is ability to create a virtual “system” on the fly and assign whatever speakers/subs we want to it and specify left/right/mono/stereo for each. Independent controls and settings (including Trueplay) stored with each virtual system. Wouldn’t this be a lot simpler for everyone, maybe even pros?

For example, In my home theater I have Arc Ultra, Sub 4 and 2 ERA300s. I would like ability to have:

Virtual System 1: Theater

• All 4 of these devices

Virtual System 2: Music

• ERA 300s
• Sub 4
• Configured as 2.1 system for maximizing 2 channel audio

Virtual System 3: Night Mode

• Just the Arc Ultra
• Remove Sub and surrounds while people sleeping

Virtual System 4: Main Floor

• Home Theater devices
• Other Sonos devices (kitchen Era100, laundry, whatever

Virtual System : Whole House

• All my Sonos devices

For multi room setups, just allow user to assign priority to each system (eg. Theater trumps music) to force devices in multiple virtual systems to stay playing in one system when another system is playing then prompt the user so they know.

Then in app, start the UI from selecting which virtual system you want, then controls, music source, etc all stay with the virtual system. Store these settings in the cloud if device/app memory is problem…heck, maybe this is opportunity for subscription revenue (each device can belong to 1 virtual system for free, subscribe to allow more)

Wouldn’t that be a lot more straightforward? 

my my my, 

after 9 months of waiting for you to restore simple things like playlist editing & alphabet scrolling you go and prioritize this limited new feature before restoring all the original missing features.   

I would love to hear the rationale from the team who prioritized this work for release prior to say playlist creation and editing.

perhaps they could explain to the millions of disgruntled users what they were thinking?    

Hi ​@Editor 

The feature had already been coded for Sonos Pro customers - it was a small matter to port it to the general-use version of the app.

​@D700 If you find zones are confusing, I’d say having so many “virtual system”  available would certainly confuse users. To me Sonos is about quality of sound and ease of use, which means it won’t cater for the more difficult set up options.

Is the sub limitation temporary or likely to be a permanent restriction with this feature? This is almost exactly what I need for my home gym setup, but I have a sub mini in there, so I guess I won’t be using this for now, unfortunately. 

Hi ​@ericpowell03 

Good question! I don’t have that information right now. My own assumption would be that we would ease that restriction at some point - or at least try to - but there may well be technical reasons why we won’t. I’m fairly sure that there are technical reasons for why you cannot already do so, but I have no idea whether these are unsurmountable or not.

I have 7 rooms with Sonos speakers and 4 out of 7 are not eligible/compatible with this new feature.  Why does the decision making at Sonos over the past year feel like I’m watching an episode of Silicon Valley?!?