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Create S2 system for Roam but keep S1 system with S1 and S2 compatible items


I have just bought a Roam (not realising initially it required S2). I have an S1 system with a mixture of S1 and S2 compatible products. I want to leave that as it is and set up a separate S2 system with just the Roam. Is there a simple way of doing this?

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Best answer by John B 2 June 2022, 11:26

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I managed to get it done (reset App and Roam).

 

After the above you get this one: the key was to click outside the white popup..

 

Which brought up this: (which you ‘OK’ to Cancel.

 

Then this pops up and you can indeed carry on:

If it was me and you are on S1 I would buy the Move.

Personally I wouldn't want S1 and S2 apps on the same device (phone), but others have with no issue.

We have one S2 speaker but it is on a different household, different account and different device.

It seems OK with both Apps on the device, time will tell of course.  If Sonos had stuck to what they initially announced and allowed you to ‘Control your S1 just as you do now.’ without forcing a Factory reset on it and losing everything from the S1 devices, I’d have been tempted to Split and go that way before - but all speakers get similar use and I’ve invested too much time curating those Sonos playlists over many years to needlessly have them deleted.

The Roam is better for me (I think it’s probably what the Move should have been) as it’s just to throw in a bag and take on holiday and play in the room etc.

Glad you manage to sort it @sjw.. 👍 it’s just a case now of getting used to its buttons & controls.

Maybe this summary I put together will help to get you started…

Roam Controls Summary

 Rear Power Button

  1. Use this button to power on the device.
  2. A quick press puts device to sleep/wakes up device
  3. A long press puts device into Bluetooth mode (it will go into BT pairing mode, if not paired), or repeat this step for pairing mode, repeat to return to WiFi (or disconnect the pairing on mobile device).
  4. A Longer 5+seconds button press when powered on will power off the Roam.

Play/Pause Button

  1. A quick press will play/pause the audio.
  2. A quick double press skips to next track (if available).
  3. A quick triple press (either restarts track, or skips to previous track - depends on audio service in use.
  4. A long press (2nd bleep) will group the Roam with a playing Sonos speaker on LAN HH (repeat to cycle through all playing sources).
  5. A longer press (3rd bleep) with invoke Sonos SoundSwap between Roam and nearby ‘compatible’ Sonos Speaker in same HH (WiFi only).

There are other button options for device reset and diagnostics etc. but they are rarely necessary, so I haven’t included those.

I really think the Move and Roam suit different use cases and both have useful roles.  The choice of names reflects what they are good at.  The Move moves around my apartment, chiefly between the kitchen and the balcony.  But it’s too big and heavy for it to roam further afield.  That’s what the Roam is for.

I agree and it’s perhaps a little obvious for me to mention here, but that’s just how the Wife and I use each of those portable devices.👍 We find that the smaller Roams are perfect for taking on holiday etc. and the much larger Move is great for use in and around the Home/Garden.

This is the most ridiculous thing I have ever run into!!!

Unistalled and reinstalled S2 and S1 over and over just to get the Roam to work! Absolute Garbage!

So much for my old Sonos system! Im not going to go out and invest $1,000's again on S2 system only to see a few years down the line when S3 comes out.. when it will be time to waste more Money! I'm throwing up my older Sonos Speakers on eBay, returning my $199 sonos Roam and will shop for a better alternative!

I don’t understand the part where you mention that you uninstalled and reinstalled S2 and S1 over and over just to get the Roam to work!

I simply chose to power off my S1 System, then installed the S2 App and added the Roam to that App.

When I was done with its setup, I then powered on the S1 setup and both systems happily co-existed with no issues.

I actually didn’t need to power off the S1 system, but just thought it best to do that, so as not to confuse anything. It wasn’t that difficult, all things said and done.

I don’t recall having to uninstall anything to make the setup work🤔?

I suggest you do the following:

Before setting up the Roam, look in the system settings in the S1 controller for the ‘compatibility checker tool’.  If it is there then run this and it will offer to upgrade compatible speakers to S2.  But there should also be an option to leave everything on S1, which you should select, given your aims.

Then power off all your Sonos.  Power on the Roam, download the S2 app and choose to set up a new system.  When this process is complete, power back on the S1 system.

I set an S2 system up for my Daughter (just a Play:1), mainly so she wouldn't accidentally upgrade my Household S1 system.

She has her own NAS folder as well, separate to our main house one.

Oddly enough, my Spotify App sees this Play:1 even though I don't have S2 installed on my Phone.

Yes, same here, but I think it’s possibly ‘by design’ because Spotify ‘connect’ picks up the Sonos devices on the same LAN subnet as the App, which is what applies in the case of Apple Airplay too.

Power on the Roam, download the S2 app and choose to set up a new system.  When this process is complete, power back on the S1 system.

With both systems powered up, is it easy to inadvertently upgrade the S2 compatible units to S2 via the S2 controller, thereby breaking the S1 system?

Running the compatibility checker tool and thus actively telling the Sonos system that you don’t want to upgrade the existing S2-compatible devices seems. anecdotally, to reduce (eliminate?) this risk.

In any case, I don’t think any upgrade is going to take place without something being pressed to confirm (although I suppose that might be done inadvertently).  If units did get upgraded, they could be rolled back provided there is still an S1 system, which there would be.

I don’t think any upgrade is going to take place without something being pressed to confirm (although I suppose that might be done inadvertently).

There are all sort of ways that these things seem to happen in the world of Sonos users and I have found that my peace of mind is assured where my S1 system runs S2 compatible units is to make sure that the S2 app isn't in my house on any device.

Thanks for that suggestion. I’ll try it out.

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Not sure I follow - I wasn’t able to dismiss the screen where it detected the other speakers.  Why is the Account, System etc. option greyed out above if you had signed in?  You ended up with a 3rd Household with it containing just the Roam and linked to your account.

Either way, I suppose removing the cable was an easy option to stop them being seen - just didn’t think of it initially.

On the playlist issue, I believe I should be able to save upto 1000 Sonos playlists - with upto 40k songs and didn’t think I was anywhere near that.  I don’t think this info is available to users now though - but is taking the thread off topic anyway.

EDIT: sorry, I thought you had finished, didn’t realise more posts were incoming..

If it was me and you are on S1 I would buy the Move.

Personally I wouldn't want S1 and S2 apps on the same device (phone), but others have with no issue.

We have one S2 speaker but it is on a different household, different account and different device.

I’ve not had any issues running both S1/S2 systems side-by-side on the same LAN subnet, using the same account credentials with both controller Apps installed on the same (mobile) devices.  

The somewhat important step IMHO, is to have S1 and S2 running on a completely different HouseholdID, by creating a new System/Household, rather than perhaps upgrading from S1 to S2 and then trying to leave both Systems in situ with the same HHID.. that’s where some users seem to encounter the occasional issue, I think.

@sjw should be fine here once the new HH is created and the Roam added to it - it will not interfere with the existing S1 setup in the slightest. The only thing perhaps is then having to maintain two ‘systems’ with music services, playlists, updates etc. 

I really think the Move and Roam suit different use cases and both have useful roles.  The choice of names reflects what they are good at.  The Move moves around my apartment, chiefly between the kitchen and the balcony.  But it’s too big and heavy for it to roam further afield.  That’s what the Roam is for.

This is the most ridiculous thing I have ever run into!!!

Unistalled and reinstalled S2 and S1 over and over just to get the Roam to work! Absolute Garbage!

So much for my old Sonos system! Im not going to go out and invest $1,000's again on S2 system only to see a few years down the line when S3 comes out.. when it will be time to waste more Money! I'm throwing up my older Sonos Speakers on eBay, returning my $199 sonos Roam and will shop for a better alternative!

 

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Check out this article:

https://support.sonos.com/s/article/4845

thanks, but that is about removing S2 compatible products from my S1 system and creating an S2 system with them in. I just want my S1 system to stay as it is, with S1 and S2 products, and create a separate S2 system with only the Roam.

thanks, but that is about removing S2 compatible products from my S1 system and creating an S2 system with them in. I just want my S1 system to stay as it is, with S1 and S2 products, and create a separate S2 system with only the Roam.

Yes, you can do that. The Roam will then be controlled via the S2 controller version. Your S1 and S2 products will continue to work as they do today, via the S1 controller. 

But this may be tricky long term because once you have the S2 controller on the phone, you may inadvertently end up moving the S2 products to the S2 software version and you have to guard against that.

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I set an S2 system up for my Daughter (just a Play:1), mainly so she wouldn't accidentally upgrade my Household S1 system.

She has her own NAS folder as well, separate to our main house one.

Oddly enough, my Spotify App sees this Play:1 even though I don't have S2 installed on my Phone.

Power on the Roam, download the S2 app and choose to set up a new system.  When this process is complete, power back on the S1 system.

With both systems powered up, is it easy to inadvertently upgrade the S2 compatible units to S2 via the S2 controller, thereby breaking the S1 system?

I’ve never had any trouble at all running S1/S2 systems side-by-side. The chosen course taken a couple of years back was to create separate Sonos Households for the S1/S2 Systems (with different Household ID’s) and so ‘never the twain shall meet’.

Both setups have been working fine ever since… the initial setup was fortunately quite easy, as I create and keep most of my playlists/favourites stored in the subscribed MSP services, plus my locally-held library and its .m3u playlists (on a NAS box) are obviously easy to import/index into both HH’s.

Most of the old S1 devices and a few older Play:1’s have now been handed on to our children/grandchildren at their Homes and they too now run S1/S2 systems side-by-side. They each use separate S1/S2 Household ID’s and they’ve been working fine aswell.

Can you point me to information on setting up the S2 system with a different Household id?

Can you point me to information on setting up the S2 system with a different Household id?

You just create a ‘new’ system from a reset or newly installed Sonos App using a factory reset compatible Sonos speaker.

What many folk used to do when the ‘S1/S2’ split was first announced, was to partly ‘upgrade’ their existing S1HH to an S2HH and leave some older devices like a Play:5 gen1 for example on their S1 setup and move their newer devices like Sonos One’s across automatically to the auto-created S2 system - both then had the same HouseholdID which arose from following the App upgrade path. 

Its a case then of taking the plunge and resetting all the devices in one of the systems back to factory and creating a brand new HH - in my case I opted to reset the older S1 devices and the S1 App to start a brand new HH (and Household ID) for that older system. I would suggest resetting/creating the system that has the least amount of devices.

I think in your case you could simply power off your S1 devices (as a precaution) install the S2 App and create a brand new HH with the Roam and then simply go forward from there.

@Weetang,

Once you have the Sonos Roam in place on a new S2 system - you might first want to setup that App with your music services, playlists etc; then if you decide you then want to move your Play:1 or other compatible devices to that S2 system you can just factory reset the device and add it to the new S2HH via ‘Settings/System/Add Product’ in the S2 App.

In a similar manner you can downgrade it back to you S1HH by taking the same steps but via the S1 App. (Note however a Sonos One SL cannot be downgraded once it’s been put onto any S2 system).

Effectively you leave the S1 system alone exactly as it stands now and then just reset a ‘compatible’ S1 player to move it to the (now) separate S2 system.

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Is there a way to add a Roam as a separate system without powering off all of the other speakers?

When I try to ‘Set up new system’ and sign into S2 App it then sees the other speakers (some of which are not S2 compatible) but doesn’t let me continue to add the Roam as a new system using the S2 app (although one of the available options of continuing is to ‘Set up a new system using the Sonos S2 app.’

I’d rather not power off all of the speakers as it means saving all of the queues (I really don’t know why Sonos can’t make queues persistent through power cycles - they survive upgrade reboots) - and for some reason I’m getting an error when I try to save a queue as a Sonos playlist - ‘Sonos doesn’t have enough free space left to save the queue.  Remove old playlists or queues in other rooms and try again.’  I probably have around 40 Sonos playlists, a few of which have a couple of hundred songs and the rest much less.

Splitting the system isn’t an option as Sonos does a factory reset of the S1 system afterwards but that’s the main one I’ll use and need previously mentioned Sonos playlists.

So is there any way of connecting the Roam to my router and creating a new system with only that in it - with the other speakers still powered on?  Or will I need to connect it to a hotspot first and then add my router WiFi details too?

I also can’t believe there is no explanation of the button on the back of the Roam in the Guide that comes with it.

EDIT: I removed the ethernet from S1 speaker which effectively removes it from the network obviously - Roam connected now.

Playlists don’t disappear when speakers are powered off.  Do you mean the queues?  If so then save the queues as playlists first.

Edit - sorry just reread your comments regarding problems you are having saving queues as playlists

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No, you’re right, I did mean queues in some places - edited slightly to make it clearer. 👍🏻