Separating and re-joining stereo pair without breaking 3rd-party services

One further test that offers a partial solution:

I verified that if you unplug the right speaker when moving the left to another location, the left speaker does revert to mono sound, playing both left and right tracks. There is an error message in the Sonos app to say that one speaker of the stereo pair is offline, but it doesn't seem to do any harm. It reconnects as a stereo pair when the right speaker is plugged in again.

I guess that not many people do this kind of a thing on a regular basis to make it worth improving. I'm sure a telemetry query would reveal exactly how often this is done. I have personally done this operation twice in the last ten years of ownership, so its no biggy for me.

Gee, sounds like Sonos would prefer you buy a speaker for every room instead of constantly re-configuring them. It's almost as if they wish to sell more speakers!

I guess that not many people do this kind of a thing on a regular basis to make it worth improving. I'm sure a telemetry query would reveal exactly how often this is done. I have personally done this operation twice in the last ten years of ownership, so its no biggy for me.

It would be difficult to guess how many people would value a particular feature when most would try it once, maybe do a little online research to find out it isn't possible, and then never try it again.

I often notice that both individuals and companies can have a "failure of imagination" where they don't realize how something would be useful because it's not something they would have thought of doing (not excluding myself here - often it's me that's puzzled as to why somebody would want a particular feature until they explain and other people chime in that they would like that too).

In my case, before I got the stereo pair I was in the habit of frequently moving my single speaker out onto the deck to enjoy some tunes outdoors while relaxing in the sun. After I got the 2nd speaker to make a stereo pair, I realized that had suddenly become more difficult. I didn't want to move two speakers, but one would only have half of a stereo track. When I tried a quick unpair-repair, my Home Assistant got all screwed up, assigning new speaker ids as if they were new speakers and breaking all my automations using Sonos.

If I was doing such unpairing/pairing and going through the process mentioned on a regular basis, then I would, first and foremost, buy another Sonos speaker.

HOWEVER...

If my budget could not stretch to that, I would unpair them and set them up as two separate Sonos 'Rooms' and just group/ungroup them 'on the fly' instead... hardly any configuration work needed when doing that.

If I was doing such unpairing/pairing and going through the process mentioned on a regular basis, then I would, first and foremost, buy another Sonos speaker.

HOWEVER...

If my budget could not stretch to that, I would unpair them and set them up as two separate Sonos 'Rooms' and just group/ungroup them 'on the fly' instead... hardly any configuration work needed when doing that.

I'm not going to buy another Sonos speaker to handle the problem that Sonos hasn't made it convenient to move their portable speaker temporarily to another location in the house once a week.

And the "grouping" solution misses the very important point that a group is not a stereo pair.

I'm not going to buy another Sonos speaker to handle the problem that Sonos hasn't made it convenient to move their portable speaker temporarily to another location in the house once a week.

And the "grouping" solution misses the very important point that a group is not a stereo pair.



That's the point, it isn't convenient to do. The 3rd party app Sonosequencr does many things Sonos' app doesn't. Preset groups, pairs unlike models as stereo, groups and ungroups automatically. What it cannot do is easily bond/unbond stereo pairs and surround setups. Believe me, if it were able to be done easily, that app would be doing it.

If this is on the list at all I would be amazed if it is anywhere near the top. Multiroom audio doesn't mean one speaker that you cart all over your property.

I'm not going to buy another Sonos speaker to handle the problem that Sonos hasn't made it convenient to move their portable speaker temporarily to another location in the house once a week.

And the "grouping" solution misses the very important point that a group is not a stereo pair.


It's not a portable speaker. Sure you can unplug it and move it around as your doing, but it's purpose is not to be a portable speaker. It's supposed to be placed, setup, tuned, and left alone, not moved around the house to whatever room you're in.