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Can you connect more than one Sonos Roam via Bluetooth


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Aka daisy chain. Many cheap bluetooth speakers can do this so it would be disappointing if the Roam can't. I do know that two Roams will not do stereo in bluetooth but I can't seem to find anywhere if it even supports two Roams or more in mono.

Thanks

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Best answer by Corry P 10 May 2021, 15:29

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Hi @Kh0annguyen 

Welcome to the Sonos Community!

Thanks for your feedback - I’ve tagged this topic as a feature request and it will be seen by the development team (though you can assume it’s been suggested before).

 

Thank you, Corry!  I’ve been reviewing the many community notes related to this feature request for the past hour and was just about to give up concluding that no one from Sonos was paying any attention.  You’ve restored my faith!

I have 4 Fives, an Amp, a Port, and two Moves.  I just got back from a week at the coast where we took the two Moves along to provide stereo in our Condo.  They worked wonderfully once we paired them to the condo wifi.  We’re camping next week and I was disappointed to realize that the Moves don’t support Bluetooth pairing. I regretted selling the pair of UE Booms I used to use as a stereo pair on camping trips before investing in Sonos as my unified music solution.

Bluetooth stereo pairing strikes me as the distinguishing characteristic that would make the Roam fit perfectly in the Sonos portfolio.  When at home, we’d use them to supplement our system in smaller less frequently used rooms that currently don’t have speakers, but when camping or going to the beach, we’d bring them along as a portable Bluetooth stereo pair.

I’ve read all the speculation in the community about the lack of stereo pairing was a deliberate choice by Sonos or an oversight.  My own speculation is that Sonos is optimized for WiFi and includes complex logic for dealing with latency etc and that Bluetooth stereo pairing requires one of the speakers to act as both a receiver and transmitter so that it can receive the stereo input then play one channel locally and send the other channel to the second daisy-chained speaker.

From an engineering perspective, this is probably viewed as a fairly large development effort that tacks away from Sonos’ core strength and positioning as a high-end multi-room wifi-based system.  I’d like to humbly suggest to the product management team that the effort is worth it because with this feature, having a pair of Roams becomes a no-brainer choice for every Sonos system owner.  Why have a dedicated portable pair from another vendor when an all-Sonos solution covers that use case and also lets those portable speakers also extend your whole house audio when at home?

I suppose there’s a counterargument that portable stereo pairs are a small segment of the portable USB speaker market.  But, I would predict that segment is MUCH larger among Sonos customers -- we chose Sonos despite the high price point precisely because we value sound quality and multi-speaker configurations.

I’d appreciate you adding these thoughts to the feature request.  And while I understand that you can’t comment on whether this feature will ever be implemented, I hope you can answer one small but important related question:

Would it be technically feasible for Sonos to add Bluetooth stereo pairing to Roam as a software-only update, or is it a fundamental architectural change that would require hardware changes or otherwise be something that would have to wait for the release of another model?

For me personally, if I knew this was a software upgrade that was coming sometime in the future, I’d buy a pair of Roams today.  But without knowing that, I will buy one, at most.

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Hi @jaycincotta 

I’d appreciate you adding these thoughts to the feature request.  And while I understand that you can’t comment on whether this feature will ever be implemented, I hope you can answer one small but important related question:

Would it be technically feasible for Sonos to add Bluetooth stereo pairing to Roam as a software-only update, or is it a fundamental architectural change that would require hardware changes or otherwise be something that would have to wait for the release of another model?

For me personally, if I knew this was a software upgrade that was coming sometime in the future, I’d buy a pair of Roams today.  But without knowing that, I will buy one, at most.

I can’t really comment on that either. However, given the similar feedback received about the Move, it would be strange if we didn’t address it on the Roam in some way, some time.

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Absolutely agree. This is a feature that would be great for both Move and Roam speakers. Hoping the development team are able to look at this :)

brian

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I don’t believe the Bluetooth audio spec has any definition or allowances for daisy chaining devices. As indicated, it’s likely the best you could do is to find one of these Android devices that allow Dual Bluetooth. 

As I understand it, a daisy chain would require any device to be both a receiver and a broadcaster. I haven’t seen any Bluetooth devices that have that capability, but I haven’t particularly looked, either. If you know of such devices with the capability to both receive and send a Bluetooth signal at the same time, please post about it. 

Soundcore Bluetooth speakers as well as JBL and UE allow up to 100 chained Bluetooth speakers. I really wish Sonos would allow stereo pairing of the Roam and Move over Bluetooth.

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Hi @Kh0annguyen 

Welcome to the Sonos Community!

Thanks for your feedback - I’ve tagged this topic as a feature request and it will be seen by the development team (though you can assume it’s been suggested before).

 

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I was just about to press “buy”, to add two Sonos roams to my collection, but then I read this thread. I’d assumed Daisy chaining multiple roams via Bluetooth would be a given, considering it’s common in competitors like UE. It would be great if Sonos could say if this is, or is not coming. If it is, when…..? 

@inmaterichard,
I sometimes carry a MiFi device with me instead - see attached. They can vary in price depending if you want a 4G or a 5G LTE connection. 4G works fine, but I recently switched to 5G (Amazon Summer Sale 😀).

These devices seem to work well when out and about here in the U.K. (I’m using EE mobile network). You can of course simply use a mobile ‘hotspot’ instead if you prefer, but if using a phone’s hotspot, then a second phone is needed as a controller, so I prefer to use MiFi.

Anyhow I have added the MiFi’s WiFi network (MobileLink-2G or 5G in my case) to my two Roams and that means all will connect/run on its WiFi signal with my iPhone connected too as their controller. 

That all means I can play music stored on my phone (over Airplay), or even stream music from online services (Spotify etc.) allegedly to upto 32 speakers paired and/or grouped (ooeerrr)!! .. I only ever use two Sonos speakers of course when travelling, but it works really well, I find …and it is a great alternative to ‘Bluetooth’ audio whilst out and about with Roams (or Sonos Moves).

So that’s another option to perhaps consider if wanting to play to multiple Roams/Moves, either ‘paired’ or ‘grouped’, outdoors.

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Bose have this featured in their Bluetooth speakers.  Its called party mode or stereo mode and works flawlessly in stereo mode with 2 portable speakers connected over Bluetooth and content playing via their mobile phone app. 

Sonos need to catch up and update the mobile phone app to accommodate Bluetooth playback or release a separate app called sonos portable. 

 

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Some Android devices have a dual audio Bluetooth feature that allows you to connect to two Bluetooth devices at once.

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 My own speculation is that Sonos is optimized for WiFi and includes complex logic for dealing with latency etc and that Bluetooth stereo pairing requires one of the speakers to act as both a receiver and transmitter


Or, use the Wi-Fi/Sonos Net facility that they’ve already developed, to sync the audio between the two devices.

(The only reason not to do it that way would be if the mobile devices are lacking some hardware to allow them to do it? The Move surely cannot be lacking the CPU power to do it)

 

 My own speculation is that Sonos is optimized for WiFi and includes complex logic for dealing with latency etc and that Bluetooth stereo pairing requires one of the speakers to act as both a receiver and transmitter


Or, use the Wi-Fi/Sonos Net facility that they’ve already developed, to sync the audio between the two devices.

(The only reason not to do it that way would be if the mobile devices are lacking some hardware to allow them to do it? The Move surely cannot be lacking the CPU power to do it)

 

FYI,  Roam and Move cannot connect to Sonosnet like the other speakers.  The ‘net’ part of Sonosnet expects the wireless devices to be stationary for the most part, which obviously doesn’t apply for portable speakers.  Instead, the portables use your router’s WiFi directly.  That doesn’t mean that they can’t be in sync with your other Sonos speakers.  Also, whether connected by Sonosnet or WiFi, your home router is giving each speaker an IP address.

It’s the last part, the IP address, that would be a problem when your away from home, if you’re wanting to use WiFi protocols to do the syncing.  Not saying syncing isn’t possible, just that it would have to done a different way.

As a sidenote,  if you 2 phones/tablets, you could setup one of them as a hotspot, then connect the portables and the 2nd phone/tablet to the hotspot network.  They you could use your speakers like normal without bluetooth.

You have completely missed the point and are arguing against a beneficial feature. Looking at how many topics have raised a topic about this subject clearly a lot of people want this. I'd be double the price of the Anker for the Sonos to have this built in. Then I'd buy another Sonos to pair. Sounds like a win win for Sonos. 

 

 

 

 

I would like to play sound from my Peloton bike (an android device) to my pair of Roam speakers in stereo.  The speakers work brilliantly as a stereo pair over wifi but when I try to connect from the Peloton I can only connect via Bluetooth and then it will only connect to one of the two Roam speakers at a time.

Please Sonos can you add stereo pairing over Bluetooth to the Roam speakers. It would be a great feature and as the Peloton community continues to grow you will add more potential customers as the experience would be so much better than using the inbuilt Peloton Speaker.

I’m surprised and frustrated this still doesn’t work -- after literally years of questions and requests.

The Sonos ecosystem and its Wi-Fi connected speakers are outstanding -- I started with Sonos in 2013 and I have 3 soundbars, 2 subs, and 2 Sonos 1’s scattered around the house -- and I love what they can do. But I waited to buy 2 Roam speakers until they worked out the kinks and its software had caught up to the rest of the Sonos home speaker lineup.

The Roams work great at home – outside, inside, upstairs, downstairs - even in the shower. Take them away from your Wi-Fi network and you have a Bluetooth speaker that sounds good -- but the second one is a brick. Or, you need to buy an additional $100 Bluetooth receiver/transmitter so that you can get sound to come out of them both – even if they’re not stereo paired. 

It’s the direct opposite of the name of the speaker -- Roam -- because you can’t.  Unless you cart around that third, extra device -- that might even have to be plugged in to work sometimes. We waited forever to have a Sonos speaker that could use bluetooth -- but it still come up short.

I bought a pair of portable Bose speakers for my son, and a pair of portable Boom 3 speakers for my daughter. They happily take them everywhere -- and they work everywhere. They can even daisy-chain additional like-branded speakers if they want.

So come on Sonos -- don’t force us to buy other hardware.  Especially when we’ve invested so much money in you already...

 

 

I have mine working as a stereo bluetooth pair for the first time. They were set up as a stereo pair on my home sonos network. I then paired both to bluetooth and pressed play. Hey presto! Stereo bluetooth. Not sure if I can recreate it away from home or if I just fluked it. Anyone else get this to work? PS I also just downloaded updates. 

 

You can do a stereo pair on bluetooth while you’re still connected to WiFi.  Of of WiFi, you won’t be able to do the stereo pair.  Seems likely that WiFi is doing the connection between the two speakers, rather than bluetooth or some other protocol.

Clearly I have been listening to sales people in shops when I should have been digging in to community forums. :D  

Try buying a pair of Sonos Roam when you are staying in a hotel. Getting a WiFi network to register the products before I could use them was great fun and Blutooth was the only option for playing music. The lack of decent documentation is always a problem. I hadn’t seen anything about mobile hotspots… one for the future perhaps.

I don’t use 3rd-party WiFi connections, as I don’t like the security issues that may bring about, that’s just a personal thing however - Sometimes when travelling regularly, I tend to take one of these MiFi (travel) routers, which you will see mentioned in my earlier screenshot, listed as ‘MobileLink-5G’

It can handle more speakers than I can carry, either paired and/or grouped and of course there is the option to use the Sonos App, Airplay, API Casting or Bluetooth Audio sources from a phone and/or tablet and can access the Music library stored back Home using the Plex service on Sonos too.

 

 

 

 

Yes I’ve tried this with an iOS mobile hotspot and it works - both the other mobile phone (controller device) and the speakers need to be connected to the WiFi hotspot. No real need for bluetooth (if you prefer not to use it) as you can stream the music over the WiFi hotspot connection too.

I don’t believe the Bluetooth audio spec has any definition or allowances for daisy chaining devices. As indicated, it’s likely the best you could do is to find one of these Android devices that allow Dual Bluetooth. 

As I understand it, a daisy chain would require any device to be both a receiver and a broadcaster. I haven’t seen any Bluetooth devices that have that capability, but I haven’t particularly looked, either. If you know of such devices with the capability to both receive and send a Bluetooth signal at the same time, please post about it. 

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In my case WiFi only for the Roam has been a good thing given the (frustrating) lack of bluetooth stereo pairing. I was able to solve this with a travel router set to my home WiFi configuration.  I even was able to use a universal WiFi adapter connected to the travel router and pull in my phone’s hotspot and use that for beach/picnic time goodness. Did need to bring a battery pack though to power the router and adapter.

Remote Stereo sound FTW!!!!!

:wink:

How well does your Anker speaker communicate with other speakers when in WiFi mode?

Horses (and electronics) for courses. Just because one speaker is Bluetooth and has a feature doesn’t mean that all speakers that have Bluetooth have the same feature set. If that were the case, why bother making other speakers, the ‘one’ with all the features has already been made.

Sonos makes a network speaker that also allows Bluetooth, and has the capability to pass that Bluetooth connection to other WiFi connected speakers. They’ve chosen the electronics to match that function. What they haven’t done is make a clone of the Anker and the features of a merely Bluetooth speaker. 

You have completely missed the point and are arguing against a beneficial feature. Looking at how many topics have raised a topic about this subject clearly a lot of people want this. I'd be double the price of the Anker for the Sonos to have this built in. Then I'd buy another Sonos to pair. Sounds like a win win for Sonos. 

 

Most folk with Sonos systems at home can group/pair their roams anyway and play Bluetooth audio to two or more devices… it’s only when away from the Home WiFi this would be useful and most people tend to only carry the one speaker when out and about in most cases… plus there are portable Bluetooth transmitter devices with dual audio transmitters anyway to play to two or more devices without Sonos needing to do anything. So I don’t see this feature as being that beneficial, all things considered compared to the other features that the Roam offers…

  • Waterproof 
  • Auto-Trueplay 
  • Apple Airplay 
  • Wireless Audio
  • Sound Swap
  • Bluetooth pass-through to wireless Sonos products
  • Stereo pairing & grouping too.
  • 10 hour battery life
  • Built-in mic with voice assistant (Alexa/Google)
  • Available in Black/White colours
  • Wireless Qi charging

I guess one could also simply carry a MiFi device in your pocket and use that to ‘pair’ and/or ‘group’ upto 32 Roams/Moves etc; that’s if you felt so inclined, plus all the speakers could play 24/48 better quality streaming (or locally held) audio too and maybe stream upto 60 million+ tracks, defending on the MSP being used. It also provides voice assistant control.

There are always various ways to get around these issues. I have such a device (see attached example), but mostly for convenience, I still tend to just use the one Roam only when travelling/camping/hiking etc; as the Roam sounds great all by itself, plus the Roam, controller and MiFi products can all use the same USB-C charger in my own use-case.

Honestly I inherited some Sonos gear from the missus, but pretty disappointed with its lack of connectivity... No Chromecast, no line in (on the arc, beam, sub, one's, move or roam), no ability to share Bluetooth from the move to the Sonos group and no multi roam support off network. Genuinely surprised why people spend so much on this stuff.... Hard to recommend.

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I have mine working as a stereo bluetooth pair for the first time. They were set up as a stereo pair on my home sonos network. I then paired both to bluetooth and pressed play. Hey presto! Stereo bluetooth. Not sure if I can recreate it away from home or if I just fluked it. Anyone else get this to work? PS I also just downloaded updates. 

 

You can do a stereo pair on bluetooth while you’re still connected to WiFi.  Of of WiFi, you won’t be able to do the stereo pair.  Seems likely that WiFi is doing the connection between the two speakers, rather than bluetooth or some other protocol.

Thank you. I’ve just unfortunately proved your point. It’s an astonishing oversight on Sonos’s part.  I’m losing faith in the brand.

You can do a stereo pair on bluetooth while you’re still connected to WiFi.  Of of WiFi, you won’t be able to do the stereo pair.  Seems likely that WiFi is doing the connection between the two speakers, rather than bluetooth or some other protocol.

Thank you. I’ve just unfortunately proved your point. It’s an astonishing oversight on Sonos’s part.  I’m losing faith in the brand.

Oversight - unlikely, more likely ‘by design’ as you can stream music up-to 16 stereo pair of Roams or 32 ‘grouped’ devices. That’s not achievable over the Bluetooth protocol, but is achievable over WiFi.

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