Contributor I

Answered

Minimum Volume is too loud to enjoy background music

186 replies
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The minimum volume on a Play 1 for instance (volume level 1) is too loud to let the music play as background.
It's "no music" or "too loud music" on volume level 1 Nothing in between. Ideally I could lower the music volume like an old amplifier. It's as simple as that. We use the Sonos system on the lowest volume side and the minimum volume is just way too high. I'm surprised that nobody else raises this.

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Ryan SAnswer

Retired Sonos Staff

Hi everyone, starting today with Sonos 9.2 there's the ability to use the mobile controller for Android or iOS to set a maximum volume for each of your Sonos players. The reason I bring it up in here, is that if you have the maximum volume set at 50%, the whole volume bar will still go from 0-100, but 100% will now reflect what your volume limit is set to. This has the added benefit of being able to get more granular control of players at low volume, as the volume steps will scale up or down with the max volume.

So, if you never set your players above a certain volume, this is a great chance to improve the control at lower volumes. Play around with it and see if this helps.

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Keithmac

Virtuoso

My surround setup could do with a 1/2 setting between 0 and 1, late at night it can be a bit too loud on first click from zero.

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Kumar

Is that the first tap to the right of the dot in the controller? Every tap moves the dot by 1 step out of the 100 step range, so I am surprised to read that this is still too coarse.

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Keithmac

Virtuoso

Yep, first tap. For me it's just the first increment that would be handy to have in two steps.

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Kumar

Hmm....someone with player/base units can comment. I have only music playing units and it takes 3 taps to the right of the zeroed button in the controller - when the mute light is on as it is at zero - to even hear some sound from them with my ears near them.

Stuart_W

World-Class Superstar

I've just tested with my playbar and the iPad controller.

When moving the slider all the way to the left and then 1 tap at the end of the line I could barely hear the TV (It was dialogue).

The to screenshots show the slider in the 2 positions.

I suspect many of the people who stilll have this issue are NOT tapping the correct place on the controller.

Arc + Sub (Gen 1) + 2 x Play 1/ Stereo Play 3s/ Era 100 Stereo in Kitchen, One Stereo in Bedroom, Play 1 stereo pair in Study, Play 1in Bathroom, Sonos Move 2

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Keithmac

Virtuoso

Mines a Playbar 2 play 1's and Sub. Listening to music late night it could do with a 1/2 setting but not the end of the world.

I am perfectly capable of operating the volume as I assume many others are?.

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Kumar

I suspect many of the people who stilll have this issue are NOT tapping the correct place on the controller.

Stuart, I find that anywhere to the side of - as long as it is not on - the button on the controller has the same effect of a 1 step change out of 100 steps. Whether I tap at the end of the line or close to the button does not seem to matter.

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paulgrimshaw

Contributor I

I'd like to add my experience here. I suspect part of the reason people have different experiences is that there is a considerable range of different volumes on different music sources. This is also a bit of a challenge for somebody designing a volume control. I find that the Sonos controller volume controls (less so the hardware switches) are fine for well mastered recordings with wide dynamic range. The problem comes with recordings designed for "pop" radio. These are all too often compressed to hell during the mastering, allowing the mastering volume to be pushed to the loudest possible for every part of the track, sadly at the expense of musical dynamics. This is because unfortunately louder music tends to sound better than quieter, and on a radio station playing track after track the ones that have the highest volume tend to stand out. The Sonos volume controls just aren't designed to handle this type of track. You end up using a tiny fraction of the left hand end of the volume, which is at best a fiddle and at worst you simply don't get the volume you actually want. The answer is to make the volume control more logarithmic (increasingly sensitive at low volumes), but this depends on the hardware level of control. It may be that the hardware volume has fixed steps and so there's little that can be done in software.

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stemac

Contributor I

I use the sonos app on my phone, but find the lowest volume setting at night is to loud, I like to listen to rain sounds or meditation music at night in bed, but find it to loud for this, sonos need to bring in a fine volume control to take it to the lowest it can go

UKMedia

I use the sonos app on my phone, but find the lowest volume setting at night is to loud, I like to listen to rain sounds or meditation music at night in bed, but find it to loud for this, sonos need to bring in a fine volume control to take it to the lowest it can go

Have you tried disabling Loudness within the EQ settings?

Remember: Sometimes Red Wine helps :)

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