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Minimum Volume is too loud to enjoy background music

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K
Tap on the Sonos box or tap at the side of the button in the app on the phone?
S
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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
Move the slider on the app all the way to zero on the left. Tap to the right of the button once. It will take you more than one tap to hear anything at all. Each tap is a 1% change.

That's how I control the volume kumar, the first tap it more then 1% more like 10%
S
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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?
yes I've done many times does help and but the bass to zero 🙂
K
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
Move the slider on the app all the way to zero on the left. Tap to the right of the button once. It will take you more than one tap to hear anything at all. Each tap is a 1% change.
UKMedia
Userlevel 7
Badge +20
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 :)
S
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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
P
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.
K

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.
K
Userlevel 7
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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?.
Stuart_W
Userlevel 7
Badge +22
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.

2 Attachments
Arc + Sub (Gen 1) + 2 x Play 1/ Stereo Play 3s/ Era 100 Stereo in Kitchen, One Stereo in Bedroom, SL One in Study, Play 1in Bathroom & Conservatory
K
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.
K
Userlevel 7
Badge +16
Yep, first tap. For me it's just the first increment that would be handy to have in two steps.
K
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.
K
Userlevel 7
Badge +16
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.
K
Tap to either side of the button in the controller to have it move in 1% changes. That gives fine control over the volume changes.
B
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Dear all. Same feelings : Lowest level is too high. Has nothing to do with apple controls : went as low as possible, then pushed just once on play bar button which immediately went to level zero. As a proof this was really the mute : the led switched to green. Apart from that it is my feeling that the increments when you use iPhone or iPad buttons are to large and that the volume button on the screen is difficult to fine tune. Room for improvement.
G
I totally agree and can't believe thìs isn't fixed already! It should be an easy problem to solve!
Some of you are talking about tapping the volumecontrol. Well I've tried and still can't get lower volume.

I would like to propose a test, so that we all know we are talking about the same volume level. Here's how we do it.

Put alarmclock on volume-level 1 (just a minute ahead or so). Listen carefully how high the sound is.
Now, the big question is, can you manually adjust the volume to a lower level? I cannot! I can adjust it to the same level as the alarmclock set on volume-level 1, but i cannot get lower. '(And it is too loud... Please fix this Sonos.)
Airgetlam
To be honest, what I ended up doing was moving the Play:1 from next to the bed to somewhere further away (across the room), which allowed me better control over how loud it appeared to be to me.

Of course, I sleep alone, so there's no one else I'm trying to please other than me. I recognize that my solution isn't a perfect fit for everyone. I have this issue in hotels, where sometimes it's hard to find an appropriate place to put the speaker.
Bruce
Cazualchatter
Userlevel 3
Badge +5
i agree the physical buttons have a lower gradient of volume control than the apps. Almost feels like sound is reducing in slow motion if you use the physical buttons as compared to the apps..
Music + Movies on 2x Play 1s + Sub + Playbar. Amazon Echo Dot + Google Home Mini. Beautiful impulsive music.
K
Ahh, I see what you mean. Yes, the physical tap is too "coarse" as can be seen by the reflected move in the controller. Fair point, but some above have also complained about the controller via the app, which muddies the waters. Hopefully Sonos reading this picks up this important difference.
S
Userlevel 7
Badge +15
I know that - but I'm talking about the physical.buttons above. Unless I'm mistaken, there isn't a smaller increment than a single tap?
K
Don't push it once it is all the way to the left, tap next to it, to the right of the button. I would very surprised if you need less than 3-4 taps, each tap does a very small advance of the button/sound levels.
S
Userlevel 7
Badge +15
In a very quiet room (let's say in bed at night), turning the volume all the way down on a Play 1 and then pushing the Volume up button once is too loud and the wife can hear it. Repeated with a Play 5 it is quieter.
H
Userlevel 3
Badge +7
That's a good way to do it, but when I just did it on my Mac controller at my desk in a quiet room, with speakers flanking the computer and close to my ears, it took me a couple of taps - more like 4 - before I could hear music with some clarity. Hence I remain puzzled as to why this too loud complaint is made.

And the same results from my handheld.
Yes, hence my question above - works for me as well.
K
That's a good way to do it, but when I just did it on my Mac controller at my desk in a quiet room, with speakers flanking the computer and close to my ears, it took me a couple of taps - more like 4 - before I could hear music with some clarity. Hence I remain puzzled as to why this too loud complaint is made.

And the same results from my handheld.

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