I'm new to the Sonos world - having waited for Google Play integration (thanks!) - and am generally very impressed, as it's a joy to use such well designed products. However, I've been surprised that Groups functionality is so weak compared to what I'd expected...
I have a large living room that has an LR Pair of Play:1s in it and a single Play:5. When playing music in that room, all three are *always* used together, but this has exposed design shortcomings of the current Groups functionality.
I'd anticipated being able to configure all the speakers in my living room (ie. all those speakers that are *always* used simultaneously) to form a "permanent" grouping, not too dissimilar to how you can "permanently" create LR pairs. Currently, Groups are what I'd term "soft", and this leads to the following shortcomings:
- THE PHYSICAL VOLUME BUTTONS HAVE BEEN RENDERED USELESS, SINCE THEY DO NOT CONTROL GROUP VOLUME. For example, despite my three speakers always being used together in a single Group, the volume control on the Play:1s only changes the volume on the Play:1 LR pair, and the volume control on the Play:5 only adjusts its own volume. This means that the carefully balanced volume levels I've achieved between the speakers in the Group are immediately messed up if I use the physical volume buttons, since the buttons change individual (or LR pair) volumes, not Group volume. Therefore, I cannot use the physical buttons, which is a real shame, and have to always resort to the App to change volume levels. I am really surprised at this shortcoming!
- GROUP CONFIGURATIONS (INC. RELATIVE VOLUMES) ARE LOST ACROSS POWER CYCLES SO NEED REGULARLY RECREATING. I try to operate as green a home as possible, so if I'm going to be away from home for a few days I power down pretty much everything in the house. That includes router and will include my new Sonos gear. It seems that LR Pairing and EQ data is retained across power cycles, but all Group data is lost. From my perspective, the three-speaker Group I have in my Living Room is a permanent group - I expected to configure this once (akin to how I configured the Play:1 LR Pair), and then have the system remember that - forever (across power cycles) - until I unconfigured that grouping. As it is, I'll keep having to establish that Group again, and keep having to set the relative volume levels in the Group, which will become pretty tedious after the Nth time!
I appreciate that the current "soft" Groups functionality will work well for speakers in a home that are only ever informally grouped together, such as for a party, or other occasion when you want different rooms playing the same music. But, there is currently no support that I can see for my use case: that of having a "permanent" Group of speakers that are always used simultaneously. Is my use case so unusual? I'm suprised if so.
Thanks for listening!
"Permanently" Grouping Speakers that are Always Used Together (Beyond LR Pairs...)
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Userlevel 7
+17
Well it kind of groups the 3 or 4 of you up.
Makes me wonder why you have stayed around so long, maybe an employee in disguise, the beauty is we will never know 😉
Makes me wonder why you have stayed around so long, maybe an employee in disguise, the beauty is we will never know 😉
Competition is great. Denon just hasn't shown themselves to be much competition, despite having copied Sonos to the point of patent infringement. It's a shame really, because Denon used to be one of my very favorite brands until the quality slipped. I owned two Denon receivers that were tanks, the last one I bought was shoddy and for the money I paid you could get a much better receiver from other brands. Like being a mod on the former boards, it only serves as a nit some small minds like to pick
And PS - Can we knock it off with the Rock Star crap? We didn't ask for that stupid title, and I only got it because I've been a member for going on 9 years and they prorate posts from back then. That's an average of around 3 posts a day, a rate I'm sure other non "Rock Stars" dwarf when they get going on a rant. Believe me, I'd have no rating whatsoever if given a choice. Just like being a mod on the former boards, it only serves as a nit for small minds to pick.
Userlevel 7
+17
The race to bring Alex first was all I was saying, nothing to do with who sells the most, is best etc etc. Competition is good for progress right?, even you rockstars can see that 😛
Amazon has no multi-room speaker, and they just partnered with Sonos. Bose is probably closest, but they are on their THIRD redesign in three years, having had to scrap their Airplay implementation because they could never get it to work. Google? Maybe, but a dongle for existing speakers is all they are right now. We'll see when they come out with their actual speaker line . . . their last attempt (Nexus Q) was one of their biggest failures ever.
I suspect that Amazon, Google and Bose are the more likely competition.....
Denon is on its second redesign in three years, each unit averages well under 100 reviews on Amazon (compared to thousands for Sonos) and have never even dented the top 20 in multi-room audio sales. They aren't even a factor, despite copying Sonos almost unit for unit to the point of bringing a lawsuit into the picture. The Denon threat is about as valid as the nail's threat to the hammer.
Userlevel 7
+17
They will have like for like Alexa intergration up against Denon as well. So timelines will be very public, with humiliation for failure or who comes seriously last. The race is on!!!
With the announced integration with the Amazon Echo, a permanent grouping option would be a very good addition. The Macronos app shows that it can be done, so why not Sonos ?
Sonos hardware is good but to stay ahead of the game they really need to up their game on the UI of the control software.
The Echo announcement was a good move as the Echo is an important "aggregator” or “service broker platform”. The Sonos software needs to respond to and exploit it's capabilities rather than just bolt it on. If they don't, others will quickly overtake them.
Sonos hardware is good but to stay ahead of the game they really need to up their game on the UI of the control software.
The Echo announcement was a good move as the Echo is an important "aggregator” or “service broker platform”. The Sonos software needs to respond to and exploit it's capabilities rather than just bolt it on. If they don't, others will quickly overtake them.
+100........please make it happen
Two day sonos customer, need a permenent groupimg feature already, please make it happen, thank you!
I won't comment on software requirements or complexity.... But some sort of default grouping is sorely needed. A key feature of songs not being fully leveraged
Userlevel 7
+22
That they do. But I sure as hell wouldn't want them designing and building my Sonos hardware, firmware and software!
I would love a group feature. Sonos please listen to your customers. Customer pay your rent, your vacation, your food, your car, your kids education.....your everything
And would add a great deal of pain for a great many people too.
Care to elaborate?
IMO the grouping could use some work and there are some interesting ideas posted on the forums such as virtual grouping - or options similar to Chromecast Audio.
For me, it would be enough if my groups stayed grouped until I tell them not to. Feel free to point out why this wouldn't work or shouldn't be added.
And would add a great deal of pain for a great many people too.
You've screamed for a change. Why not set out how that change would work. That would allow others to point out why your proposal would not work. Until you can say what you actually want whatever may be done will not be to your satisfaction.
If I had a nickel for every time someone said a software change was a "no brainer" I could retire from software engineering. Fact is, you or I have no idea what is "not hard" or a "no brainer" without detailed knowledge of the software. We also don't know if there are other changes in the pipeline that take precedence because of popularity.
And by the way, making derogatory comments on the skills of the programmers you are asking for a software change is not only tres gauche, it is the very definition of biting the hand that feeds you.
Sonos....I'm confused at the delay in adding a permanent Grouping feature. This is not that hard !!!! Do you need a better programmer to update your software? This seems like a no-brainier that would add a tremendous amount of functionality for a lot of people. I guess you'll add it when other competition starts to eat at your revenue? Come on folks, you have a great system. Give us what helps us listen more conveniently.
+1 on this
+1 I agree as well. I have four Play 1's two of which are in the dining room / living room. One in the bedroom and one in my office(second bedroom). When company comes over, I would like to just select Group Name:xxxx and have just the living room / dining room play. I know this is simple enough to do on the fly with current controls, but I plan on purchasing more speakers and setting them up as stereo pairs and adding a couple more to the living room. So eventually we'll be talking about 6 - 7 speakers in the group. When that time comes it will start to be a pain in the butt to set up the groups on the fly every time we have company.
Me too!! I bought a Play5 v2 to replace a Play3 in my living room. When I placed the Play5 in a different spot than where I had the Play3, I noticed the sound is MUCH better with both rather than just the Play5. So, I decided not to sell the Play3 like I had planned. It would be great to have them behave as a permanent unit with relative volume synching (I want the Play5 to always be louder than the Play3).
Having a har time believing this isn´t a feature already - Come on Sonos.
Would love this-would make for a great future upgrade 🙂
+1 - this seems like such a simple and logical step. Could be as simple as adding them to the same room. I believe the User Experience could be done very easy and technically this simply would not be difficult.
Much much needed. Would be just great if they just add something like a check box to perm group players.
Putting in my vote for this feature, as it is sorely needed.
My situation - I do A/V installs for higher end clients who have large homes, vacation properties, etc. and they like to have zone controls, but each zone requires 2+ Connect:Amps and we want a way to bond multiple Connect:Amps so they don't have to fuss with Grouping every time.
Another scenario that I'm sure many would like this feature for is using multiple Connect:Amps for their surround sound systems. Scenario - receiver gets HDMI audio from each device, then separates it out into line outputs for each surround channel. Each line output is sent to a Connect:Amp input which are then balanced for volume between their inputs and, finally, bonded so that the user has 1 volume control that raises the volume for the bonded units relative to it's set volume.
In any case, this kind of functionality is a dream come true and certainly would get my clients to purchase more units.
My situation - I do A/V installs for higher end clients who have large homes, vacation properties, etc. and they like to have zone controls, but each zone requires 2+ Connect:Amps and we want a way to bond multiple Connect:Amps so they don't have to fuss with Grouping every time.
Another scenario that I'm sure many would like this feature for is using multiple Connect:Amps for their surround sound systems. Scenario - receiver gets HDMI audio from each device, then separates it out into line outputs for each surround channel. Each line output is sent to a Connect:Amp input which are then balanced for volume between their inputs and, finally, bonded so that the user has 1 volume control that raises the volume for the bonded units relative to it's set volume.
In any case, this kind of functionality is a dream come true and certainly would get my clients to purchase more units.
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