Play:1 stereo pair with Sonos One

Add me to the list who was going to buy a Sonos One but now find I can't pair it with my Play 1. Glad I checked this forum. Even though they may now be thinking about it, you would have thought some wise nut would have kicked someone from day one and mentioned how many more sales they would have got initially. For now, it's a 'no' from me.

I was also hoping to split up my pair of Play 1's to mix and match with Play One's so that I could have alexa's capabilities strategically placed in my home, and now that I have them, realize that I can't pair them. This seems short-sighted, and the multiple replies within this thread should show Sonos this. Any update Sonos?

I add myself to request for ability to add a sonos one with a play one in a stereo Pair.

Why would one consider a Google speaker that can't be paired with anything over a Sonos speaker that actually can be paired with itself, just not with other models? That's an "or the bunny gets it" threat which is not too well thought out.

Please add me to the list of people who was about to order a sonos one to pair with my sonos play1 and now isn't sure how to proceed.

I'm new to sonos, I bought my first play1 three weeks ago to try it out, I was happy with the sound quality and decided to get a second play 1. In the meantime, I got the notification from the sonos app that the sonos one was out, so got into the idea of having a smart speaker at home. Not being able to pair in stereo with an almost identical speaker I purchased less than a month ago is frustrating.

If there is some fundamental technical reason why the two cannot be paired, please share that information with the community. I'm an engineer and should be capable of understanding any technical jargon you throw at me.

If they are not compatible, fair enough, I'll accept that and bite the bullet. I can move my single play 1 to the bathroom where a stereo setup would be an overkill, and populate the house with sonos ones and maybe a 5.1 setup as my budget will allow.

If it comes down to minor differences in the sound from the two speakers, that would render the stereo option slightly inferior with a mismatched pair, well then, I agree with those who propose adding a disclaimer in the app and letting the user be the judge of what works for them.

If you are just trying to sell more speakers, I think you are actually going to sell allot less.

I will personally wait to see what the final word is on this, and make do with my single speaker in the meantime. If there is no change I will have to decide if I want to snap up a few second hand Play 1s from those who choose to upgrade, or invest in the newer speakers.

I hope this post is seen as helpful feedback from a customer who could potentially invest in allot of sonos equipment over the years, and not just somebody whining because he can't have what he wants.

I will personally wait to see what the final word is on this, and make do with my single speaker in the meantime. If there is no change I will have to decide if I want to snap up a few second hand Play 1s from those who choose to upgrade, or invest in the newer speakers.


Did I miss something? Sonos is going to announce a final word on this functionality? I highly doubt that. That said though, I would think that if they are going to make a change, they would announce it before the retail season moves into full swing. If they opt not to do it at this time, I doubt we'll here a thing.

I was going on MikeV's comment: "A couple of days ago, their CEO tweeted that they are considering allowing the Play:1 and Sonos One to be paired together. No guarantee that it will happen, but our voices have been heard at the highest levels of the company."

Fingers crossed.

I was going on MikeV's comment: "A couple of days ago, their CEO tweeted that they are considering allowing the Play:1 and Sonos One to be paired together. No guarantee that it will happen, but our voices have been heard at the highest levels of the company."

Fingers crossed.

I think the CEO's statement will be as definitive as you are going to get, at least until they actually release this functionality.

Well I would still be interested in hearing the technical reasons for the incompatibility, if indeed there are any.

If someone from the sonos team is reading this, I think allot of us would really appreciate a transparent honest discussion on the subject.

If there are technical problems with stereo coupling of the two speakers, I would imagine there has been a number of emails exchanged between engineers and management discussing the problems.

If someone in charge is willing to authorise such transparency, it should simply be a matter of copying a few relevant paragraphs from said emails to explain the problem to us. Who knows, maybe someone from the community would have a solution you hadn't thought of.

You would sooner see pigs fly than see Sonos release internal e-mails of any kind, never mind e-mails between engineers and management.


Though I am amused at your final sentence; for it is indicative of something I've been saying for years. It seems you feel this information should be released for the purpose of allowing folks to critique their conclusions and offer their own solutions, rather than accepting their conclusions as a definitive statement of those in the know. That in itself says volumes as to why Sonos doesn't bother with this type of communication, as they are truly damned if they do and damned if they don't. But at least by shutting their mouths, they don't have to listen to outsiders tell them how stupid they are.

I highly doubt Sonos is afraid of Bluesound. Bluesound's only real "advantage" is streaming hi-res audio, a feature Sonos not only rejected supporting, they rejected it in a fashion which basically stated they think it is a sham.

I was so excited to get the new One but unfortunately I didn't realize it won't pair with a play 1. I have a 3 floor town house and 4 play:1s....I really wanted to put a One on each floor and stereo pair them with what I have. It is so sad that now the only way is to have 2 Alexas on one floor and none on another....I would have bought more play:1 when they were on sale with a couple of dots. This is a real flaw in my opinion.

You could get 2 Sonos Ones for 1 zone, and use the Play:1s for other zones...with dots. As far as buying play:1s on sale, it's highly likely that the price will go down rather soon, since they have less features then the Sonos One are currently the same price.

Bottom line is Sonos have had the field of WiFi streamed systems mostly to themselves for a decade, but Alexa is coming out integrated as part of a number of WiFi streaming competitors in the next few months, let alone the Echo and Google speakers.

So Sonos was forced to act, and had to deliver close to the price point as well. so the obvious option was to build a Echo compatible speaker BASED on their cheapest speaker.

I like playing with tech. gadgets, so I have an echo dot already and the novelty has worn off the usefulness is very dependent on how you use your system, I would say it will be terrible paired as surround sound on the TV (or even in the TV room at all) as every time it thinks it hears the key word "alexa" the sound is lowered while it tries to figure out the command, then just at the most important dialog of the film that makes sense of the 3 hours of your life invested your sound system will say "I'm sorry I don't understand that"

Buy a single Sonos One bung it in the kitchen and use it to turn the radio on when your hands are covered in cooking mess. stick to Play 1's (which may be on offer soon!) for your TV room surround sound.

or buy a single Sonos One for the bedroom so you can turn the alarm off by shouting at it...

Being of similar size and shape is an accident of expediency, these are different speakers for different purposes.

Hi, it is possible to pair a Sonos One and a Play:1 but you have to use a 3rd party app. I do not want to make any promotion but there are so much threads about this topic... Looks like many of us want to do this:
https://en.community.sonos.com/amazon-alexa-and-sonos-229102/pairing-a-play-1-with-the-new-sonos-one-6791476/index5.html#post16164099
You can use the official Sonos app after you created the stereo-pair and it works like a "normal" one..

I too, wish to be able to pair my Sonos One to my Play1 to get stereo sound