Best way to set up 4 speakers in one room?

In the hopes that someone from Sonos sees this - that is NOT a solution for a four-speaker room, just a kinda bad workaround.

When putting together 2 speakers in a stereo pair, they become one target for Airplay, they get a common volume setting (which both the software AND the physical buttons respect). If you only group them together, they still remain 4 speakers when it comes to Airplay (yeah you can target more, but have to select all one by one every time), and more painfully, you can’t use the physical buttons to adjust the volume of the ROOM, you only adjust the relative volumes of the speakers in the group.

Multiply that by two, and you see why there should be an option to create “dual stereo” sets, instead of having to group two pairs or four individual speakers together.

The underlying logic is mostly there, since you can add two surround speakers to soundbars; why can’t you add two surround speakers to a stereo pair as well?

I don’t care about bandwidth, nor who does the heavy lifting. All I’m talking about is usability:

1. if you GROUP 4 speakers in the SONOS app:

• they won’t have common physical volume control, you’ll need to always adjust the volume using your phone/tablet/ whatever the source is
• they still will show up as 4 separate AirPlay targets, so to make sure all 4 work, you either send the airplay stream to all four, or send to one, and then jump to a different app (or possibly different device, if your airplay source is eg. a mac or an AppleTV, then you have to switch to phone) to group the speakers via Sonos. The group created in the Sonos app does not show up as a single Airplay target.

2. if however, you create a Stereo pair:

• those two speakers are capable of sharing the physical volume control
• they show up as a single Airplay target

3. furthermore, if you have a soundbar, two speakers and a sub, you can create a single set of 4 speakers that work in unison, common volume, single airplay target

I’m expecting to be able to do the same in a living room with 4 identical speakers (in this case, 4 IKEA Symfonisk) - create a single, dual-stereo group (with possible a +1 sub) with a shared volume (so I can raise/lower the volume of the entire room by stepping to the physical buttons on the speaker; instead of having to dig for phone + sonos app), and a single Airplay target to choose from the AppleTV.

One can dream...

Appreciate the effort, but again I’m not looking for workarounds, I’m trying to raise that there is a use case missing in the app:

• you can add two more (surround) speakers to a stereo soundbar
• you can’t add two more (surround, or second pair) speakers to a stereo pair
  • I kinda understand the slight difference that comes from the soundbars actually having surround input; but still those work well with stereo inputs (and AirPlay supposedly also supports surround if it comes from eg. an AppleTV)

in the hopes that someone from Sonos sees this, and it is indeed as low-hanging-a-fruit to solve as I’d expect (since all the parts seems to be there both code and UI-wise).

And I’m not here to be convinced that I’m using it wrong either :) I use AirPlay because these are sold as AirPlay speakers, and because I want to use AirPlay, that’s why I bought AirPlay speakers for :)

You’re talking about music, I’m talking about sound, because these are speakers, not music players. The source of the sound can be many (Netflix, Youtube, TV+, or any streaming service on the big screen attached to my AppleTV; a game running on my iPad, watching a conference in Teams/Zoom/any browser from my Macbook; or any local or streaming music service on my iPhone), out of which Sonos natively supports a few music services; the rest can be handled via AirPlay.

And I want to use AirPlay because it is convenient. I don’t want to even touch the Sonos app practically ever, unless I’m changing the speaker setup in my home, or for the occasional check for updates for the speakers. Airplay is exactly 1 swipe + two taps / clicks away every time, from all of the devices. I don’t want to touch a 3rd party controller app in the same manner that people hate having 2-3 separate remotes for their TV, Set Top Box and AV Receiver - especially if there is a working way to avoid that and only interact with the single device you’re focusing on. And as long as I’m using a single Stereo Pair, Sonos delivers that - I don’t have to touch the Sonos app, I pick an AirPlay target on the source device and it just works.

All I’m hoping is that some time in the future, I can create sets of more than two identical speakers in the same manner, that for all intents and purposes behave as a single device, common volume and everything - so we can reach with these wireless speakers what we were capable of doing with a wired AV Receiver and 4-6 speakers some 20 years ago (without someone trying to tell the user that they really should never want four equal speakers in the four corners of a room...)

Regarding surround, maybe.
But if I can send a stereo Airplay signal to a Beam + 2 surround (+ Sub) setup as a single target, I’m pretty sure Sonos can handle sending the same stereo signal to more than 2 speakers in any configuration.

For what is’s worth, I believe even the “stereo pair” (+sub) function is Sonos magic; one if the pair handles Airplay and distributing the signal between the 2(.1) speakers - it is not Airplay standard provided functionality. I can create magic groups of 1+1 (stereo pair), 2+1 (stereo pair with sub), 1+2 (beam + surrounds) 1+2+1 (beam + surrounds + sub) standalone speakers - I sure hope 2+2 is not conceptually different :)