Yes, each One should be set up as its own room. If the placement of a pair of speakers are closer together, you could create a stereo pair which would combine the two speakers into one room. But if the speakers are all far apart, I would keep them as four separate mono speakers and group them in the Sonos app.

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?

You’re talking about AirPlay 2, which is Apple’s system. What @GuitarSuperstar is talking about is the best, and most bandwidth economical way to do the requested function.

As near as I can tell, you are requiring your Apple device to do all the heavy lifting, and requiring four distinct AirPlay2 streams. @GuitarSuperstar is using the bandwidth of one stream from the Apple device, and then the normal feature of grouping in Sonos’ software to achieve the goal. 

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...

What is the source of your music? Must you use AirPlay? I just Grouped three Rooms, then sent Spotify to them to the Group via my iPad controller. The Group was a single, a pair, and surround.

In another scheme I used a portable player that can Group with other players and sent music to the Group via Bluetooth.

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...)

I think you’re going to need to convince Apple, for some of that. Right now, AirPlay 2 sends stereo only to non-Apple devices. The only way I’m aware of to send multichannel information via AirPlay 2 is  between two Apple devices. And I ‘think’ it hands off the connection, it doesn’t really carry the information across AirPlay 2. 
 

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 :)

Stereo pairs with any even amount of speakers would be nice.  The framework, both technical and usable, is there as you state.

Sonos dont care about this feature even though it is not so uncommon a use case. Why they dont see how many restaurants and coffee shops have them dotted around the room on low volume is beyond me.

I have a large kitchen 8m x 7.5m with two pairs of stereo paired ones and a sub. I have the sub on Kitchen 1 and I try to permanently keep 'Kitchen 1" grouped with "Kitchen 2". The problem is that my kids throw audio from Spotify app and often break the group apart. It is such an unbelievable pain. Then someone alters the volume on one pair and not the other.

The whole idea of them be permanently locked in a single room as a single target for all voice commands, 3rd party apps with a common, single volume control is completely missed by the Sonos people. They tell me all the crappy shortcuts to group them again, claim they shouldn't ungroup themselves and other stuff.

Basically it is not a use case that they care about enough. 

Guys you’re so right. I don’t understand why it’s not possible to create a 4 speakers stereo configuration, it seems pretty basic !! 

I’m so frustrated, I might drop my Sonos speakers because of this

READ THIS AND REACT, SONOS !!

@FrenchJu

I don’t know any multi room audio system that supports such a configuration. Of course I understand if someone like you needs that special usecase. But a manufacturer imo has to look at what MANY people are asking for. And if there would be many… at least one of the big players in multiroom audio business would have developed something like that.