Hi,

I have the same issue. Operating 5 Sonos-Speakers in 4 Rooms, added Symphonisk couple years back to get Airplay. Worked like a charm: Musik would come from all speakers in the group with Symphonisk.

Since some update several months ago, starting Airplay will reset the grouping of speakers by removing Symphonisk from the group.

It is a real loss of a comfortable functionality. Like the time when they removed the mobile as a sound source in the app (before AirPlay). Just randomly worsening the functionality.

Makes me even less likely to buy Sonos going forward, it has reduced my actual use of the system. Thinking of replacing it for good. 

Similar problem playing through Roon. Grouped Airplay (5 devices including 4 Sonos One’s)  have played fine for several years; now suddenly The grouped devices will not play. I can play to each device individually, grouped or ungrouped, but no combination of groups will play.

Same issue here. Wtf, Sonos?!

Before jumping to conclusions maybe a reaction from Sonos is in order. @Corry P Is this considered expected behaviour under the new app/software?

A clarification: I know that you can in fact group all speakers with the one playing via AirPlay:

1. Start playing over AirPlay to your speaker, in particular in my case I use Spotify. 
2. Swipe up from the bottom to reveal all your speakers and groups. In my case “Sonos System” is the AirPlay-compatible speaker. 

   

    

3. Click the playing speaker to set the app to control it 

   

4. Click the little speaker symbol next to the pause button to pull up the group settings  

   

5. Tap each speaker in turn to group it with the AirPlay speaker 

   

6. Hit “Apply” to make things play everywhere. 
7. Make sure you keep the music playing, because if you pause it for too long the grouping will be lost and you’ll have to go through this process again. 

My commentary on this flow is as follows: 

• This flow is incredibly error prone and not very discoverable. You need to do steps 2 and 3 to set the app to control the playing speaker, because if you attempt to group the speakers while the app is controlling one that’s silent, you’ll just group the AirPlay speaker into a group that’s playing nothing and the music will stop. 
  • My recommendation: If a speaker is playing, default the app to focus on it. Never make the app focus on a speaker that’s silent if it has a choice to do otherwise. 
  • Another recommendation: When grouping speakers that are silent with one that isn’t silent, have the silent speaker join in playing, regardless of which speaker is in focus on the app. 
• The act of starting an AirPlay session on one speaker kicks it off whatever group it’s in and makes it play on its own, even if that group is currently silent. 
  • My recommendation: this is something the original app did correctly, in my opinion: groups were persistent, and a play/stop action to one member was interpreted as an action to all of them. 
• I cannot for the life of me figure out how volumes are chosen for these group members. Every time I follow this lengthy flow, I equalize the volumes so that all my speakers are playing at roughly the same loudness, and the very next time I group them together, their volumes are all different. 
  • I’m frankly less sure what to recommend here, since the volume logic is opaque to me. 
• I realize that Spotify is a service within the Sonos app, but frankly the UX for choosing music is better and more familiar to me with Spotify than with Sonos. Plus, the performance of audio playback and volume adjustment is must better through AirPlay sessions originated in the Spotify app than through the Sonos app. 
  • Implementing my “persistent grouping” recommendation would obviate this concern. 

Please please please implement my second suggestion (make groups persistent even when starting AirPlay sessions). Having to open the app constantly re-group speakers is incredibly annoying and seriously has me exploring alternatives to Sonos. 

@Corry P I hope this clarifies my concerns somewhat. 

Thank you, dugmas, for explaining these steps. I hadn’t figured out that out on my own, and now at least I can once again AirPlay to all my speakers instead of just one. I agree with you that it’s a very cumbersome process.

Thank you for the details, dugmas, i got stuck with an active pair of sonos:3s which is not available through air play directly and I couldn’t make the whole system play through airplay.  i was following similar steps and was re-grouping the speakers through sonos app before but probably i had one of Sonos:1 as an active previously and it was easier to regroup. Thank you again for spending time to post this instruction. 
 

And dear sonos, as a decade long customer, i ask you, please stop making your software worse. 

Hi @dugmas et al

Welcome to the Sonos Community!

Thanks for flagging this - we were able to reproduce this behaviour in our own testing, and it is not intended behaviour.

We are investigating, but have no estimate for when a resolution might be put in place.

I hope this helps.