In db, what is your acceptable minimum volume? Providing Sonos some guidance there may be helpful.

In any digital device, there is a threshold required to ‘push’ the amplifier over to audible, although I’d assume there’s some wiggle room on that. 

One thing I chose to do with the pair of PLAY:1s that flank my monitor was to move them back a foot. That reduced the perceived volume significantly for me. Further away from your ears is better, although not an ultimate solution. 

I sympathise. The essential problem is that the player volume varies in integer steps of 1%. The volume limit feature doesn’t help, because a scaled volume of less than 1% rounds down to zero.

For example, if a volume limit of 25% is chosen, to try and improve the granularity of the volume slider, the first 3 clicks up from zero yield no sound at all. It’s only when the slider is at 4% that there’s any sound, because 4% * 25% = 1%, the lowest volume value that the internals can deal with. 

I have a pair of Era100 flanking my monitor, and my solution is to use a Port as an attenuator. The Port plays the source I want to hear; its Line-Outs are connected to its Line-Ins; and it sends its Line-Ins to the Eras. By fiddling with the Port’s volume and Line-In sensitivity I can achieve the required low level of audio at the Eras.

Pretty ridiculous really. If only Sonos would implement an internal volume control which worked in real numbers not integers...