Answered

Volume levels too high after 15.2 update

Show first post

170 replies

P

I have 14 sonos units - but now they are too loud on level one - I’m going crazy - Please fix

G
Userlevel 1

The only solution I see now is to buy HomePod. I tried Spotify instead for a month and its a little better but still too loud so I realise that itś time to leave Sonos behind.

K
Userlevel 2

I reached out to customer service and it was confirmed there too that the high volume level is by design now and not considered a bug ;-(

N
Userlevel 2

15.8 release - no change.. still WAY too loud : /

My imperfect solution?
I’ve just bough an Homepod and everything works just as I want to..

I will use my Sonos speakers as satellites for Beam.. Anyone knows if it is possible to use more than two satellites for Beam/Arc?

T
Userlevel 5
Badge +4

This issue is still not fixed in update 15.8 and there is no option to remove the volume bug that Sonos applied. 
 

Still millions of your customers unable to use their Sonos products properly as a result of Sonos changing how the system works @Corry P 

 

Corry P
Userlevel 7
Badge +18

Hi @Kugelfang 

I have nothing more to share at this time.

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
K
Userlevel 2

@Corry P : it would be great hearing back from you on this matter. Anything that you can share? Even if the implementation needs time it would be great to hear that the issue was at least acknowledged and is being worked on.

Not sure if you’ve missed it, but @Corry P has already commented on this topic here:

 

thanks for pointing this out but I saw it. The post is 22 days old in in the last sentence it’s mentioned that a possible mitigation will be pitched internally. I thought maybe there is something to share on that. lets see

J

Our Play 1s have has this problem for months. Our upstairs Beam- separate from the Play 1s - has the opposite problem. There’s no volume limit on the TV. 

Ken_Griffiths

@Corry P : it would be great hearing back from you on this matter. Anything that you can share? Even if the implementation needs time it would be great to hear that the issue was at least acknowledged and is being worked on.

Not sure if you’ve missed it, but @Corry P has already commented on this topic here:

 

K
Userlevel 2

@Corry P : it would be great hearing back from you on this matter. Anything that you can share? Even if the implementation needs time it would be great to hear that the issue was at least acknowledged and is being worked on.

B

I can’t believe this isn’t fixed yet. 
To be honest, even before this “update” level 1 was a bit too loud for bedroom before going to sleep listening, now it’s just ridiculous, we don’t really use our bedroom Sonos any more.

Please fix this, I really don’t want to change our home speaker system again.

D
Userlevel 1

Sorry, this cannot be functioning as designed as previously the volume levels were fine, the fact Sonos has tweaked the design and it is now unusable is an appealing position for a company with this many users.  The request is simple, fix the scaling of the volume so 1 is barely audible with a smooth transition all the way through.  
there should be laws against updating firm or software that renders a device useless for the purpose if was intended.  I use my Sonos 1 in the bedroom when going to sleep but it is now useless for this.

please fix this quickly

J
Userlevel 2
Badge +4

I believe that it shouldn’t be that difficult to change the scale of the volume bar so that the volume level 1 would become 10 (or something) or they might add volume level 0,25 0,5 and 0,75 (or something like that). That would fix the problem very easily. No need to thing about some complex solutions... 

L

Exactly the same problem here, 1 is too loud and if it was introduced with 15.2 I think it would be possible to reduce the overall volume of Apple Music in an update …

O
Userlevel 2

My Sonos system was perfect before 15.2 At the very least, let us revert back to a prior firmware. I do not have any Era speakers, nor do I play Atmos through the app, thus being able to go back to 15.2 would work for me.

AirPlay has allowed for volume normalization for me for Apple Music (through Apple’s settings), but AirPlay is buggy and consistently knocks speakers off. Playing Apple Music through the app, like others have stated, the 1% volume of AM is STILL too loud (especially at night), and there needs to be a normalization option for when streaming Spotify and/or Apple Music within the app so we don’t have to rely on shoddy AirPlay. 

I do have 2 Era speakers, but still being bothered by the same issue …

T
Userlevel 2

…. and we switched away….

Sonos should be aware of this, because it's never a good thing when customers will switch away from a beloved solution cause it stop working ….  cause maybe in the future the customer will switch away from Sonos ! So I think @Corry P , Sonos should bring back the old behavior before 15.2 maybe as an option for those customers who will maybe “switch away” 

K
Userlevel 2

Same for me, normalizations within one source and across multiple providers is a great goal and would be a much appreciated improvement. 

However, in the case of Apple Music a volume level of 1 is simply MUCH to loud already. We were using the alam clock function of Sonos for years which used a Apple Music Playlist to wake us at Volume 1. Since the 15.2 Update the volume is disturbingly loud and we switched away from playing an Apple Music playlist to playing a radio station instead. 

C
Userlevel 2

My Sonos system was perfect before 15.2 At the very least, let us revert back to a prior firmware. I do not have any Era speakers, nor do I play Atmos through the app, thus being able to go back to 15.2 would work for me.

AirPlay has allowed for volume normalization for me for Apple Music (through Apple’s settings), but AirPlay is buggy and consistently knocks speakers off. Playing Apple Music through the app, like others have stated, the 1% volume of AM is STILL too loud (especially at night), and there needs to be a normalization option for when streaming Spotify and/or Apple Music within the app so we don’t have to rely on shoddy AirPlay. 

M
Userlevel 1

Just to add, my thanks to @Tom_69 for keeping this thread on this issue alive until a fix is provided. 

M
Userlevel 1

@Corry P why can't these imposed changes that 15.2 implemented be reverted? Surely this would fix the issue.

Amazon music also suffers here. Noticeably between songs due to the different audio formats, but there is no may to limit/set it to only play Dobly, Ultra HD or HD tracks. 

Like most here I've had forgo listening to music on my sonos system due to the volume inconsistencies, and previous sonos advice (e.g. stream to different speaker/system or use different audio source) is poor support. 

User199227
Userlevel 2
Badge

Normalization is not the issue for me. It’s a great goal for Sonos and I hope that it can be improved upon in the future. I understand the difficulties in doing so, particularly across different services, and to a great extent that’s not a Sonos issue or something that Sonos can really fix.
 

What *is* a Sonos issue (and something Sonos *can* fix) is the overall playback volume at a given volume setting. Going from a volume of zero (silence) to a volume setting of “1” should be subtle. A “1” should be barely perceptible. A “2” should be a tiny bit louder, etc.

I shouldn’t have to go from silence to “way too freaking loud”. I see no reason that Sonos can’t adjust what a volume setting of “1” means for their hardware’s output.
 

It’s ok if a “1” is too quiet and I just have to turn the volume up to reach my desired level. What is NOT ok is not being able to turn the volume down low enough. If the Normalization process turns up the “gain” too high, then just lower the hardware’s output at a given volume setting!

M
Userlevel 2

It’s Apple Music. Not some random radio station or service. Between them and Spotify….that’s it. Make them both work really really well. The “it’s not us” and “we’d have to do it for hundreds of services” rationale is beneath a company of Sonos’s size. Clearly we all love the product and it’s not working properly if you can’t turn the music down. That’s a core feature….not a niche “ask” from a few users. 

O
Userlevel 2

Hi @Tom_69 et al

Thank you @Tom_69  for bringing it to our attention that we did not yet update this thread - this was an error on our part, and apologies for the lateness.

With the advent of spatial audio from Apple Music becoming available to play on Sonos devices, Apple expressed an interest in actioning a change due to the volumes of stereo tracks being inconsistent with each other and with tracks from other music providers. In line with this, and with long-standing requests from our customers to apply volume normalisation to tracks, we have added to our speakers a response to the normalisation figures provided.

The current behaviour of the sound volume is intentional and by design. Due to the way we now utilise volume normalisation metadata from Apple Music in update 15.2, average loudness is now better aligned between different tracks. Some stereo tracks may appear louder than before and some stereo tracks may appear quieter as a result, but as I said this is expected behaviour.

Knowledge of these changes were not widely distributed internally, hence the reason why we raised this as a possible "bug" on the basis of everyone's experience on this thread. We aim to improve this in the future to minimise the chance of this sort of misunderstanding happening again.

I understand this is not ideal for everyone, and as such I have internally raised as a feature request the option to disable this normalisation process at will from within the Sonos app.

This is just completely BS…

It is understandable that there is no magic fix to normalize the volume between all kind of services, but the current volume for Apple Music is just way too loud. All that is needed is to trim down the volume of Apple Music, in order to be it more equal to other sources. Currently, it is impossible to use a playlist that contains both Apple Music and your own library. It is also impossible to play Apple Music at night, even with a volume of 1, it is too loud.

How can you say this behavior is intentional? @Corry P ? It just does not make any sense.

N
Userlevel 2

Hi @Tom_69 et al

Thank you @Tom_69  for bringing it to our attention that we did not yet update this thread - this was an error on our part, and apologies for the lateness.

With the advent of spatial audio from Apple Music becoming available to play on Sonos devices, Apple expressed an interest in actioning a change due to the volumes of stereo tracks being inconsistent with each other and with tracks from other music providers. In line with this, and with long-standing requests from our customers to apply volume normalisation to tracks, we have added to our speakers a response to the normalisation figures provided.

The current behaviour of the sound volume is intentional and by design. Due to the way we now utilise volume normalisation metadata from Apple Music in update 15.2, average loudness is now better aligned between different tracks. Some stereo tracks may appear louder than before and some stereo tracks may appear quieter as a result, but as I said this is expected behaviour.

Knowledge of these changes were not widely distributed internally, hence the reason why we raised this as a possible "bug" on the basis of everyone's experience on this thread. We aim to improve this in the future to minimise the chance of this sort of misunderstanding happening again.

I understand this is not ideal for everyone, and as such I have internally raised as a feature request the option to disable this normalisation process at will from within the Sonos app.

I think you missed the point.. we all love (or to be honest at least I love) normalized volume across our library. 

The problem is that now there isn’t enough “notches” od the lower end of volume settings so after this change we could get a SILENCE and then the next lowest possible notch is WAY TOO LOUD to listen at night..

I’ve again compared my Sonos to Alexa and Homepod and the lowest possible Sonos volume notch (1%) is roughly compared to Alexa 15% and Homepod 10%

Again - the problem isn’t the normalization but the volume settings on the lower end of the scale..

just my 2 cents

Bohdan

T
Userlevel 2

Hi @Corry P ,

 

yes I’m aware of this. It would be nice if there is a magic way to make the audio levels consistent over all services and tracks. But there is no such a way. I don’t have a better idea as a little slider for advanced like settings, for every service the customer has installed, where the audio level can be adjusted as „a setup like thing“ so it will be all the same level for using the volume slider for a speaker or group. So that I can adjust the online radio a little bit louder and Apple a little bit softer and the volume is the same on eg level 10 in the app. 
 

 

this may be not the best and easiest solution for all customers but if anyone has this problem he can solve this. 
 

best 

Thomas 

Reply


Terms & ConditionsCookie settings