The issue affects Apple Music which is why you’re not experiencing it.

I provided readings earlier in the thread to evidence the difference in Apple Music volume, here is some data for 1% volume on one of my Play:One’s. Levels were captured using live listen on my iPhone 12 Pro and Airpod Pros.

I loaded BBC Sounds and turned on Radio 1, the song playing was ‘Freemasons - Love on my Mind’ so I measured the audio and then played the same song from Apple Music.

BBC Sounds: 17dB

Apple Music: 30dB

Whilst I fully appreciate it’s personal preference as to what volume people can withstand for sleeping, in our household no-one can sleep with music blasting at 30dB. When you have been listening to your entire Sonos system for over 10 years at a certain level you really get used to it, only to have that volume level near enough double with a poorly designed update from Sonos.

For reference, to get BBC Sounds to hit the same volume as Apple Music, I had to put the speaker volume on 9%.

I had a response after emailing the CEO, still not holding out much hope of anything resulting from it but at least it has been acknowledged. 
 

“Thank you so much for reaching out to Sonos Customer Experience. Your initial e-mail and feedback have been shared with our CEO. Patrick, after having read through the description of the situation you have been facing, decided it best to have your case sent over to one of his senior advisors within the the project, for further handling, such that action could be taken immediately.”

However they did then go on to say to disable loudness to help fix it, so the fundemental understanding and impact of the issue is still not hitting home! 

This issue is still not fixed in update 15.10, no updates from the CEO’s senior advisors either. 

Update 15.11 has still not fixed the Apple Music playback volume issue. I also haven’t received any further response from the CEO correspondence. 

It’s now 9 months since Sonos introduced this issue and still no sign that they want to fix it. 
 

Maybe see this earlier post in the thread from Sonos Staff…

It’s gone forward as a ‘feature request’, but there’s no saying anything might change here. Sonos never announce their development updates either, looking at other feature requests that have been put forward in the past.

I’ve read it, it’s not acceptable (hence why I contacted the CEO and got a response). The issue still exists and I’ll keep updating everyone until the issue is actually fixed. 

@Tom_69 

its one of the reasons why I ditched Apple Music, the gain is set way to high to get decent quality sound even at higher volume levels.

switched to Qobuz and am happier now with the volume control and the quality, I lose atmos and voice control but not bothered by that.

hope this is resolved for you sooner than later 

Some thoughts… maybe the App volume-level curve is global and therefore a ‘balancing act’ across all the music services/audio sources that Sonos presently support (and across all their different hardware products too) and that’s why these things are perhaps presently ‘by design’?

Some music services undoubtedly output the various audio sources in different quality and so maybe slightly quieter than others …and adjusting the App volume curve is perhaps a much bigger task than we perhaps realise. It might mean there’s a ‘potential fix’, but the engineering costs to do it, may not justify the work involved, particularly for a minority of users that seem to experience this issue with Apple Music on their particular model/combination of Sonos speakers. A case of.. ‘You can’t please all the people, all of the time’. 

As I outlined earlier in this thread, I do not notice the issue on a Beam HT setup in our main bedroom and the Wife and I subscribe to Apple Music, Amazon Music and use many other music services too via the Sonos App …and Apple Music is not significantly louder than the other services at 1% volume-level. That said, we don’t sit within a couple of feet of the HT speakers anyway to be concerned by the volume at that 1% low level.

If a fix is forthcoming maybe it needs to come from the Apple side of things to reduce the potential cost of re-engineering the Sonos software/hardware controls too.

All speculation of course, but my other thought is if Sonos do change this in response to the acknowledged "feature request”  - then the Staff who frequent this user-community will likely announce it in this thread anyway, proximate to any Sonos firmware/app update.

Maybe the only solution is to all of us move away from Apple Music to Spotify ? Like all of you I cannot work anymore with volume set to 1 in the whole house (using 12 Sonos products). Another solution might be to sell Sonos products and to buy newer and better equipment from other sound manufacturers. The only sure thing is that staying as is = not the solution. I will evaluate my options and decide what I will remove to solve this key issue.

Just curious, as the Wife and I use Apple Music too (amongst other MSP’s, like Deezer and Amazon Music, aswell as Spotify free version), but do you find this 1% volume-level troubling on all your Sonos products?

We have a Ray, two Era 100s and Sub in our Kitchen/Diner area (as an example) which is about 14’ square in size and the Wife and I would struggle to hear the Apple audio in that room at that low level of 1% even with the surrounds set to ‘Full’ rather than ‘Ambient’.. So I’m just wondering if you find it occurs on just some Sonos products?

In fact there’s not that much of a huge difference between each of the services at 1% volume - nothing that I would be too concerned about at least, to even think to mention it. I guess though that the Wife and I are approx. 6 feet away from each of the speakers (give or take) when we sit around the breakfast bar.

Our Fridge would drown out the sound completely at that 1% volume level, quite easily, I would say.

Good morning to you,

I do not know about all speakers in the house but I would say they are all equally suffering from the sound boost. I did not notice when it did start but for sure I cannot have Apple Music + Sonos active for work or when going to bed. Hence, I reactivated my Spotify account and added newest playlist through Soundizz. Using Spotify Connect generates the lowest sound but Spotify through Sonos adds a better sound level control. Maybe Sonos receives a % of revenues from streaming services and this is a manner to increase profits (having users subscribing to more than one musical service) ?

Dunno, we mostly use Amazon Music HD (that’s our primary service) mainly because of its higher quality audio availability on Sonos. The Apple subscription is because that allows access to our iCloud uploaded ‘ripped’ music and it is a good fallback/alternative if "Amazon music is playing on another device”.

We have a 3 month Deezer subscription that was won in a competition and Spotify ‘free’ is installed ..er.. because it’s free.

I’m just not seeing a huge difference in volume-levels  at 1% - yes (of course) there are some differences, but nothing that I would call so significant that it would cause me to switch away from Apple, or any other music service for that matter… so that’s why I wondered if this was just happening on some Sonos products only?

The issue is apparent on all of my Sonos devices.
 

2x Play 1’s, Era 100, Play 3, Roam and the latest gen Five. 
 

@Tom_69,

Really? …Taking my two Roams, just as one example here, I would really struggle to hear those at 1% volume level. That’s even if they were grouped, or stereo paired and positioned right next to me.

I wonder why different Sonos users are hearing such a huge difference?

I recently did a routine hearing test (result attached) and that was passed with quite a good result. At least I’m not (yet) a candidate for a hearing aid, it seems.

This volume issue is still not fixed in version 16.0, Apple Music is still noticeably louder than other music sources. 

@Tom_69 

its one of the reasons I got rid of Apple Music the gain was to high for my tastes and I don’t listen to atmos music…

This wasn’t a problem in the previous 4-5 years and I don’t use Apple Music. Live TV, Spotify, Audacy, Amazon Music, Pandora and Xbox are all too loud.  
 

This is 1% at 10’ away. 
 

That’s definitely odd. I’d probably want to power cycle the speakers first, to force them to reload, and if it continues, I’d call Sonos Support directly to discuss it.

When you speak directly to the phone folks, they have tools at their disposal that will allow them to give you advice specific to your network and Sonos system.

This wasn’t a problem in the previous 4-5 years and I don’t use Apple Music. Live TV, Spotify, Audacy, Amazon Music, Pandora and Xbox are all too loud.  
 

This is 1% at 10’ away. 
 

 

 

Which speaker is this on? I’ve been doing more testing since the last update and I’ve found an added variable which was not present previously. Interesting to see if it’s just me.