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Can you connect more than one Sonos Roam via Bluetooth


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Aka daisy chain. Many cheap bluetooth speakers can do this so it would be disappointing if the Roam can't. I do know that two Roams will not do stereo in bluetooth but I can't seem to find anywhere if it even supports two Roams or more in mono.

Thanks

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Best answer by Corry P 10 May 2021, 15:29

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Many thanks for the reply and info.  How would I group the two speakers over Bluetooth?  Would they be playing in stereo?

The Bluetooth playing Roam can be connected to the local WiFi at the same time. Simply play the audio over Bluetooth and group the speaker with the other Roam by pressing the play/pause button for 2-3 seconds on the other Roam and the Bluetooth audio will play through both Roam devices. (You can also group them via the Sonos App).
 

Each speaker plays the Left/Right channels so it’s not stereo separation, but as mentioned, two playing speakers are better than one to listen to your Peleton Bluetooth audio. 

I’m late to the party here. I bought a Move and then added a Roam. I assumed I’d be able to connect them both via Bluetooth (they are portables after all) and play audio through both when out and about. But the only way I can see to achieve that is to use two phones, set one as a hot spot for the other and the two speakers and use that. That sounds like a massive faff. Surely there’s an easy way? 

I’m late to the party here. I bought a Move and then added a Roam. I assumed I’d be able to connect them both via Bluetooth (they are portables after all) and play audio through both when out and about. But the only way I can see to achieve that is to use two phones, set one as a hot spot for the other and the two speakers and use that. That sounds like a massive faff. Surely there’s an easy way? 

You could use a device with dual BT audio transmitters. Here is one offering…

 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bluetooth-Multi-Stream-Transmitter-Control-Long-Lasting/dp/B08CMRD4S6

I understand that some Android mobiles also support more than one BT connection too.

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Bose have this featured in their Bluetooth speakers.  Its called party mode or stereo mode and works flawlessly in stereo mode with 2 portable speakers connected over Bluetooth and content playing via their mobile phone app. 

Sonos need to catch up and update the mobile phone app to accommodate Bluetooth playback or release a separate app called sonos portable. 

 

I guess one could also simply carry a MiFi device in your pocket and use that to ‘pair’ and/or ‘group’ upto 32 Roams/Moves etc; that’s if you felt so inclined, plus all the speakers could play 24/48 better quality streaming (or locally held) audio too and maybe stream upto 60 million+ tracks, defending on the MSP being used. It also provides voice assistant control.

There are always various ways to get around these issues. I have such a device (see attached example), but mostly for convenience, I still tend to just use the one Roam only when travelling/camping/hiking etc; as the Roam sounds great all by itself, plus the Roam, controller and MiFi products can all use the same USB-C charger in my own use-case.

I just bought two Roams and one Move to be able to connect them together outdoors. Think large hotel suites, beach parties or parties in the park. While testing, I was wondering why I couldn’t do that … that led me to this thread. And. What. A. Mess. 😮

Anker, JBL, Bose all have something similar … “Party Mode” where you can connect multiple speakers . Your phone connects to one speaker and from there the speakers mesh to work with the other 99 speakers. I don’t think anyone needs 100 speaker over BT but for Sonos, champion of multi speaker audio, to be at just … ONE? LOL! 

This sucks because now I have to return the Sonos back to BestBuy and look for something that can do AirPlay 2 (at home, WiFi with other HomePods) as well as multi-speaker BT (at large places without WiFi).

I just picked up two roams for the purposes of being away from home and duel pairing them via Bluetooth for music. This thread is a year old, so I’m guessing an update isn’t about to drop. How disappointing.  I’ll definitely be returning them now. Guess I’ll get some UE Booms. 

I purchase 4 roams thinking it would be easy to use them outdoors via Bluetooth.  I was surprised to find that I could only use one of the speakers.   I thought with the name “Roam”  that the speaker was designed to roam.  My mistake at the tune of $850

I purchase 4 roams thinking it would be easy to use them outdoors via Bluetooth.  I was surprised to find that I could only use one of the speakers.   I thought with the name “Roam”  that the speaker was designed to roam.  My mistake at the tune of $850

 

huh?  The name “Roam” made you think that you would be able to connect 4 of them to a single bluetooth source? I’m not following that logic.    You can return them if they are not what your looking for.  A Move sounds like it might be a better fit for you, if you want bigger sound/volume and still be connected to the Sonos system.

I purchase 4 roams thinking it would be easy to use them outdoors via Bluetooth.  I was surprised to find that I could only use one of the speakers.   I thought with the name “Roam”  that the speaker was designed to roam.  My mistake at the tune of $850

Use a mobile WiFi Hub/Access point outside too, then you can use all Roams ‘grouped’ or ‘paired’ with ANY audio source including Bluetooth. I often take two Roams ‘paired’ when glamping outdoors using a d-link dwr-2101 mobile WiFi, but there are dozens of ‘cheaper’ options too that will work just as well.

I’m surprised and frustrated this still doesn’t work -- after literally years of questions and requests.

The Sonos ecosystem and its Wi-Fi connected speakers are outstanding -- I started with Sonos in 2013 and I have 3 soundbars, 2 subs, and 2 Sonos 1’s scattered around the house -- and I love what they can do. But I waited to buy 2 Roam speakers until they worked out the kinks and its software had caught up to the rest of the Sonos home speaker lineup.

The Roams work great at home – outside, inside, upstairs, downstairs - even in the shower. Take them away from your Wi-Fi network and you have a Bluetooth speaker that sounds good -- but the second one is a brick. Or, you need to buy an additional $100 Bluetooth receiver/transmitter so that you can get sound to come out of them both – even if they’re not stereo paired. 

It’s the direct opposite of the name of the speaker -- Roam -- because you can’t.  Unless you cart around that third, extra device -- that might even have to be plugged in to work sometimes. We waited forever to have a Sonos speaker that could use bluetooth -- but it still come up short.

I bought a pair of portable Bose speakers for my son, and a pair of portable Boom 3 speakers for my daughter. They happily take them everywhere -- and they work everywhere. They can even daisy-chain additional like-branded speakers if they want.

So come on Sonos -- don’t force us to buy other hardware.  Especially when we’ve invested so much money in you already...

 

 

Honestly I inherited some Sonos gear from the missus, but pretty disappointed with its lack of connectivity... No Chromecast, no line in (on the arc, beam, sub, one's, move or roam), no ability to share Bluetooth from the move to the Sonos group and no multi roam support off network. Genuinely surprised why people spend so much on this stuff.... Hard to recommend.

Yep, it does a pretty bad job of doing stuff it wasn’t designed to do. Perversely, it’s an amazing device when deployed for its intended use. 

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I have mine working as a stereo bluetooth pair for the first time. They were set up as a stereo pair on my home sonos network. I then paired both to bluetooth and pressed play. Hey presto! Stereo bluetooth. Not sure if I can recreate it away from home or if I just fluked it. Anyone else get this to work? PS I also just downloaded updates. 

I have mine working as a stereo bluetooth pair for the first time. They were set up as a stereo pair on my home sonos network. I then paired both to bluetooth and pressed play. Hey presto! Stereo bluetooth. Not sure if I can recreate it away from home or if I just fluked it. Anyone else get this to work? PS I also just downloaded updates. 

 

You can do a stereo pair on bluetooth while you’re still connected to WiFi.  Of of WiFi, you won’t be able to do the stereo pair.  Seems likely that WiFi is doing the connection between the two speakers, rather than bluetooth or some other protocol.

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I have mine working as a stereo bluetooth pair for the first time. They were set up as a stereo pair on my home sonos network. I then paired both to bluetooth and pressed play. Hey presto! Stereo bluetooth. Not sure if I can recreate it away from home or if I just fluked it. Anyone else get this to work? PS I also just downloaded updates. 

 

You can do a stereo pair on bluetooth while you’re still connected to WiFi.  Of of WiFi, you won’t be able to do the stereo pair.  Seems likely that WiFi is doing the connection between the two speakers, rather than bluetooth or some other protocol.

Thank you. I’ve just unfortunately proved your point. It’s an astonishing oversight on Sonos’s part.  I’m losing faith in the brand.

You can do a stereo pair on bluetooth while you’re still connected to WiFi.  Of of WiFi, you won’t be able to do the stereo pair.  Seems likely that WiFi is doing the connection between the two speakers, rather than bluetooth or some other protocol.

Thank you. I’ve just unfortunately proved your point. It’s an astonishing oversight on Sonos’s part.  I’m losing faith in the brand.

Oversight - unlikely, more likely ‘by design’ as you can stream music up-to 16 stereo pair of Roams or 32 ‘grouped’ devices. That’s not achievable over the Bluetooth protocol, but is achievable over WiFi.

I bought a pair of Roam speakers from a Sonos reseller thinking/assuming that they would (of course) work as a pair. The assistant didn’t point out the flaw in my thinking!

I found out that you can create a pair on a Mac via MIDI and such like but this is disappointing and doesn’t work from my iPhone… and adds a nail in the coffin for me and Sonos. The initial products were great, but why pay a premium price for something that doesn’t quite hit the mark?!

(I have 2 Sonos Move - that I have found out do not work on SonosNet and do not work properly on my mesh network - another pair of nails for products that lack detailed information before buying and only work within a limited set of parameters)

I bought a pair of Roam speakers from a Sonos reseller thinking/assuming that they would (of course) work as a pair. The assistant didn’t point out the flaw in my thinking!

I found out that you can create a pair on a Mac via MIDI and such like but this is disappointing and doesn’t work from my iPhone… and adds a nail in the coffin for me and Sonos. The initial products were great, but why pay a premium price for something that doesn’t quite hit the mark?!

(I have 2 Sonos Move - that I have found out do not work on SonosNet and do not work properly on my mesh network - another pair of nails for products that lack detailed information before buying and only work within a limited set of parameters)

Where have you been the past few years then, since these products were launched. There’s been quite a few discussions about the things mentioned here and elsewhere online - oh and you can stereo pair the Roams and group Roams/Moves together, wherever there’s an accessible network/WiFi connection and play Bluetooth audio to all - I tend to use a mobile hotspot to pair/group them (an iPhone XR in my case) and control/play to all from my iPad App and it’s Bluetooth - only one device needs to be BT paired, even when playing to all.

I bought a pair of Roam speakers from a Sonos reseller thinking/assuming that they would (of course) work as a pair. The assistant didn’t point out the flaw in my thinking!

I found out that you can create a pair on a Mac via MIDI and such like but this is disappointing and doesn’t work from my iPhone… and adds a nail in the coffin for me and Sonos. The initial products were great, but why pay a premium price for something that doesn’t quite hit the mark?!

(I have 2 Sonos Move - that I have found out do not work on SonosNet and do not work properly on my mesh network - another pair of nails for products that lack detailed information before buying and only work within a limited set of parameters)

Where have you been the past few years then, since these products were launched. There’s been quite a few discussions about the things mentioned here and elsewhere online - oh and you can stereo pair the Roams and group Roams/Moves together, wherever there’s an accessible network/WiFi connection and play Bluetooth audio to all - I tend to use a mobile hotspot to pair/group them (an iPhone XR in my case) and control/play to all from my iPad App and it’s Bluetooth - only one device needs to be BT paired, even when playing to all.

Clearly I have been listening to sales people in shops when I should have been digging in to community forums. :D  

Try buying a pair of Sonos Roam when you are staying in a hotel. Getting a WiFi network to register the products before I could use them was great fun and Blutooth was the only option for playing music. The lack of decent documentation is always a problem. I hadn’t seen anything about mobile hotspots… one for the future perhaps.

Clearly I have been listening to sales people in shops when I should have been digging in to community forums. :D  

Try buying a pair of Sonos Roam when you are staying in a hotel. Getting a WiFi network to register the products before I could use them was great fun and Blutooth was the only option for playing music. The lack of decent documentation is always a problem. I hadn’t seen anything about mobile hotspots… one for the future perhaps.

I don’t use 3rd-party WiFi connections, as I don’t like the security issues that may bring about, that’s just a personal thing however - Sometimes when travelling regularly, I tend to take one of these MiFi (travel) routers, which you will see mentioned in my earlier screenshot, listed as ‘MobileLink-5G’

It can handle more speakers than I can carry, either paired and/or grouped and of course there is the option to use the Sonos App, Airplay, API Casting or Bluetooth Audio sources from a phone and/or tablet and can access the Music library stored back Home using the Plex service on Sonos too.

 

 

 

 

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Can you guys clarify the mobile hotspot option for me?

Let’s say my wife and I are both on the beach with no wifi connection. Are you saying I can connect to her iPhone’s mobile hotspot (with her cell only receiving a cellular signal), and my iPhone will see that as a “Wifi” connection which will allow me to Bluetooth stream to my stereo paired Roams in stereo?

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When the speakers are also connected to this wifi, then yes. I’ve not tried to connect speakers to a phone wifi though. Also Sonos does not support connections via cell networks - but that does not mean it wil not work.

You can find the hotspot function in the wifi settings of her iPhone.

Yes I’ve tried this with an iOS mobile hotspot and it works - both the other mobile phone (controller device) and the speakers need to be connected to the WiFi hotspot. No real need for bluetooth (if you prefer not to use it) as you can stream the music over the WiFi hotspot connection too.

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Thanks guys, this sounds pretty easy and this tip should allow us to listen to good music in stereo in the beach without lugging my much larger JBL Extreme Bluetooth speakers.

Sonos really needs to address this shortcoming, just no excuse for such a limitation with a higher end product like the Roam when much cheaper options have no issues streaming stereo over Bluetooth. Anyone willing to pay Sonos prices does so because they have a deep appreciation for SQ, and most anyone in that portion of the market will typically be less than satisfied with mono. It’s really inexplicable that they still haven’t addressed this at this point. 
 

Many thanks for the workaround.

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