Changing volume of a group only changes the first speaker volume

[Eric_Gross]

I have a group of two RAAT speakers which I am changing the volume of using my phone volume up/down. The issue is that only the first speaker’s volume changes. I think it is not reasonable to do this while it would be reasonable to change the volume of all grouped speakers.

[Mike_LC (Mike)]

Seems like it would need to be a selective choice. I group numerous zones at times, large and small spaces combined, for whole house music. The same grouped volume, in large rooms and smaller spaces, would not be good. In my case some grouped locations need separate volume settings.

[mike (Mike Fass)]

Hey @Eric_Gross – The @support team flagged this for me, but it’s not actually a bug. Happy to explain the design in a bit more detail.

We’ve experimented extensively with grouped volume control. Due to the wide range of devices Roon supports, we need to use extra care when designing critical controls like these.

Every Roon Ready device has been tested and certified by our team so we know volume implementations can vary widely from device to device. These variations can be even more extreme with RAAT devices in general.

As such, grouped volume strategies that work in some cases fall apart when applied to devices with completely different volume ranges. And because many users have a variety of different devices across the home, tying the volume of all devices to a single control inevitably leads to unpredictable results.

We designed the volume interface to give you clear indication of the current level for all your zones. When you’re using the volume controls in Roon you can use the lower + and - buttons to nudge all your grouped zones louder or softer.

But allowing for larger volume changes across grouped zones is more complicated – volume ramps up at different speeds on different devices and some devices give us less feedback about their current level than others, so it’s not even possible for us to compensate for subtleties between devices.

Linking a volume slider (or iOS hardware buttons) to the diverse array of devices Roon supports sounds good in theory, but after extensive in-house testing we’ve concluded it’s not a feature that can ever work the way people expect, and as such is not a design we can stand behind.

Hope that helps!