Sonos Topology

Zone Player

Sonos is a multi-room audio system, consisting of one or more zone players, smart speakers that connect to your home network. Unlike a traditional speaker that requires a controller to send a music stream, a zone player actively connects to a music stream itself. The controller is needed only to instruct the zone player, after which the zone player executes these instructions autonomously. A Sonos controller is relatively dumb, configuring itself dynamically using the information provided by the zone player.

To see the capabilities of a zone player, use:

$ zp -H xx.xx.xx.xx info

where xx.xx.xx.xx is the IPv4 address of the zone player.

Zone

Zone players are organised in zones, rooms with bonded smart speakers that act as one. A zone consists of a single zone player, a stereo pair, or a home theatre with surround players, optionally expanded with a Sub. A zone is controlled through its master zone player. This is the only zone player in the zone that's visible in the Sonos app. The other, hidden, zone players are slaves (stereo pair) or satellites (home theatre). Typically the zone setup is static, and changes only when you rearrange your rooms, or acquire more zone players. Technically, a Sonos Boost or Sonos Bridge is also a zone, but with a hidden master.

To see the topology of zones and zone players, use:

zp -H xx.xx.xx.xx topology

Zone Group

Zones can be joined to form a zone group, rooms that play the same music synchronised. The group is controlled by its coordinator (or rather: by the master zone player of the coordinator zone). The coordinator connects to the music stream. The members (or rather: the master zone players of the member zones) connect to the coordinator. Unlike zones, the group setup is dynamic, and changes regularly.

To see the groups, look at the inappropriately named Rooms view in the Sonos app. Unlike the Room Settings, which actually shows the zones, the Rooms view shows the zone groups. Technically, a standalone zone is a zone group consisting of only a coordinator zone.

Household

Zone players, zones, and zone groups belong to a Sonos household. A household supports up to 32 zone players. These zone players form a mesh network, op top of your home network. The configuration of music sources (library and services) and favourites is synced over all zone players in the household. All zone players in a household need to be on the same firmware version.

Zone players can only be organised into stereo pairs or home theatre setups with other zone players from the same household; all zone players in the same zone belong to the same household. Zones can only be grouped with other zones from the same household; all zones in a zone group belong to the same household.

The Sonos app connects to one household at a time. Since the topology, music sources, and favourites are synced across all zone players in a household, the app randomly picks an associated zone player to report these.