Current design is such that turning a player OFF drops it from the sync group.  if you wish to keep the players synced even with power off, you can set that option in player settings for Sync Power.  This will allow you to keep the players synced, and choose to unsync if they are off.

I don't know what you mean by "drops it from the sync group".

I have both players set to power on/off independently.

If the players are synced and I power one down, the other no long shows as synced.  This is as you say.

But, if I power the second box back up, it sync's again!  So it was not effectively removed from the sync group, by my plain understanding of the phrase.

So I still wish for one of two behaviors in the (default) power on/off independently mode.

1.  Remember they are synced (current behavior) but let the on box unsync.

2.  Really permanently unsync when powered down.

On power off, the drop is temporary (off being a forced idle mode, so can't remain synced without stopping the rest of the group).  Power back on, and it will rejoin its group, if it still exists. This is as designed. Sync Power keeps them synced permanently (thus one goes off, they all go off, etc)

clearly, you wish the design to be different. I'm just making sure that you are made aware of all of the parameters that do exist currently.

I do understand.

What happens to me is.

I'm playing something in both locations.  My wife turns off the SB3 in the kitchen.  Later, I realize its been left sync'd.  Now I'm stuck.  If I turn the kitchen on, I'll mess up the (very long) track I'm playing.  But if I don't, my wife will eventually turn it on and mess me up anyhow.

If I ran power sync'd, she would have turned me off when she turned her box off.

This is obviously not a show stopped - its just an enhancement suggestion - and you guys have much more important fish to fry right now.  Besides, you may decide that the way it is right now is right for the majority.

(Some UI design BS.  The powered off box which will resync when it is powered up represents undisplayable, thus hidden, state.  This is usually a bad idea in a UI design).

Thanks for listening.

Since this is an enhancement request, it's going to need to be moved to 6.5.

Andy - is this something that's easily done?

If not, let's retarget, post 6.5

Thanks

Sounds like all we need here is to still display the fact that the players are synced, and to allow unsyncing.  Is there a reason we can't still show the players as synced in Player Settings -> Audio and the player frame?

we'd need a new sync state, or change the behaviour of sync for everyone

right now, when a player turns off, it is temporarily dropped from the sync group to rejoin when it is powered on.  Unless you want to have power off drop a player permanently, then you'd need to have a "temp unsync" state that registers as sync group for the purposes of diplaying player names and controling sync state, yet does not operate synced for the purposes of allowing playback on the "on" player awhile leave the other in pause ("off") mode.

Isn't that what we already have?  The temporary unsync state is just never displayed to the user.

the sync groups are linked in the client object.  When a client turns off or on, the syncgroup pref is checked and matched against any existing groups.  there is no live list of "clients in a sync group that are off". The complication in mindset is that "off" is really just pause or stop as far as playmode is concerned.  Might be worth using this as a point for deciding how sync should work.  It has been rather piecemeal so far, based on the latest "why can't I do this?"

having player stay in 'sync' when off isn't too hard.  what gets a bit more complicated is handling all of the synced commands, then when we go to do them all for all other clients in the group...don't do some commands for players that are "off"; making sure we get all of the $everyClient cases. 

Fixed in change 9126.  The Audio settings page will now show 'off' players as synced, so you can unsync them.