I'll jump onto this thread since it seems you've solved the original issue.
I have a living room wired with 7.1. I also have outdoor patio speakers and an outdoor Sonarray SR1 system (8 speakers/2 subs).
I would like the Living Room, Patio speakers, and Sonarray to each have independent volume control and the source can be split to inside/outside (e.g TV inside, Music outside or any combo). I currently use an Onkyo receiver and Sonos Amp and Sonos Connect. None of the speakers are Sonos. To play the TV outside, the Sonos is connected to the TV HDMI Arc port. For some reason, this is creating a huge clusterfuck and the Sonos is automatically switching sources to the various zones, e.g., listening to music outside and it will randomly change to TV, or it will just turn on music inside even with the receiver off - it will turn it on and start playing.
I need to get rid of the Sonos. The setup with everything being hard wired and the app just suck. I also think it isn't powering the Sonarray system properly which is resulting in some of the speakers cutting in and out (I just rewired the speakers so that shouldn't be the issue).
Currently everything inside runs through the TV and AVR. If the TV is playing anything (OTA, Netflix, Playstation, etc.), and receiver is set to TV, it works and plays the correct input. This is critical because I don't want my kids to have to operate the receiver. To play music inside, you have to change the receiver to Sonos (although it does that all by itself now, even when you don't want it to). This is fine because I don't really care about having the music play inside, just want the ability to have the TV play outside.
Everything outside is currently run through the Sonos and doesn't use the receiver (main or 2nd zone).
Is there a 3-zone receiver that can handle this easily without the Sonos? Seems like I could set up the inside with the main zone, then add the outdoor patio and Sonarray as Zones 2/3. Would be nice if the outdoor could be grouped and volume adjusted as a whole or independently (this is how the Sonos does it), but it isn't a deal killer to just have to adjust each volume independently. Also, if I ditch Sonos, what are the options for actually playing music through the system using Spotify/YouTube Music/etc. easily through my phone? Are the connect features on the receiver easy to use/operate?
Just read about the HEOS above, seems like that might work. However, I don't see YouTube Music listed. I hate YTM, but its also where all of my old albums have been uploaded so would be nice to be able to use it. Also appears the Android app is shit.
It needs to be EASY so my wife and kids can operate it.