They are not receiving an ack from the GW.. Is the GW properly defined? Do it have sufficient power for the radio attached, and do you have a capacitor across the supply lines of both node and GW radios
@mikemayers
You could also have a look at:
http://forum.mysensors.org/topic/1288/example-dimmable-led-with-rotary-encoder
Where you can use a simple rotary encoder for volume input control (which also works from controller side). Then you add the MAX5486 as output device to control the actual volume to your speakers.